Taste My Wrath (The Iron Fae Book 1)

by Debbie Cassidy

“We have to wait till dawn. Till the games are over.”

  “If you wait till dawn, they will see you,” he said. “Danika, if they see you, they will kill you.”

  I’d known this. Of course I had. But protecting Nina was all that mattered. “I’ll be careful. I’ll take the roofs.”

  “The daytime shadows are not our friends,” he reminded me.

  Only the night shadows were willing to cloak me. In the day, I’d be vulnerable and exposed.

  “Go,” Nina said. “I’ll be okay. I can hide here until the sun comes up. I’ll be fine.”

  “Fifteen minutes till dawn,” Killion said. “Your sister will be safe. Let me get you back.”

  A lot could go wrong in fifteen minutes. “No. I’m not leaving her. I’ll figure something out. I’ll stay in the pipe until the shining ones have left the district. Nina can come get me when they’ve gone, can’t you, Nina?”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  Killion’s eyes narrowed as he thought it through. “Very well. We wait.”

  We? “You’re staying?”

  “Till dawn. I can stay till the sun rises.”

  I nodded. “Okay. Thank you.”

  “I’ll keep watch.” He slipped away and out of the pipe.

  “What is he?” Nina asked.

  “Honestly, babe, I have no idea.”

  Five minutes passed with agonizing slowness. Why was it that as the end of the Hunt grew closer, time seemed to stand still, and then Killion was flying back into the pipe. Blue eyes wide.

  “Baku have picked up your scent. They’re coming. We need to run. Now.”

  His words galvanized me into action. I grabbed Nina, and we lunged toward the mouth of the pipe. Getting trapped in here was certain death. We had less than ten minutes till the sun came up. All we had to do was evade them till then.

  We burst into the night, and I swung Nina onto my back and ran. Killion was a shadow running parallel to us, but the baying of the Hunt’s mounts and the snarls and grunts of the baku were too close.

  There was no choice but to keep moving.

  “I see them!” someone cried.

  Us. They saw us. I pushed harder, faster. Nina held on tighter, and then Killion was at my back, propelling me forward, lifting us and carrying us.

  “What is that? Did you see it?” the voices cried.

  Oh, shit. Wait, was the world turning gray?

  “Dawn!” Nina squealed. “It’s dawn.”

  “Danika…” Killion’s breath was a whisper in my ear. “I’m sorry.”

  He melted away with the first rays of the sun, and my body chose that moment to give up. My pace slowed as the world filled with light.

  Nina was safe. Alive. That’s all that mattered.

  “Dani…Oh, God.”

  A weight hit my back, taking me down. Nina screamed.

  Someone yelled, and then the weight was gone, but the hot, rancid breath of the baku wafted close to my ear.

  “What do we have here?” The voice was cool and sharp, like cut glass, like ice. “Stand, human.”

  Nina climbed off me and grabbed my hand. We stood together to face the Hunt. Three shining ones on obsidian mounts with flared nostrils and red eyes that bore into us.

  I recognized the antlered one. His expression was emotionless, his face an impassive mask as if death meant nothing. As if this Hunt was just a game. Which to them it was. To them, we were nothing.

  The cloaked figure had nutmeg skin and shiny brown eyes. A mouth that was too thin and a nose that was too wide. He canted his head, studying me. But it was the final rider that stole my breath. Golden-haired with amethyst eyes, the crown prince stared down at me with a haughty expression and no sign that he recognized me. Heck, he probably didn’t. I was a human, like every other human. We probably blended into one.

  “A little old for the Hunt,” antler man said.

  “A helper, a rule-breaker,” cloaked man said.

  “It seems the sun brings us a fresh kill,” antler man added.

  “No!” Nina stepped in front of me. “You leave my sister alone.”

  The antler guy raked Nina over, his gaze lingering on her feet. “Imperfect. Broken yet passionate.”

  “You and your obsession,” the cloaked one said. “She’s no use to us.”

  “Yes.” I met the hooded one’s gaze. “She’s no use, but she survived, and it’s dawn. You can let her go home. The Hunt is over.”

