The Archmage, I assumed.
“I think that’s Abramelin,” I gasped. “He’s… He’s going to kill Zayne!”
It wasn’t that I had no faith in my brother’s abilities, but this was Abramelin. Swathed in black fabric, the Archmage had Jasmine’s slanted, slim facial features and birdlike eyes—narrowed and unblinking, seeped with intelligence and fire. He wore his hair in a crew-cut fashion, and his cheeks were clean-shaven, save for a patch of black hair on his chin. In a conventional sense, I might have called him handsome. But none of that mattered. He was a raging psychopath, who wielded magic like a second skin.
Darius grabbed me before I could take off, and I glared, trying to wrench my arm free. “Let go!”
“We do this together, Kaye,” he insisted once again, his voice tinged with that fierce baritone rumble that set my heart aflame. “We do it together, or not at all.”
“I know, Darius. Together. Let’s go!”
He released me for a moment, and I ducked out of the way as he shifted forms. Within seconds, his sunset coloring rippled beside me and I clambered up his side, carefully avoiding the spikes along his spine, and situated myself at the nape of his neck.
“Go!” I cried, then clung to him as he shot off the ground. I tightened my thighs and held on for dear life. Riding a dragon was like riding the world’s most insane motorcycle, without a helmet. I narrowed my eyes, bracing against the wind. While fae speed might have gotten me there just as fast, I wouldn’t trade Darius’s ability to breathe Archmage-melting fire for anything. He exhaled vibrant blue flame down on Abramelin as I screamed for Zayne to get out of the way. My brother, bloodied but still swinging, leaped back as the fire surged toward the Archmage. However, before impact, Abramelin threw up a shield, and the fire peeled around him like rain spilling down a sturdy umbrella.
From above, I took in Zayne’s militia and Abramelin’s men battling in the courtyard of the castle, their fight spilling into our old campsite. Each beat of Darius’s enormous wings sent rubble and debris flying. When his fire-breath fizzled, Abramelin was ready. He hurled up a blast of bright blue light from both hands, and I felt the heat of his magic, the raw power of it, before it was anywhere near us.
Darius swerved hard to avoid it, but the hex carved across the side of his belly, leaving a bloody slice in its wake. My dragon lost his balance, bellowing in pain, and I lost my hold in the process, falling from his neck and slamming into the ground. I exhaled sharply, as if to breathe out the pain, then staggered to my feet.
“Back off, Kaye!” Zayne shouted. The two were back at it again now that Abramelin had dealt with me and Darius—like we were nothing. “You’re no match for him!”
“That’s right,” Abramelin purred, his voice carrying over the sizzle and snap of spells colliding. “Your mongrel sister has no place here among true magic-wielders.”
I was not a mongrel. My eyes narrowed as an untapped rage coursed through me. I’d had enough of this. Enough of people like Jasmine and Abramelin.
And my inner voice agreed.
Take him down. For good.
“Fuck you, Abramelin.” I hurled one disorienting hex right after the other, rapid-fire, as Zayne pitched in with a few spells of his own. The Archmage weaved and dodged, but only barely managed to escape the assault unsinged. Overhead, Darius had regained his balance, though that didn’t stop the large red droplets of blood from watering the ground, the open wound on his side desperate for my attention. But I couldn’t give it. I couldn’t tear myself away from the fight with Abramelin—not for one second.
My dragon seemed to know that. Zayne must have too, because he stopped shouting for me to leave and welcomed my help.
And so, began a grand dance between us four, Abramelin in the belly of our Bermuda’s triangle. Zayne and I worked in tandem, hurling whatever we had at him, and Darius kept Abramelin’s minions from joining the fight. Although the three of us said nothing to one another—nor did we respond to Abramelin’s maniacal villain goading, no matter how much his words stung—we succeeded in steering him slowly, but surely, away from the Brisbane castle.
But the Archmage was exceptionally skilled. He fended off two streams of constant magical attacks, plus a dragon, like it was all child’s play. As far as I could tell, he hadn’t even broken a sweat, while dodging hexes and hurling them straight back at all three of us.
