“You should have fucking waited,” Lucian warned.
“Yeah, I didn’t get a choice. She’s…” I vanished, reappearing before her. Staring down at Bilé, she stepped over him to come toward me, never taking her eyes from mine. In a silent battle of wills, her power clashed violently against mine for dominance.
“You are mine, are you not?” she hissed, her voice echoing through the meadow to the mountains and beyond. “I feel you, why? Why do I feel you, and yet I am so hungry that anyone would do? I just want to get fucked! How hard is it to get something so simple when the men in this kingdom are so fucking hugely endowed? Look at you; you’re perfect. Fucking feed me, or I will remove your cock and use it on myself, bastard.”
Bilé vanished, and I exhaled, turning to look at the woman who watched me. A wicked smile spread across her lips as she took the few steps needed to close the distance between us.
Her mouth landed against mine in an earth-shattering kiss that rocked the world around us. My eyes opened and widened as the forest exploded. Trees were uprooted, and fire covered the branches the moment they crashed to the ground, all while her hand stroked my cock. I was painfully slammed against the ground as she stood over me, lowering her body to take what I offered. Twin daggers appeared through her chest, as her gaze slid to them, then to me in a look of lethal hatred and shock of betrayal.
She gasped through the burning pain, and the look in her pretty eyes twisted my gut. Synthia fell onto me, and I held her, replacing my clothes as I pushed her off of me, dressing her with magic as she continued to gasp for air.
“Did you get it?” Lucian asked, forcing my gaze to the man strolling into the meadow as black ghostly creatures floated around Synthia, touching her with their mangled, green-looking fingers.
“Of course, I fucking did. Do you have any idea how long I have been gone? It took a fucking decade to find the prick who had it, and then he refused to give it to just anyone. Do you know how many souls are down there? I barely fucking escaped before I ended up reaping them all just to make them stop fucking me as I searched for one soul in a haystack.”
“Replace her soul, and then give her back her heart,” Lucian muttered as I stood, watching the reapers who picked up Synthia and held her between them as Thanatos stepped forward, staring into her eyes.
“You are not ready to be reaped, my sweet girl.” He produced a silver spool of thread and a golden needle. The entire meadow watched in silence as he began slowly sewing a glowing blue aura back into Synthia. She smiled at Thanatos, watching him with wonder as he smirked, flirting with her as he put her back together. “He had begun to consume her most treasured and loved memories. They tend to start on the juicy bits first. She won’t be the same, not until all of her memories are restored—if she’s strong enough to take them back, that is.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” I demanded carefully, studying Synthia as she watched Thanatos, her glowing eyes beckoning him to touch her deeper as she flirted with him unabashedly.
“It means that Synthia was down there for a long time. Time in the Seelie prison is different than it is here. It’s slow and endless. She was brutalized, asshole. There are pieces of her scattered down there still. There are more corpses in that cave than there are fae inside Faery. She was in the worst place in the entire fucking realm. You left her there to be tortured by a creature that’s been around since the beginning of this world. Not that you could have done shit once she entered, but you could have let the rest of us know where she was. We could have saved her so that she could fulfill her destiny.
“That little hole you see when you peer down into the pit? By the time your feet touch it, you’re already lost. The reapers said I stood there, talking to them, but I didn’t wait to enter the cavern. I had my full powers, but Synthia? She apparently hadn’t accepted her powers, and when she finally did, she left a trail of her own blood on the way out. Luckily, she also left a ladder she made with their corpses, or I’d still be stuck down there. The monster showed me, but since the entire fucking pit is filled with Seelie tricks, who the fuck knows what actually happened to me down there. That creature within the pit? He’s fucking strong. I got her soul, and then I ghosted before death took over and I was stuck there until the end of time reaping their souls.” Thanatos eyed Lucian accusingly. “There we go, sweetheart. Speaking of hearts, where is yours?”
Synthia stared vacantly until Ristan moved closer, removing the bag from his hip and handing it to Thanatos. Her platinum head turned, staring at the organ that still beat wildly, increasing with speed the closer it came. Her scream rent through the air, shooting trees up into the mountain as if a hurricane had just ripped through and uprooted them. She struggled against the reapers, even with the strange, glowing blades that pulsed angrily against her flesh, where they impaled her skin.
“You’re hurting her!” Adam snapped. He started forward, only for Lucian to step in his path as Spyder chuckled, moving in beside him to block his way.
“No, I’m not hurting her. The proximity to the organ holding pain is what’s hurting her. She doesn’t want it back.”
“What happens if you don’t put it back yet?” Lucian asked.
“She wouldn’t care if the fae lived or died. She’d be an unfeeling, miserable person to have to deal with, cold and detached. While it’s only an organ, the mind believes it to hold emotions, and that makes it more powerful than the soul that actually dictates who we become. Without it, the mind shuts that part down. So, I will place her heart back into her chest, and you can contend with what happens after. She needs it back to be whole, and I don’t give a fuck what anyone else wants, she deserves to care. It is what makes her the Goddess of the Fae. She is who we need to win the war, understood?” Thanatos’s glacier-cold eyes locked with mine.
