by Michele Hauf
“Allow me to leave your home. I promise to never return, to not ever darken your days with the evil that I am.”
“You are not evil, Beatrice.”
“At the very least I am wicked. And I remind you of her.”
He nodded and turned away. “Her eyes were red. Yours are bright and wondrous. You will never be like her.” He cast a glance over his shoulder at her. “And for that you should be thankful.”
Such a cruel man. “What can you tell me about her habits, her desires, her needs? She gave me a blood hunger. Is that normal?”
He nodded, without facing her. “Could be. I never question my fetishes.”
“Your dark sexual desires made a child, Faery king. And you treated me like dirt all my life. Just let me go. I want to leave Faery and return to the mortal realm, where I am loved.”
“Leave, then. But I’ll not direct you to a portal. Take only the clothes on your back and abscond from my sight.” Malrick gestured to his lackey, whispered in his ear and sent him off. “I would ask you to stay. You will, at the very least, be alive in my home.”
“Alive but never happy. I’ll take my chances out in the Wilds. It can’t be that treacherous.”
“It’s not, for one who has grown up in the Wilds.”
Yeah, so the man wasn’t on Team Beatrice. What was new?
“Could you at least, uh...direct me in a way that’s not so harrowing as all the rest?”
Malrick smirked and as his lackey returned carrying a box, he approached Bea. “I care for you more than I will ever be able to admit. And, in proof, I will do this small favor for you.”
Bea thrust up her chin, unwilling to show the slightest glee at his sudden step toward compassion. It wasn’t kindness. It was simply what he thought she wanted to hear.
“When you leave, travel straight until the underforest ends. Then turn to your right, fly over the end of the forest and journey on from there. You must not pass through the end. The landscape is brutal. But if you make it over, you’ll have a good chance of survival. With luck, you may locate a portal that leads away from this realm.”
Sounded so not like a party Bea wanted to attend. But she’d been practicing with weapons all her life. She knew defense. And defense would be key when traveling the Wilds, for even she wasn’t familiar with half the creatures that inhabited Faery. Though she innately knew that lacking knowledge had kept her obliviously safe all her life.
She nodded, maintaining a stoic resignation. She would not show her father how desperately she needed him to touch her. Perhaps hug her and send her off with his good wishes. Impossible. Malrick was forged from something so cold and adamant it had no name. He thought demons were the cruel, despicable ones?
The lackey opened the wood box and Malrick drew out a crystal blade, hilted with finely worked metal that glinted in all colors with a red sheen. He held it between them. Waning daylight danced in the clear crystal, flashing out brilliant red beams. Like demon eyes. Yet there in the center traced a black vine as if the spine of the weapon.
“This is yours,” he said, and handed it to her.
Bea took the knife. The hilt was warm, and it seemed to conform to her grip, but that was impossible. Metal didn’t do such things. The curved crystal blade was so clear she could see her hand through it.
“It was your mother’s,” he offered. “Sirque left it behind when she was— Well, it is yours to own now.”
“This was once my...”
She couldn’t afford a blink when the blade flashed brightly across her vision. Beguiled by the beauty of it and the knowledge that her mother had once owned this, she could only revere the gorgeous object. And then she feared it. Was the crystal threaded through with the blackness that was her mother’s blood? The same blood that ran through her veins and had darkened her ichor?
“You’ve been trained to use weapons properly. I know,” Malrick added. “I made sure my best trainers were available to you as you were growing up. None but the finest education.”
That startled Bea. She’d always thought to sneak a lesson here and there from some in the household troops and had sworn them to never breathe a word of it to her father. Malrick had instigated those lessons?
No, don’t step over to his side. It is not your side.
“I can hold my own,” she said. “I’ve had to protect myself from my siblings and others in the household all my life. But much as you claim to be the instigator in my training, you’d never admit to knowing I had to fight for survival.”