I, on the other hand, was drenched in the early morning sunshine, the sweat soaking through my clothes. No matter, we fought on, whether a victory was possible or not. The rest of the world fell away as we battled, as we avoided harrowing curses that charred our clothes and scalded our skin, as Darius did his best to fight the realm’s best Archmage with no more than brute strength and skill.
Our luck was bound to run out, of course, and when it did, I went down hard. A non-fatal, though still painful, hex nailed me right in the chest. I gasped, trying to swallow down air, and watched as Zayne went down next, followed by Darius, whose collision with the ground rocked the valley. I tried to push myself up, but Abramelin leapt—literally, like a grasshopper—from his spot some twenty feet away and landed on top of me, pinning me to the gravelly earth below.
“You’ll have to go first, half-breed,” he hissed, pressing a hard hand to my throat, the other raised, a ball of black energy forming in his palm. His eye twitched as he studied me, face rampant with disgust. “You see, I’d like your brother to watch you die, along with your filthy lover.” He moved in closer, hovering above my face, his rank breath filling my nostrils as I struggled for air. “You’re nothing to me, of course. Just a gnat. One beast of many, I’ll slaughter before the day is out. But to them, you’re everything. To them, you’re the world.”
Abramelin howled right in my face, spittle coating my skin, and I struggled to free myself.
“But you aren’t the world,” he hissed, his lip twitching. “You’re nothing more than an abomination, and I will see that your kind never tarnishes our realm again…”
It was then that I caught it—the glint of sunlight reflecting off the massive knife on his belt. As he crushed my windpipe in his strong grip, still ranting on about my filthy mother and the blemish my existence had created on the supernatural world, I jerked the knife free, then unceremoniously plunged it straight up into his gut.
Hot blood spilled down my hand, and I wriggled away when he released me. The shock registered just as plainly as his disgust once had, riddled all over his face as the glowing black ball of magic shrunk and disappeared into his palm.
“Y-You…” he stammered, and I kicked away from him when he tried to grab me again, then scrambled back as quickly as I could.
“Me,” I growled, then watched as he slowly withdrew the knife, blood puddling beneath him. I smirked when his narrowed gaze shot up to mine. “I’m the last thing you’ll ever see. Me. The half-breed that destroyed you.”
The black magic surged again, this time in both hands as the knife clattered to the ground. Seconds later, however, a blast of bright blue flame engulfed him, and I lifted a hand to shield my eyes. When it extinguished, the ash of the great, psychopathic Archmage, Abramelin billowed across the valley—already forgotten.
Knowing I hadn’t a moment to lose, I was on my feet in a flash and tending to Darius’s wounds. Once I sealed the gaping cut on his side, I checked on Zayne. While he’d seen better days, my brother was alive, mentally sound, and relatively unscathed from our skirmish with Abramelin. It was more than any of us could have asked for.
“What now?” I asked, still trying to catch my breath from the whole ordeal, hands planted on my hips. We looked to the fighting in the valley, which hadn’t slowed one bit, then to the half-demolished Brisbane castle at the top of the hill where Abramelin’s warlock cronies had gathered, perhaps hoping he’d annihilate my brother.
“We continue keeping people safe,” Zayne remarked. His exhaustion was plain as day. “His people are going to keep fighting until we stop them.”
Darius roared—an excessive reaction to our muted conversation, and a quick glance up the hill told me why. All of Abramelin’s warlocks and various other supernatural cronies charged toward us like the goddamn cavalry. Maybe they had seen their master fall, but regardless, his message of hate lived on.
“Out of the fucking frying pan and into the fire,” I grumbled, brushing the hair away from my sweaty forehead. I was running on empty, my stomach in desperate need of food and water, but if I wanted to live to satiate it, I couldn’t stop fighting. Not yet, anyway, no matter how desperately, I wanted to collapse and go back to sleep.
A strangled cackle slipped out, and I clamped a hand over my mouth when Zayne shot me a curious look.
But the thought of just going to sleep, like I wouldn’t be wracked with nightmares for weeks, was totally cackle-worthy.
