Rhapsody (Bound to the Fae Book 3)

by J. Kearston

  Apollo sneers above me in disgust. “We weren’t letting a monster like you near our son again. A necessary evil to keep around to maintain the stasis he was in, but we weren’t about to let you finish draining him.”

  Another mental pull, and I can tell that he’s starting to notice his abilities weakening, even if it’s just slightly. But it’s enough that I can start getting a sense of the energy, how to wield it.

  “And she thinks a sudden jolt of a massive amount of energy will be enough to resuscitate him?”

  He releases my throat so that he can slap me across the face and I hiss. “Don’t speak on matters that don’t concern you, girl. What we do with our son is our business.” He grips my jaw. “I’ll make you this deal once and only once.“ His eyes flash as that binding magic stirs to life. “Call back your army, leave our kingdom and family alone, and I’ll remove the bounty from your head. You’ll be allowed to live out your days up here with the rest of the abominations without our interference, so long as I never have to look at your face again. You come down for supplies, you do so as far away from our land as you can get. Deal?”

  I mull over his words, noting all of the loopholes. He only offered without their interference; he could easily send someone or hire someone to hire someone else to assassinate us. All he’s technically agreeing to do is remove the formal bounty on my head, but that wouldn’t stop anyone else from issuing one or even just killing me in general. He never claimed he wouldn’t kill me, and I don’t know what deal Elorie forced him to make and likely somehow this would negate that one.

  “No.”

  Before I can lose my spark of courage, I slam my head forward as hard as I can, busting his nose. Valdis is as surprised as Apollo, the oppressive force on me weakening slightly as he jolts. With him still straddled above me, I draw my leg up to knee him in the crotch. There’s no such thing as cheap shots when your life is on the line.

  There’s a couple of shouts as I hear Atlas at the door, knowing Valdis will try to subdue him and leave me to Apollo. I barely make it a few inches back, trying to scramble to my feet, before Apollo is there, fisting my hair and yanking me to my feet with him. There’s a click as Atlas cocks his gun and my warning shout is lost to the sound of him firing.

  Over Apollo’s shoulder, I watch Valdis throw a hand up to create an invisible barrier before whipping it to the side, changing the bullet’s trajectory the same moment Apollo whirls us around, the two of them in sync from decades of fighting alongside each other.

  The momentum has me spinning an extra few steps, only his grip on my hair keeping me from going too far, but enough that I’m able to see Atlas’ horrified face. Shutting my eyes, I let the power I’d siphoned rush out of me all at once. Apollo releases me as he stumbles back, cursing, the same moment the bullet hits my collar bone.

  Instantly, the heat I’m throwing off forces the metal to melt as it makes contact, pooling on my skin and running a burning trail of molten metal down my chest rather than piercing it. The shock is enough for Valdis to lose his hold on the changelings, and they don’t hesitate for so much as a fraction of a second.

  Azazel gets to him first, breaking one of Valdis’ arms as he raises it to defend himself. A second later he’s tearing into his throat, his human teeth doing little to hinder the savagery of it.

  Raziel on the other hand, has a cooler sort of calculation to his attack, a cold rage that mirrors Lucien in its intensity. He fakes left, giving Loki time to get to her feet and pull Apollo’s attention two ways before capitalizing on it. Darting behind him, he grips his head, gritting his teeth through the burning pain as he jerks it to the side with an audible crack. Apollo’s body slumps to the ground face first and Loki crosses the small distance to place a foot on his spine before stomping, ensuring there’s absolutely no way he’ll be able to recover.

  Even the changelings don’t siphon energy from the two men that spent my childhood tormenting me, as if the thought of mirroring their forms disgusts them too.

  I sink to my knees as the air rushes from my body, consciously reminding myself to breathe before I spiral. Atlas is suddenly there, using my shirt to try and swipe away the molten metal still burning my skin from my body. I’m aware of the pain, even the slight air current brushing over my various burns hurting, but that disconnect I forced into existence is only exacerbated by the mental blow they delivered.