“Beatrice, I...” Malrick exhaled heavily and swept a hand before her, gesturing to the blade. “Use it with care. I send you off with blessings, and the sincere wish that you will not encounter such opposition that you will need to use it. Goodbye, my daughter of Sirque.”
Bea lifted her head and found in her father’s silver eyes a strange glow. Similar to the one she had first seen in Kir’s eyes that summer evening when they had been forced to bond in marriage. Was it compassion?
Impossible.
“Thanks, Malrick.” She chucked him aside the arm with a fist, and he flinched.
Mossy misery, he was still the same cold Malrick. No kindness in his heart.
With the insurmountable task of breaching the Wilds before her, Bea sought levity to encourage her first steps into the dangerous unknown. “So, I’m off.”
“Indeed you are.” Malrick turned, and his lackey followed him out of the receiving room, leaving her standing there alone and—she could admit it to herself—afraid. Her father had left her as if she were nothing more than a nuisance merchant attempting to ply her useless wares upon him. Never to see her again. Never.
And she was good with that.
She turned to the massive doors that opened out into the courtyard. And beyond that, the forest. And beyond that, the Wilds.
Tears spilled from her eyes. “Shouldn’t be so difficult to march away from an asshole like him. I’ll pretend he’s just my bitchy werewolf monster-in-law.”
Yet she stood there for a long time, the crystal blade clutched tightly against her breastbone. At one moment, she almost looked back. Might Malrick have twisted a glance over his shoulder after her? She would not look. She must not...
Bea turned around, her eyes tracing the long hallway strung with direwebs and dripping humble-bee mead. The glow from the bright Faery sun made her blink. Malrick was gone.
She let out her held breath.
“Alone,” she said. “Get used to it, Bea.”
* * *
Kir clenched the steel bar suspended a foot above his head and gritted his jaws. A claw cut across his back, tearing open his skin and nicking bone. He’d chosen not to have his wrists bound to the bar; instead, he would receive the ritual banishment due an unbound, free wolf.
Shifted to werewolf shape, the pack males had reluctantly queued up for the ritual that a wolf must endure as a means to ceremoniously oust them from their home—their very family. Half the pack had already cut claws across his skin. He had only ten more lashes to go.
Another cut into his flesh. And another.
He’d not yet cried out, though he clenched his jaw mightily. The claws were delivered swiftly, yet deeply. And they’d been dipped in wolfsbane, the wicked punishment to this trial. He felt every cut as a betrayal. His pack should have stood by him and protected Bea. Instead, following Etienne, they had chosen to make a grandstand act of defiance to show Malrick their disdain.
It could have been handled differently. But he would no longer question or argue. He wanted this done so he could get to her.
Five more wolves cut into his skin. Two more left. Etienne stepped up and paused. He could hear his principal’s rapid heartbeat. The werewolf was both excited by the release of endorphins, the blood and the pain, and also reviled.
Blood poured from Kir’s back, and he knew the muscles would take days, perhaps weeks, to heal properly, for the wolfsbane fucked with the healing process. He hung now, his fingers barely clinging to
the bar. It was all he could do not to let out a long moaning cry.
“Do it!” Kir yelled.
And Etienne’s claws cut into his rib bones. Kir’s knees bent. He clung. Mustn’t let go. Show them strength and face this trial with honor. Walk away from Etienne, who betrayed me and my sister, a proud man.
Mercy, but only one wolf remained to mark him. Jacques.
Kir and Jacques had grown up together. They’d been close—brothers—their families a blend, and many times Kir had gone to Jacques’s mother for the things he needed and vice versa. Jacques knew Kir’s dreams and hopes, his desires. He knew that Jacques could not have found a better woman to love than Marielle. He hated that walking away from the pack also meant severing the bond he had with his wolf brother.
But some things were more important. Like the trust he had given Bea.
His best friend stepped up behind him. The werewolf had not a human voice in fully shifted form, yet Kir could sense his friend’s distress in the acrid scent that oozed from him.