  The cloaked one smiled, exposing jagged teeth. “Yes, she can go home, but you will stay. You will bleed.”

  I raised my chin, stomach trembling with terror. “I know.”

  “No.” The crown prince spoke for the first time. “Enough. We have what we need. We should return our cargo to the Keep.”

  “You’re not in charge here,” hooded guy snapped. “You don’t make the rules.”

  The crown prince was looking at the antlered dude.

  And the antlered dude was looking at me. “I think I want to see it bleed. I think I want that very much.”

  I looked to the crown prince, but his gaze was fixed on his mount, shoulders tense.

  “Dani?” Nina gripped me tighter.

  I pulled my hand from hers. “Go. Go straight home. Do it now.”

  “I won’t leave you.”

  “You will!” I shoved her. “You’ll do as I say, do you hear me. If you don’t, all this…everything will have been for nothing.”

  Nina’s eyes brimmed, and she shook her head, but my expression was enough to have her backing up.

  “Go!”

  She turned and began to run in her loping gait. I returned my focus to the Hunt. “Let’s get this over with.”

  12

  Four baku surrounded me, circling while the antler guy and hooded guy moved their mounts into damage range. The crown prince hung back, eyes down as if he didn’t want to witness what was about to happen.

  I drew my daggers from my belt, because like fuck was I going down without a fight.

  “Oh, look, it has a weapon,” hooded guy said.

  “Interesting,” the antlered one replied.

  There was movement in the periphery of my vision.

  The whip.

  I dove out of range, rolling and coming up so I was face to face with the dripping maw of a baku. It growled, its body trembling with the desire to attack, but it didn’t.

  I was off bounds for now. I was the Hunt’s plaything.

  The whip cracked again, missing me by a hairbreadth as I rolled out of the way.

  An arrow thunked into the ground to my left.

  “Aw, you missed,” hooded guy said.

  “So did you,” the antlered one replied coolly.

  “I was playing.”

  “So was I.”

  This was a joke to these creatures. I was a joke.

  Anger rose up my throat, pushing words out of my mouth, short and sharp like mini daggers. “How about you come down here and play with me?”

  Hooded guy let out a sharp bark of laughter and then looked surprised. “Well, that was interesting.”

  “Amusement is interesting,” antler guy said. “I believe I feel amused.”

  I rose and glared at the unfeeling bastards. “How about we make a deal. I fight one of you, one on one. If I win, you let me live.”

  “Pfft,” hooded figure said. “We don’t have to make deals with you.”

  “No, you don’t, but wouldn’t it be an amusing story to tell?”

  Antler guy’s eyes lit up with interest. “Jarnik, what do you say?”

  Jarnik grinned, showcasing his awful teeth again. “I say, I’ll enjoy pulling the lawbreaker’s heart from its chest.”

  He dismounted, and the air crackled with dangerous energy, dark, deadly, and ravenous. It pressed in on me. Bad idea. This was a bad idea, but it was too late to change things now. There was no doubt in my mind that he was more powerful than me and that he could kill me. But I’d fought several bleak and won. I could take on one shining one. I
had to because I wasn’t ready to die.

  He pulled two daggers from the holster at his waist. Larger and deadlier looking than mine. Jarnik could be posing as a distraction. Antler guy could spear with an arrow at any time, but then Jarnik attacked, and I stopped thinking. Years of training took over, moving my body to defend and evade—spinning and ducking before going in for the attack. My blade made contact, snagging as it bit.

  Jarnik hissed and leaped back before staring at the wound on his arm incredulously. Triumph roared in my veins, and I lunged at him. There was no stopping now. I had to take him down. I had to win.

  I could win.

  He swiped, missed, swiped, and cut a line across my cheek. The sting was nothing compared to his screech as I buried my dagger in his shoulder.

  He shoved me hard enough to send me flying back. I hit the ground, rolled, and came up with a bellow before rushing toward him.