  “Fuck, Cambria, I almost,” Atlas trails off, hands trembling as he pulls the collar of my shirt back to examine the extent of the damage. He gently traces his fingertips beneath the marks on my neck, my cheek.

  But all that I manage to say is, “They let me think he was dead.”

  Nothing to put him at ease, not even a tear shed as I process all of the terror of the last few minutes. Just a sort of numb horror at how everything could have been different, how much guilt I’ve suffered with. Maybe it’s better that I thought he was dead rather than be in the tortured state that the people I thought were my parents for so long have been trapped in. Hoping. Not able to say goodbye and move on, but have it a constant state of fresh grief.

  “What are you talking about?” he murmurs, smoothing a hand over my hair, looking for somewhere safe to touch.

  “My brother.” Because blood or not, I won’t think of him as anything else. “Elorie was only siphoning from me to keep him alive and gather enough energy to bring him out of that stasis I apparently put him in.”

  Dorian curses, him and Lucien catching the tail end of our conversation as he enters the room and slides to his knees in front of me. “We need to get some ice on those.“ He cringes. “Fuck, we didn’t set a tray up in the freezer.”

  “Because ice is neither a necessity nor is it food,” Atlas breathlessly teases, mirroring my rant the first day we woke up in my apartment after they showed up in Faerie.

  Lucien’s gaze lingers on my throat before glancing at the corpses, and then the changelings, mentally filling in all of the blanks. When he sees the damage to Loki’s back, he doesn’t even hesitate to offer a hand in her direction.

  Loki bites into his flesh and Luce doesn’t so much as wince, his eyes holding mine. “Do you want to go back?”

  I swallow before nodding, the small movement making me wince.

  “They’ll try to kill us,” Atlas warns, but as I meet Dorian’s watchful gaze, his eyes soften with understanding.

  “Maybe,” he relents. “But it’s long past the time Cody’s ghost stopped haunting everyone. It needs to end...one way or another.”

  Chapter 16

  Cambria

  I don’t feel bad about Valdis and Apollo’s deaths, even though I know I should pity them now that I understand what drove their actions. But honestly? I don’t. They were shitty people that tormented me, haunted my dreams for all of these years even after I was finally allowed to move out. A sob story doesn’t erase all of the damage they did, no matter how tragic. It just makes it easier to understand why they were raging assholes.

  Maybe that lack of closure for them is karma at work. They tortured me my entire life, then died before being able to see their son again. It’s a vicious cycle of cruelty, and no matter what way you look at it, it’s just...depressing. I can shoulder the guilt for hurting my brother, but I refuse to take on the added weight of those two monsters’ fates.

  “This is without a doubt the dumbest idea ever.” Atlas glances around the charred remains that used to be the forest surrounding the ring they first arrived in Faerie in. “We should just let them all kill each other off and come back to pick up the pieces.”

  My gaze is rooted to the last spot we last saw Rickon, staying behind to give us a fighting chance and becoming the traitor they accused me of being. With as many people as are coming back from the dead lately, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out he’s chilling down in Elorie’s dungeon, just waiting to be brought before the queen for sentencing. Fates know she always worked on her own schedule rather than what’s fair. But my life doesn’t work t
hat way, with happily ever afters and good surprises.

  And though I might condemn my not-fathers, Rickon...I can make my peace with his behavior, as hypocritical as that may be. At least he was an asshole in a bid to protect the small amount of freedom I’d been given from being taken away, to give me a semblance of a normal life while trying to figure out a permanent solution. He was the first person that actually gave a shit about me, even if I didn’t know until it was too late.

  “They’ll never be done killing each other.” Lucien’s voice sounds as tired as I feel, looking out over the desolate remains. “The cycle will just start all over again like it did all those centuries ago unless something changes.”

  Licking my suddenly dry lips, I start walking, picking my way through ash and charred logs towards the city. “Goal is to save as many changelings as possible. The fae-” I pause, thinking it over “-we should probably care about too, I suppose. But I have a hunch they’ll just as readily attack us even after they see we can get the changelings to stand down. I’m not as concerned about keeping people alive that will stab us in the back the first chance they get.”