One more. Just do it, he prayed. Make it end.
Jacque’s claw dragged down the back of Kir’s neck, cutting into his vertebra. Kir howled and dropped the bar. He fell to his knees in the puddle of his blood.
Jacques shifted instantly. His hand landed on Kir’s bloodied shoulder. “Come on, man. I’m taking you to the infirmary.”
“No,” Kir gasped, heaving for a breath. “Home.”
And he blacked out.
* * *
Kir woke in the infirmary facedown on a cot, a flat pillow crushed against his cheek. The white-tiled walls were spattered with his blood. The odor of dried blood repulsed him. He cried out at the pain on his back and realized he’d been bandaged, for wide strips of gauze wrapped around his chest.
Reaching back was a lesson in patience. Every muscle ached and felt as if it had been shredded to ribbons. He tugged at the gauze below his rib cage, and the thin medical fabric pulled at the wounds. Howling in pain, he didn’t stop until the bloody gauze had been torn away.
As his eyelids fluttered and he tumbled off the bed, he noticed someone standing across the room. A sniff scented her chemical perfume. Madeline.
“I can’t believe you have done such a thing, Kir,” she said. “For what? That filthy faery?”
For the first time in his life Kir saw his mother’s vile soul, and he did not like it. Had he the strength, he would have lashed out at her. If only he had known she had been his ultimate betrayer.
“You are just like your father.”
Perhaps he was. His mother may have grown to believe her lies over the years, but he would not stomach them one moment longer.
“You...” he muttered. It hurt to move, to open his eyes, but he did and managed to focus on the woman standing with arms crossed over her chest. “And Etienne.”
Madeline gasped. An admission. The only one he would ever get.
“Leave me,” he said.
“Kir, no, I—”
“Go!” He growled at her, and his mother fled, the click of her heels racing down the hallway the last thing he ever wanted to hear from her.
* * *
Hours later, Kir agreed to let Jacques help him into the shower to clean up, but he wouldn’t let the nurse put on more bandages. He would heal. Eventually. He didn’t have time for this. He needed to find Bea!
“I’ll drive you home,” Jacques said as Kir pulled up a clean pair of leather pants and shoved his feet into a borrowed pair of boots. “But you’re not bleeding in my car. Put a shirt on, man.”
He caught the long-sleeved shirt Jacques tossed him and pulled it on but didn’t button it up. The wounds had scabbed and would be healed in a day or two. It would take a lot longer for his pack’s betrayal to resolve in his soul.
Without saying a word, he strode by his friend and down the hallway toward the car park.
Jacques didn’t say much on the drive home. There wasn’t anything to say. He was pack scion; he’d had to follow his principal’s orders or risk his own banishment. Hell, he would never step so far beyond his father’s rule. And Kir understood that. The good of the pack always came first. It was a rule he had abided always.
Until now. Rules must be bent to accommodate real life. And real life was messy and unexpected, and—when love was involved—demanded a man follow the rules of his heart.
Pulling up before Kir’s house, Jacques shifted into Park and grabbed Kir by the wrist before he could turn and get out. “I know what it’s like to love someone as much as you, man. What you feel for the faery has gotta be strong if it allowed you to do this.”
Kir nodded, accepting Jacques’s form of an apology. An apology that wasn’t necessary. Both knew what was required to leave the pack. And he couldn’t in good faith have remained with a family that would not accept the woman he loved.
“We had good times,” Jacques offered. “You will always be my brother. Hell, I wish you could have been my best man. I’ll feel you standing there beside me, Kir. Know that.”
Kir nodded. “Keep up the good work with the enforcement team. Don’t let the packs indulge in the blood games and keep an eye out for V-hubs.”
“Got it under control. But it won’t be the same without you by my side. Go and find her, man. Hold her tight and never let her go.”
He clasped Jacques’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “Bea and I will be fine. Thanks for the ride. And...thanks for all of it, brother.”
Jacques nodded and turned his head away quickly.