He placed the heart into Synthia’s chest as she wailed, fighting against his hand. He pushed into the cut he’d made, and then she just stopped, glaring at him. The blades were removed, and the reapers stepped back together, releasing her and watching as she stood there silently.
“Syn?” I asked, cupping her face between my hands and ignored her exposed breasts. I glamoured her into a new white dress and watched as her eyes lifted and narrowed on mine in a dull gaze. “Wake up, beautiful.”
Her eyes began to gain focus as she lifted her head to peer up at me. Stepping back, she looked down, grasping the front of her dress as she looked around frantically. Synthia spun around in a tight circle, opening and closing her mouth repeatedly before a tremble of fear shuddered through her.
“Who the fuck are you?” she demanded, and it was like a punch to the gut. “Where am I?” Panic filled her tone, and then she turned, running away from us on her pretty bare feet.
“That’s unfortunate,” Lucian stated, watching her running further away from us through the skulls of the dead she’d murdered. She gazed down and back at us while still hauling ass to get away.
“She doesn’t know who the fuck I am. My wife doesn’t know who the fuck I am, again.” I exhaled, wondering if I should sift and stop her from running, or let her exhaust her energy, so she didn’t fight as much when I placed her over my shoulder and took her to bed to remind her of to whom she belonged.
“Let me try something real fast,” Adam chuckled. He ran after her, glamouring on the pretty-boy image of what he’d looked like while being a member of her coven “Syn!” She turned, slowing, looking at Adam with recognition. “It’s okay,” he assured her, but her mouth opened and closed as she stared over his shoulder to where I stood. Her eyes were vacant of the recognition I needed and craved.
“I left her there, and I fucking lost her.”
“You might have for a little while, but why the fuck would she go to Adam of all people?” Lucian asked, watching Synthia as her arms wrapped around him. “You may need to bend that ass over and remind it how you feel
cradled in it. Or, you may lose her to that band boy member she’s trying to climb at the moment.”
“She was raised with him at the guild. In fact, Adam was of this world too. She called him to her when her parents were slaughtered by her brother.” I watched her whispering behind her hand, glaring at me. “What exactly happens when the Seelie consume parts of a soul, and how do I get my wife back? I could just push the memories into her, speed this shit up, right?”
Thanatos snorted, shaking his dark head, and his eyes began to glow an eerie blue as power entered the field. “You could, but you would break her mind. You force her memories to return, and you’ll never get her back. She has to want to remember. You think you could just make it so? You wanted her powerful, and she is.
“You wanted her to lose parts of herself, but she didn’t need to lose them. Those parts, the humanity that you thought held her back—it didn’t. Someone is holding her back. So, you need to ask yourself who that could be, Ryder? That fucking humanity, it is rare, and it is who she is and a huge part of why she’s so fucking beautifully fierce and loves your family. She stood outside your bedroom and threatened to take me on to protect your family, Ryder. So, stop assuming you can just rip parts of her out to make her accept what you need for her to ascend. You can’t take the piece of a person that make them into who they are and rip them out without damaging consequences.
“She didn’t need to fucking sacrifice her humanity to grab her power. She just needed to feel secure enough to do what is needed of her. What you ought to do is ask yourself why your wife didn’t feel safe enough to grab what was rightfully hers to take?” Thanatos muttered. “I’ve watched you both struggle to rule, but here’s the thing: It’s not about who has the power or who is stronger than whom. It’s about finding a balance, and if you can’t find it together or take her as she is, you will lose her. She’s an amazing woman, so don’t think there’s not a fuckton of us men hoping you fuck up and we get a shot with her.
“Good luck, you’re going to fucking need it. The creature only ate her favorite memories, which were of you and your children. Lucky fucker,” Thanatos groaned before vanishing with the reapers in a cloud of dark smoke. I turned, studying Synthia as she watched me, her eyes narrowed as if she was plotting my murder.
“Fucking great, she’s reverted back to a fucking guild enforcer, and I’m enemy number one, again.”
Flames of Chaos
by
Amelia Hutchins
Chapter 1
Exhaling a long, shaky breath, I stared at the lights of the city below the cliff I stood upon. Haven Falls, a city of immortal beings that weren’t even from the Human Realm. A place that haunted my dreams and lived in every nightmare I’d ever had. It was nestled between winding valleys, hidden within them to remain a secret from the mortals whose realm we lived in. I’d stood in the same spot long enough for the day to become night. The town had turned from a bustling hub of activity to a lighted dreamscape.
I’d been twelve when my Aunt Aurora had taken us away from here, away from the cruel brutality of the immortal realms from which we’d come. This place held no appeal and no good memories for me. It was the center of everything I hated; everything I wished to burn down and feel the ashes of the wreckage between my toes. I’d dreamt once I had burned it down, leaving those who stood aside and watched me being tortured, brutalized, and terrorized by my mother, in ashes.
My sisters didn’t share my vision of this place, nor had they endured what my mother put me through trying to end my life. They relished being home, seeing their old friends while helping me search for my twin, who had been missing several months now without a single sign of her.
My eyes lifted toward the galaxies of stars above and then lowered to fall on the oldest of my sisters as she moved to where I stood.