Summoning a curse that would temporarily blind our assailants, I hurled the bright orb of cerulean toward Abramelin’s captains. One raised his hand to block it, but the curse exploded into a fine dust over its targets, catching them all in its web. I straightened my sore shoulders, grinning.
Behind the dark-robed warlocks, dragons poured from the mountains, sandwiching them in between us. Darius took to the skies, his blue flame cutting the group in half, and I gasped when he narrowly avoided a black flash of hateful magic—the kind that might have stopped his heart had it been a direct hit. Fearing for him, for all us of against Abramelin’s elite, I got to work on protection wards, while Zayne met the warlocks in a full-on magical assault.
As I drew from my limited white magic within, a haze materialized in front of me. At first, I thought it was a trick of the sun, or maybe my wearied brain had just had enough, but slowly the dark purple fog thickened—and sprouted into a man.
A djinn, to be specific.
He cocked his head to the side, a twisted grin on his lips, that little ponytail flicking rather dramatically, and then latched onto my wrist before I could react. My scream died in my throat, and I watched, horrified, as blackness crept through the veins along my arm, a terrifying coldness accompanying it. A djinn’s touch was poison, more than the bite of an Arachne, and as I fell hard into darkness, the last thing on my mind was that a djinn’s touch—was fatal.
Chapter Twelve
I awoke in a dimly lit, worryingly-quiet, room—feeling like I’d been hit by a freight train.
Was this the afterlife?
No. If I were dead, I wouldn’t be in pain.
Unless I was in Hell: a realm for paranoid humans that I’d never believed in, even as a supernatural being.
“Kaye?”
A soft moan crept up my throat in response, though it died on the tip of my tongue. I tried my hardest to get my eyes open, to make them stay open, but the throbbing pain throughout my body was coming into sharper focus and logic told me to succumb to sleep, to ride it out.
But I couldn’t.
That was Darius’s worried voice—and Darius couldn’t be in Hell. My hands scrambled along the scratchy quilt thrown over me, my fingers frantic to find him in the darkness.
“Hey, hey, it’s okay. Calm down,” came his rumbly, baritone admonishment. My heart stopped racing the moment our hands found one another, his engulfing mine in a soothing heat that I wanted to feel all over.
“D-Darius?” A raspy croak—that was the best I could do, but his soft chuckle made me feel better about it. A shadow loomed overhead when I finally managed to force my eyes open, at least halfway, and I realized it was him reaching over me. Moments later, the dim lighting lifted somewhat, and I noted that he had been fiddling with an oil lamp of some kind on a wooden bedside table. The flame brightened, it’s glow dancing over his handsome features.
“Hi,” I whispered, smiling even though it made my face hurt. “Am I… Am I alive?”
“For now,” he murmured, settling on the edge of the snug twin bed I found myself in. “You scared the absolute shit out of me though.”
“It was a djinn.” My heartbeat quickened again as the memory, foggy yet present, filtered into my mind’s eye. “H-He—”
“He touched you,” my dragon finished for me. “I saw it. Zayne got him before the poison could get too far. I tried to get to you, but there were so many of Abramelin’s men in the way… I couldn’t.” His grip tightened. “It was the most fucking terrifying moment of my life, Kaye.”
“Tell me about it,” I rasped, a breathy chuckle slipping out when I saw him smile. “Seriously. I thought I was dead. I saw the poison… I…” I blinked hard as I remembered all that had happened. “Wait. Did we win? Is Abramelin dead?”
I’d watched him die, but that certainly hadn’t stopped the fighting. Where was Zayne? Was Catriona okay? Panic jolted through me, more poignant than any of my physical pains. I hadn’t seen her since I sent her to tend to those that had fallen at the castle wall—and there had been that explosion, the one before I saw Zayne fighting Abramelin. What if—
“Kaye, easy. Breathe.” My dragon pulled me away from the brink, silencing my racing thoughts as he stroked my wrists with his thumbs. His voice calmed me, quieted the fear, and I took a few deep breaths alongside him. When we finished, he leaned down to kiss each of my hands, then sat up with a grin. “Abramelin’s dead. His forces turned tail and ran when they realized they were a headless snake. Catriona is safe. Quinn too. Zayne was wounded, but not gravely… All is well in the world. Finally.”