  I had this. He was injured. I could win, I could—

  Pain lanced through my calf. My knee buckled, and I went down. Fire raged up my leg where the arrow protruded.

  “Enough!” antler guy ordered.

  But the hooded figure wasn’t listening. His boot slammed into my chest, knocking me onto my back so hard the breath whooshed from my lungs.

  The world spun.

  The arrow.

  It was poisoned.

  Weakening me.

  Jarnik’s jagged smile hovered above me. “Your heart is mine.” He raised his dagger, ready to plunge it into my chest.

  I had to move. I had to do—

  And then a knife was buried in Jarnik’s forehead. A slender throwing knife I recognized. No… It couldn’t be.

  The dagger fell from Jarnik’s grip, hitting the ground with a soft thud, and then he toppled off me.

  “Dani! Oh, God, Dani!”

  Nina. No. What was she doing here? I had to get up. Had to move.

  She crouched by me, trying to pull me into her lap, but my body was heavy and unresponsive.

  “A swift and sure aim.” Antler guy appeared above me. He crouched, looking down at me. “Your sister has marksmanship. A valuable skill.”

  No. I spoke the words with my eyes, my mouth unmoving. You let her go. Let her go.

  He touched my cheek with icy fingers and then raised them to his face. “Tears…Fascinating things.” He licked his fingers, and his dark eyes bloomed with honey hues. “Fascinating,” he said again.

  “Please, don’t kill her,” Nina said. “Kill me instead.”

  NO! The scream was trapped in my head, impotent and worthless.

  Antler guy tore his gaze from mine and fixed it on my sister. “No death today,” he said. “There has been enough death today.” He touched my forehead and muttered words, sibilant slimy words that burrowed into my mind and took root there. “You cannot speak of this night.”

  “Danika…” Nina sucked in her bottom lip, her eyes welling. “I love you. Please, don’t die. Please, I want to stay—”

  The antlered creature hauled her away from me and slung her over his shoulder. Nina cried out, a desperate sound that tore at my heart, but I was locked in my body, paralyzed and impotent.

  “Dani…” Nina reached for me.

  Nina. Oh, God. Nina.

  And then she was gone.

  I lay on the icy ground, numb and frozen as the sounds of hooves, the bay of mounts, and the snarl of baku melted away. I lay in the street as the sun rose up and bled across the ground.

  I lay there until the world came alive, and hands lifted me up and carried me home.

  13

  “Nina!” I sat up with a gasp, finally free of the drug from the damn arrows. “I have to get to Nina.”

  Baba pressed me back onto the sofa. “No. You’ll stay here, and you’ll recover. Ma is bringing you a salve for your cheek and herbal tea to detox your body.” His eyes were hard and unforgiving. “What you did was reckless and dangerous. You could have been killed.”

  I didn’t have the heart to argue, only the will to go after my sister. If I hurried, I could intercept the Hunt at the gates to central Middale. If I left now, I might make it.

  “No!” Baba’s voice was a whiplash of intent. “Enough! Enough with the willful disobedience, the risk-taking, and the lies.”

  I stared at him in shock. Baba rarely, if ever, raised his voice. I caught sight of Ma, frozen in the doorway to the lounge, a tray in her hands. Her face looked stiff and unnatural as if struggling to manage a shit ton of emotions.

  “We almost lost two daughters today.” Baba’s voice cracked. “No more. Nina is gone, and you’re alive, and we will move on.”

  Ma bustled toward us. “Out of the way, old man. I need to see to that wound before it becomes infected.”

  She sounded calm. Normal even, which was at odds with her expression and the haunted shadows in her eyes.

  Baba stood and left the room, and Ma took his place. She didn’t speak as she applied the salve, but her eyes shone with unshed tears.

  “Ma, I’m so—”

  “Don’t you dare say you’re sorry. Nina is alive because of you. They may have taken her, but she’ll live, and I can’t thank you enough for that.” She pressed a kiss to my forehead. “Drink your tea, and get some rest. I’m making keema today. I know how much you love minced lamb.”