  The streets are relatively empty, faint screams carried on the breeze. There are several miles between here and the castle, and I’ve no doubt they’re swarming it already. The changelings will be naturally drawn to the concentration of energy, and if she’s amassed enough that she thinks she can Frankenstein Cody back to life, there’s no way to hide it from them.

  And as much as I hate Elorie, I love Cody more. If there’s actually a chance that she can bring my brother back, I’m going to make sure that I do everything within my power to give her the opportunity.

  “And if she’s just crazy?” Atlas doesn’t have any snark behind his question, just voicing what the others were too polite to ask, worried about taking that hope away from me.

  “I know it’s unlikely,” I reply with a sigh. “Impossible not to get my hopes up a little, though.” Turning to walk backwards in the middle of the street so that I can face him, I meet his eye so that he can see the conviction in mine. “Then we try to kill her before she kills us. Because if this fails, she will have absolutely no reason to keep me alive anymore and will blame me as much as her consorts have all of these years. She’ll be heartbroken, furious, and can teleport. Really small window of opportunity to take her out before she realizes that everything she’s worked towards for decades was pointless. And I doubt that even Azazel is fast enough to escape her wrath if that happens.”

  “How many more consorts does she have?” Lucien’s eyes scan our surroundings warily, waiting for a feral changeling to jump out of the shadows or a pissed off fae to lash out.

  “Two. Brone and James.”

  “Oh my god,” Atlas cuts in, “a normal name!”

  I narrow my eyes, but it works to bring a small smile to my face. “Brone we don’t really need to worry about since he’s a telepath; communication and reading minds. Useful in a multitude of situations, but it’s never worked on me because of that ingrained protection against compulsion and mind tampering, so you three should be safe as well. And not like he can alter memories or put thoughts in people’s heads, so he can’t trick the changeling’s into doing his bidding.”

  I stop when we reach an alley between buildings, gazing down at the line of corpses littering the ground, blood staining the walls. It looks like a pack of rabid wolves tore through here; not hungry ones. There’s too much still intact, similar to the way Azazel tore out Valdis’ throat simply to kill him rather than absorb his energy. Death and destruction, simply for the sake of it.

  They aren’t starving anymore, they’re just pissed.

  They’ve been free long enough to curb their hunger, to return to a perceived state of their version of ‘normal’, and now, they’re able to think more clearly. This isn’t a mindless swarm after energy, it’s an army after revenge, a territory to settle in now that they need a new home.

  Dorian stares at the carnage with the same sort of assessing eye. “And James?”

  My eyes stay locked on the alley. “We don’t need to worry about James either.”

  “Another telepath?” Atlas asks, but I shake my head, gesturing in front of us.

  “Already dead.” His wide, unseeing eyes stare lifelessly at the sky, his neck bent at an odd angle and a hole punched through his gut.

  Dorian’s voice is a horrified whisper, drawing the same conclusions I have, analyzing the changelings’ behavior far more carefully. “Fuck.”

  We hesitate, sharing a glance. Our entire plan hinged on them reacting the same way as the others, winning them over with energy and recognizing the source nostalgically as the three with us did. But if they aren’t hungry, it isn’t really a selling point anymore.

  They don’t need me, so why should they bother listening?

  “Well, we’re dead.”

  Lucien rolls his shoulders before cracking his neck from side to side. “No, we just have to think outside of the box. You can still manipulate emotions, so you should be able to calm them down. Make them love you, Cambria. Lord knows it isn’t as difficult to do so as you think it is.”

  Not nearly as self-assured as he is, we continue making our way to the castle, passing body after body, blood spatter covering the outside of buildings. Any fae that managed to survive this first wave either ran, or must be barricaded inside somewhere, terrified. But either way, they don’t show their faces, and it makes the long walk a terrifying sort of peaceful compared to what we were anticipating.