I let myself sink back into a plush pillow, considering his words—and remembering his father’s sentiment about peace. There was never any peace. Just a fool’s peace. Just because Abramelin had fallen, certainly didn’t mean there wasn’t another crazy warlock or mage itching to take his place.
My eyelids weighed heavy suddenly. The longer I let myself dwell on it, the heavier they became. Clearly, I had been saved from the djinn’s poison, but I imagined recovery from that kind of attack wouldn’t be easy. My gaze wandered to Darius’s face, eager to distract myself with more pleasant things. It was then that a memory struck, foggy just like the last one—fading in and out of view. A man. A dragon carrying me through the battlefield, my arms hanging limp.
“Thank you for saving me,” I whispered, voice breaking. Tears blurred my vision, falling when I closed my eyes as Darius kissed me.
“I’d love to take credit for that, Kaye, my fae,” he told me, “but I’m afraid it wasn’t me.”
My eyebrows twitched upward curiously. Sleep clawed at me, pulling me back, and my body was all too willing to fall. It needed the time to heal. I could give it that—in a minute.
“Then w-who?”
“Well, my love, you seem to have a knack for trapping alpha shifters in your gravitational pull,” he teased, sitting up and glancing back. I couldn’t bring much of the dark room into focus, but I detected a slight movement in the shadows. Another being. A shifter. A dragon. Darius smiled at the newcomer, then turned to me. “Brisbane’s very own alpha, practically annihilated anyone within a five-foot radius of you when you passed out. Zayne took care of the djinn, and I had to watch him heroically rush you back to the castle.”
There was an edge to his voice; while Darius seemed to be trying to keep the story light and teasing, he didn’t feel that way about it. Not completely.
Darius would always come back for me.
I imagined he was pissed someone beat him to it.
I knew I would be, had our positions been reversed.
“Now, Kaye, he’s here to meet you,” Darius told me, his voice gentler now—like he was walking on eggshells, “and, well, he’s…”
My eyes darted to the man at the end of my bed as the rest of the world seemed to fade away. The darkness had won once more. My body would get its peace. Yet as my vision clouded and the tension eased out of my limbs, succumbing to the sweet embrace of a healing sleep, that face remained so startling clear. Like I had been searching for it my whole life. My inner voice said nothing, yet I felt her calm, her clarity—her connection to this stranger who
stood at the foot of the bed.
“I-I know him,” I whispered, my words like thunder in my ears—yet in reality like the softest drizzle of spring mist. “He’s my father…”
And with that, I was gone, this time knowing that I wouldn’t awaken to the midnight of my own death.
I’d wake to the dawn of my new life.
Chapter Thirteen
“Are you sure you don’t want me to stay?”
I grinned, hugging Zayne tighter, despite the dull ache blistering throughout my body.
“Of course, I want you to stay, you idiot,” I whispered, “but I don’t need you to stay. Alfheim needs you more than I do.”
“You sure?” Behind him, I spied Darius embracing his friend, Colton, briefly before moving on to Liam. One of them said something and all three burst out into laughter—a sight that made my heart sing. Seeing genuine joy on Darius’s face after all the bullshit we’d been through… Well, it somehow managed to make everything better.
“Positive,” I murmured. We held one another a few moments longer, then eased apart, with Zayne gently holding me by my upper arms as I found my balance again.
After a week of healing in a dimly lit room, with only the Brisbane healers, Darius, Zayne, and Catriona for company, today was my first day outside again. Having lived in darkness, fighting for my life as healers extracted the poison from my system, the outside world was kind of overwhelming. A startlingly bright sun beat down on the mountainside, a landscape that was green and vibrant and thriving. Situated on the other side of the Brisbane clan’s castle, it was where the other shifter clans had camped out before the grand battle, right at the front door. It was gorgeous out here—beautiful, yet draining. Even though I had fought to be here, to say farewell to my brother, the militia, and all the shifters who had risked their lives for our cause, I quickly found myself wanting to sit in the shade and watch from a distance instead.
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