  Cooking was her outlet, her way to bury her emotions. She might be outwardly calm, but she was hurting beneath the surface.

  I lay back and closed my eyes.

  Nina was alive. It should be enough, but then why did my gut squirm at the thought.

  Why did my sister being alive feel like a threat?

  The clock inched toward midnight. I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, my mind whirring. Fuck this. I needed some air. Dressing quickly, I slipped down the stairs and froze. Why was the bolt not on the door?

  I stepped out of the house into the crisp night air to find Auntiji shivering on the doorstep with a small pot of red paint and a brush.

  What the fuck? “What are you doing, Auntiji, it’s almost midnight.”

  “It needs to be redone,” she said in the way of explanation.

  “I repeat, almost midnight. Can’t it wait? I mean, what is so important about these symbols?”

  She pursed her lips and then nodded slightly as if coming to a decision. “Protection against them.” She leveled me with a gaze that was surprisingly alert for her. “They can’t come into our home with these symbols up.”

  “I don’t understand…”

  She gripped my elbow. “You see them, don’t you…for what they are. You feel it, don’t you, the fire to fight back?”

  I’d been right about her. “Yes…”

  “Come with me.”

  She pulled me back into the house and along the corridor into her room on the ground floor. Her knees were swollen with arthritis, and she didn’t do stairs well, so we’d moved her into what had once been a dining room.

  It’d been a long while since I’d been in this room, and the smell of incense was almost too much. I coughed, and she tutted.

  “A little incense never hurt anyone. Sit.”

  I perched on the edge of a chair pushed up against her overflowing dresser. “Okay?”

  She crouched with a groan and pushed the paint pot under her bed and then straightened, hand at the small of her back, and sighed. “Oh, my poor bones.”

  Patience, Dani. My gut told me I needed to hear what she had to say.

  “I never had children,” she said. “Never wanted them, but now I realize that if I don’t pass on what I know, then it may be lost forever. My family…my people are gone. I think I may be the last one left.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Seers.” She sat on her bed and shuffled back against the headboard before swinging her legs up with a sigh of relief. “We are seers, although in the old days many called us witches because of the things we could do. But when they attacked the first time, it was us that humans turned to for protectio
n.”

  “Okay, I’m confused.”

  “The shining ones. They aren’t new to our world, you know. They were here before. This was their home, too, once, and humans…we wrote tales of their viciousness, their beauty, and their mischief. We went in search of them, of doorways to their world, and some of us even found them. But mostly they found us. They enjoyed playing with us, even then. They like to play at love. They were drawn to our emotions and our humanity. It fascinated them, but we had rules, and as long as we followed those rules, the interactions were mostly harmless, and then something changed. They began to take people. Children, maidens, young men, and that was when my people developed these symbols. We used them to keep the shining ones at bay. We fought them off with iron and talismans and then…one day they were gone.”

  “Iron? But iron doesn’t affect the shining ones.”

  “Yes, something has changed. But it’s them, I’m sure of it. They were called the fae, the seelie, the tricksters. We called them Tuatha or unseelie. We had many names for them. We wrote books about them.”

  “Books…”

  “No more, though. All gone. All burned. All lost. Many have forgotten, but my family remembered. We passed the stories down from generation to generation. When they came, I remembered my grandmother’s teachings.” She leaned forward. “They are not our saviors, Danika, and I believe that the children who are killed during the Hunt are the lucky ones because I believe that the children they take have a fate worse than death awaiting them.”

  “Auntiji, what do they want with the children?”

  But her eyes were closed, and her chest rose and fell in sleep. Dammit.

  I left her room, hands trembling, my conscious mind already making excuses. It was a stupid story, nothing more. A myth, a legend. She was an old woman, a crazy old woman who slept a lot and liked to paint nonsense symbols.

  Then why were warning bells ringing in the deep dark recesses of my mind? Why were they screaming at me that Nina was in grave danger, and I had to save her?

  The last thing I wanted was to do a guard shift, but skipping would mean losing my job. Magnus had given me a lifeline, but he wasn’t the kind of man to let me abuse it.