Sabine was everything gentle and motherly to us since she was the oldest and had been present for every set of twins being born, and also because our mother was a heartless bitch. We had to learn quickly to depend on one another in order to survive. Stopping beside me, she peered up at the stars before she spoke.
“Once we enter the town, they’ll know we are back,” she muttered in a hushed tone, pushing her golden curls away from her face as the wind picked up, mirroring the internal struggle her words created within me.
“They already know we are here,” I countered, sensing eyes that viewed us as we stood in the crisp evening air, staring out at the town. “We are being watched and have been since the moment we exited the cars.”
“They can watch us all they want. Someone here knows what happened to Amara, and we’re not leaving here until we find her.”
Frowning, I considered her words. Amara had been withdrawn from me for a while now, and I wasn’t so sure she wanted to be found. It hadn’t been unusual for her to be missing for an extended period, but this one felt different. It felt wrong, and everything inside of me said to find her before it was too late to save her.
Turning, I took in the stares of my sisters, who had rallied behind me to come find Amara. Every single one of them refused to stay behind, and I loved them more for it. We were of the original family of witches, born from the same blood that ran through Hecate, the Goddess of Witches. She was my grandmother, and because of her, we had a duty to this town, one we’d escaped from until now. We’d left our mother, Freya, here to deal with the fallout, but Freya was wishy-washy and had a bad reputation for shirking her duties. She vanished soon after we did. Shocker.
Amara, my sister who I had a love-hate relationship with for the last few years, had come back to Haven Falls to secure our family’s place on the council within the Nine Realms when word had reached us that Freya had vanished without a word. It would have been troubling if it was anything new, but it wasn’t. Freya loved men, and she cared little about propriety or reputation when she took them as lovers. She hated being part of the council that oversaw the immortals entering the Human Realm from the Nine Realms.
Only those with the purest of bloodlines could sit on the council of the Nine Realms. Together they decided whether immortals were safe enough to enter the Human Realm and if they could maintain our secrets. In the center of town is the portal between this realm and the entrance to the Nine Realms. Those coming through had to check in with the council, gaining papers that made them legal to be here.
Amara came back to Haven Falls on her own, offering to hold the seat among the council. I pleaded with her to reconsider, but she refused. She’d reminded me that no immortal passing through the portal could gain entrance unless a witch of Hecate bloodline voted with the others. Still, it could have been anyone else. She’d come back soon after that, but more often than not, she missed meetings. She withdrew from everything and everyone, which made waves in this town. Amara had even withdrawn from magic, unwilling to do spells that called for the coven, claiming she was drained or sick on the days they needed them.
Upon her return to the Human Realm, she checked in weekly, letting us know everything was fine. Then weeks turned into months, and then nothing. It was as if she just vanished. We’d called her phone, leaving voice messages and text messages to no avail. Then the day came when her phone was disconnected. Calls to the original families held little to no hope. No one had seen her in weeks, and even worse, the store we ran was closed down. The bond I shared with Amara had severed as if she’d just ceased to exist. For me, it was debilitating to be unable to reach out and sense the presence of my twin. It felt like a part of me was missing, and no matter how much I tried, I couldn’t reconnect it.
“Someone in this town has to know what happened to her,” my sister Luna said, slipping her hand into mine and squeezing it reassuringly. “They’ll regret it if they touched one of our own. There are enough of us to wage war if they so much as harmed a hair on her pretty head.”
Enough of us.
My fami
ly was composed of all females, eight sets of twins. Hecate had cursed her line to birth multiples, all female offspring. She’d ensured we would never be alone, but that came at a heavy price. Any female who carried a male child learned quickly the cost of doing so. My mother was the daughter of Hecate, purest of blood, and yet she birthed twin daughters without a care of what happened after we’d detached from her womb. Her sisters Hysteria and Aurora had been the ones to deal with the repercussions of her overactive libido.
Freya had wanted an army of witches, but she didn’t want the responsibility that came with birthing that army herself. Instead, she left us with her sisters, who loved us like their own children, Aurora more so than Hysteria. Hysteria had entered the portal and hasn’t been heard of since. Hecate herself birthed two sets of twins. Freya and Aurora and Hysteria and Kamara. Kamara had been lost centuries ago or left on her own. Nobody knew what happened to her, other than she’d vanished and hadn’t been seen or heard of since.
“We may have to consider the fact that she might have gone with our mother,” Kinvara stated, shrugging when I stared at her, brow raised in a questioning look.
“I have considered it, but Amara isn’t that stupid.” I frowned, knowing it was a viable explanation, but that wouldn’t make Amara safe. “I don’t think she’d be stupid enough to trust our murderous mother.”
“I don’t think our mother would try to murder Amara,” Sabine pointed out. “She’s cold-blooded for sure, but she isn’t a murderer. Maybe she wanted Amara with her to lure men to her bed, but murder? I don’t think she would do something like that to her own child.”
“Seriously?” I snorted. “That bitch tried to murder me frequently. Hell, she tried to abort Amara and me from her womb. If Aurora hadn’t stepped in during every attempt on my life, I would be dead. I was a child.”
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