  By the time we reach the iron gates, a terrifying combination of calm adrenaline is flowing through my veins, like we’re stuck in the eye of the storm. Chaos and disaster surround us, yet don’t seem to directly affect us. We’re in our own bubble as the world falls apart in front of us, too uneasy to speak for fear of breaking the spell.

  The gates are already shoved open, but as soon as we cross the threshold of the barrier, the glamour we were all expecting doesn’t appear. That false illusion of perfection, faded away to reveal the stone castle in its true state. It’s still gorgeous, but it's lost the magical charm that made it seem like something out of a story book.

  Each grey stone is visible, and there aren’t any flowers vining over the exterior. The multicolored gem path is back to the simple rocks, grass, and dirt that nature intended, and the air doesn’t feel laced with drugs. It’s just a regular castle, beautiful in its own right.

  The screams have morphed into shouts and grunts, far louder than before. There’s a brief flash of running bodies in the distance as soldiers battle in the back of the castle grounds, too far for them to notice us. I half expected there to be changelings crawling up the sides of the building like something out of a cheap horror film, but there’s nothing but dead bodies paving the way up the steps to the splintered remains of the front doors.

  “All the queen’s horses and all the queens men,” I murmur, glancing around with a detached sort of pity for all that died trying to defend the woman that brought this fate to their doorstep.

  So much death lies at her feet, and they call me a horrible person. But I guess the fact of the matter is that nothing is ever simply black and white. Good people make terrible mistakes that they can never make amends for, and horrible people can sacrifice themselves trying to atone for theirs. The line for what even makes a person ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is so blurred that it depends on who you ask. I’m the villain in hundreds of people’s eyes, and the best thing ever to a few. So who decides what’s right and if I’m even the decent person I think I am?

  Apollo thought he was a good person while burning off my wings, that he was saving his people from me hurting them like I did his son. Victor thought he was in the right, seeking revenge for his brother in a twisted sense of justice. And then there’s me, trying to protect the monsters that just slaughtered the better part of a city.

  Maybe all of the torture I endured doesn’t excuse my callous indifference to all of the death surrounding
me any more than it was a defense for my tormentors’ behavior.

  Maybe I’m not actually the hero after all, let alone the good person I thought I was.

  “We can still go home if you’ve changed your mind,” Dorian offers softly.

  It’s a tempting offer, especially in the middle of my silent existential crisis, but if I take him up on it, I’ll always regret it. I’d rather face an early grave than have to look at myself in the mirror for the next fifty years and remember that I was too scared to try. And that right there is how I know I’m doing the right thing; because it scares the shit out of me.

  It may not be the right thing to everyone, but it’s the right thing for me.

  “Try not to get stabbed or eaten, okay? I’ll never let you live it down.”

  Striding up the steps, I enter the main hall. Splintered wood and shattered remains of ornate objects crunch beneath my feet and I hold my breath, knowing that the sound could draw the attention of anyone. Fae or changeling, both are a threat right now. It’s cruel to expect Raziel, Loki, and Azazel to fight against people they’ve spent centuries living beside, but maybe that will make the others hesitate. If they aren’t mad with hunger and thinking clearly enough to orchestrate an attack, then maybe they’ll pause to wonder why three of their kind are protecting us.

  Or maybe they’ll sway our murder babies to the dark side and we’ll be royally fucked.

  Smart or not, there’s no way Dorian or I will be able to land a killing blow on any of the three psychos if they turn on us. Despite giving him a hard time, the three of them have wormed their way into my shriveled little heart and I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Atlas or Lucien, though? Probably. If it meant protecting us, they’d do it so we wouldn’t have to, would bear that pain to save us from it. That isn’t to say they don’t care about them too, but the two of them are able to flip that emotional switch far better than I could ever dream.

  A crash to our left may as well be a clap of thunder with as loud as it echoes in the halls. But it’s just a painting that lost its battle with gravity, the nail slipping free of the giant crack splitting the wall. The frame snaps upon impact, adding one more thing to the rubble piling up around us.