Kicking open the door, Kir slid out and waved as his friend drove off. He might see him again someday. He hoped that he would. And they would be civil to each other, but Kir’s banishment would not allow Jacques to show him any sort of friendship or companionship. Never could he return to the compound without facing swift and wicked retaliation.
Never again could he speak to Madeline. So be it.
The sun slashed a wicked heat across Kir’s neck. The shirt stuck to his back where the scabs had cracked. He pulled it off, sure none of his neighbors would see the ravaged mess on his skin on his short walk up the sidewalk to his front stoop.
But as he arrived at the steps, he saw a woman standing there. Tall, dark, slender and beautiful. She wore what looked like black abraded leather on her legs and body. A sheer black veil covered her face down to her top lip so he could not determine her eye color. And spiraling out from each temple were long ebony horns.
No need to see her eyes. Kir immediately sensed what stood before him.
The demoness stepped down toward him. “I understand one of my daughters has been searching for me.”
Chapter 24
The day was going much better than anticipated. Bea marched toward the underforest. And she did so with a sigh of relief. No dangerous intruders had leaped out at her; nor had she been attacked by anything swooping down from the azure sky. She wasn’t starving, though she certainly wouldn’t refuse something to eat and drink.
If the Wilds were all they’d been made to be, she should be bleeding and shivering in fear for her very life right now. Begging for rescue from a valiant knight armed to the teeth with weapons of all sorts to combat any creature he should encounter.
So far all she suffered were sore feet and an annoying itch at the back of her neck.
She swatted at a nuisance sprite who had been dive-bombing her hair all afternoon. “If sprites are all I’ve to worry about, then this adventure shouldn’t be so taxing. I’ll be home before I know it.”
Then she smiled because now when she said home she meant the mortal realm. Never had a place welcomed her more.
And then she frowned. If she did get back to the mortal realm and to the place she called home with Kir, would he welcome her back? She only assumed he was upset about her kidnapping and subsequent return to Faery. What if he was not? Perhaps he may have been initially upset to lose her, but what if, after a few days without her, he’d determined that it was best she remain in her land and he in his?
> Clasping her arms across her chest, she shook her head fervently. “He loves me. He has to. I need him to.”
Because if he did not, then she truly had no home.
The glint from a pool of water distracted her dire thoughts. It was a good size, probably a lake. Bea eagerly rushed toward it. Colorful stones and boulders scalloped the shore. Hoping to quench her thirst, she carefully navigated a path to the vivid blue water.
The water was so cold it gave her brain freeze, but she lapped it up, knowing her journey could turn perilous and there was no guarantee if or when she’d next come upon fresh water.
She was hungry, though. “Should have asked the old man for a last supper before he sent me off.”
On the other hand, her hunger was more for blood, not food. She’d not known that demons required blood, or ichor, for survival. Was it all demons, or just the particular breed that was her mother? What sort of demon had Sirque been anyway?
That Malrick had been able to dismiss her a second time with the same disinterest as he had the day of her wedding no longer bothered Bea. What did was that he’d thought he was protecting her by not providing details about her mother. So Sirque was demon. And Malrick hated demons, and through the years, he had ingrained that hatred in Bea.
Kir held a similar hatred.
But seriously? If she thought about it, what was it about demons she and her husband need fear and hate so much? There were all sorts in Faery. Demons had easy access for the very reason Himself, the Dark Prince, considered himself one who could rule Faery. Some breeds of faery were once of the angelic realm, as were the major demons, from which all demonic races had birthed. At least, that’s how Bea understood it from the stories she’d read as a child. School had not covered demons in detail for the very reason they were looked upon as a lesser, vile race.
“The Wicked,” she muttered.
Somewhere in Faery there was a cold dark place where the half-breed demons were exiled, forced to live away from all others. A place where she apparently belonged. Why had Malrick not sent her away? Perhaps the man did have an inkling of compassion behind those hard silver eyes.
