The king spoke behind me. “My sons will bring your daughter home safely, sweetness. I have no doubt about it.”
I turned my head to look back at Grath and caught him shutting his eyes and dropping his head back. I got a clear view of his Adam’s apple bobbing. He’d said ‘sons’, and he also realised he’d said ‘sons’.
When Grath looked back at me, he held an apology in his eyes.
“It’s the court’s best kept secret,” he sighed. “Not even Hiko knows. Certainly not Karmuth himself. I would’ve never given him a trial, Siya. He needed to be out of sight, and the dungeons were as safe as anywhere else to wait it out. I couldn’t have known he’d mate the girl. He showed as little interest in partnership as Hiko. I would’ve kept a better eye on him if I’d thought he’d blemish Isay.”
Stunned, I stared back at Grath. I hadn’t known, not even suspected. Everyone kept secrets, and while his was laid out in the open, there was no better time to reveal mine.
“Since we’re sharing,” I gulped, “Crown Prince Nefari of Hessia is Isay’s father.”
He nodded. I nodded, too. The air was thick around us, and there was no way of knowing whether he nodded in acknowledgment, affirmation or simply because he had no words to relay what he was truly feeling.
I nodded because no matter the reason behind his own gesture, I understood his silence. The courts would be in upheaval when it came out that Grath had two successors instead of one. He was likely protecting Karmuth’s mother, too. It was clearly an inter-courts intercourse, which was never looked kindly upon.
My own father had dismissed my title the first time and renounced me completely the second time. I would have left Elverstone to be with Grath either way.
King Ilario’s verdict was merciful; he couldn’t have done anything else without provoking a fight with Vindica. However, Ilario had refused to leave my relations unpunished. Whoever stood for Karmuth’s mother had all the reason to rebuke her, disclaim her, kill her—whichever reaction came first should the truth about it come out.
I wondered if he wasn’t with that woman for the same reasons my relationship with Nefari never worked out. When he kissed me gently on my forehead and then on my lips, I didn’t wonder any longer. None of it mattered. We were each other’s now.
Isay would be back.
My father would come. So would Nefari. And King Rothian would be punished for misconduct.
Chapter 39
ISAY
I FELT HIM BEFORE I SAW THE DESTRUCTION. TRIPPING BETWEEN awareness and comatose, I saw Karmuth’s warriors crush through fae like they were nothing but dust.
Sinister’s wild eyes flashed as he tore his victims apart, sliced them into pieces, and bathed in blood, a wicked grin never leaving his face. Regar had collected so much ecos he was glowing and resumed slicing with his sword, dodging bullets like they’d never be fast enough to hit him. Hiko preferred the gun. When he ran out of bullets, he dropped his weapon to pick up another, then he kept on shooting, hitting the mark each and every time. I did not see Karmuth, I saw through him.
Hands bloody, he’d discarded his sword for a knife. A hallway rushed past my eyes, my vision flickering between what he saw and what was right in front of me.
He chased a fae through the corridor. Their footsteps bounded in my head like the bass in a dance club.
The fae slipped on the slick concrete and fell into a pool of blood and ashes. He was not fast enough to get back up, for Karmuth stabbed his knife right through his skull.
I could feel it. The force in which the knife plunged into the flesh vibrated through my bound hands as if I were the one holding the weapon.
He didn’t stop after that first blow. Karmuth, he didn’t stop. The fae at our feet was dead already when he grabbed the dead man’s collar with one hand and held him up against a wall as his knife kept plunging into flesh.
So much blood.
I was going to be sick. That meal Elia had fed me rushed back up as Karmuth went feral catching sight of another group of warriors.
I not only saw him sprinting through the bullet shower, not looking back as Hiko shouted profanities at him, but I also felt several bullets hit him. A flash of pain in my leg just above my knee left me panting, a ripping through my shoulder made me cry out. The foul taste in my mouth intensified, and I couldn’t swallow it back down as my dinner burned through my throat and spurted out across my stained shirt. The stench wasn’t any better than the taste had been, and while the pain ebbed I kept convulsing, certain that I’d vomit all of my insides out next.
A lock turning forced me to look away from the bloody scene taking place somewhere in this building, and I looked up at Elia’s frightened eyes when the door slid open. The key in her hands dropped with a cling to the ground as she rushed in to fumble with my restraints. The chains wouldn’t release.
“So much fear,” she mumbled all the while pulling at the chains holding me imprisoned. “So much hate. So much death.”
“Run!” I pleaded. “Go! He is angry. He is really angry.”
A forceful pull later, the chains hanging from the ceiling fell in a swish and a clatter, pulling me to the ground with the force and a weight my damaged ankle could not bear.
My vision shifted once more. Karmuth tore through a fae, his knife ripping through guts while his other hand pulled at ecos and another force I didn’t recognise. His wounds healed as the man died in his arms. Deep within him, despair and disrelish burned hot as coals. They also intermingled and filled his stomach with heaviness that pinned me to the ground harder.
“Please just run!” I begged the woman. Karmuth would see her as a threat. “He’ll come for me. You shouldn’t be here when he does.”
Something in my voice must’ve gotten to her, as she stopped her attempts to free my hands from the long chain now lying around me. Her eyes darted to the wide-open door, the sounds of battle now so close I could hear it with my own ears.
“It’s too late to run, child,” she whispered but shuffled away from me, nonetheless. I saw her back hit the wall farthest from the door, but not far enough.
The room was not big. With the door wide open and light streaming in from the hallway, no corner would be dark enough to hide her. Her rapid breathing worked against her as much as the tight space.
I wasn’t feeling Karmuth any longer, but I heard him just fine as the thundering footsteps ran down the hallway and stopped right at the doorway.
I was already crying before I saw the leather boots step in, followed by the warriors with him. My blurry vision hazed even more with the tears blinding my sight. He was here, he’d come, and he’d bathed in the blood of every single fae he’d run into. He’d killed every one of them on his way to find me.
Eyes on me, he kneeled, brushing hair out of my face with a gesture so gentle it couldn’t possibly be the same man who’d just wreaked carnage on so many fae.
“Hey beautiful, I’m going to get you out of here,” he rasped, his voice not managing the gentleness his touch did.
Studying my restraints, he did not resume the violent pulling Elia had attempted. Instead he motioned Sinister closer, smoothed out the chain in several places, and had him chop through the metal as if it was firewood. It didn’t release my hands completely but removed the extra weight.
The sound had been loud enough to hide Elia’s muffled terror. I was the one who involuntarily gave away her location as my eyes sought her out while Karmuth wiped at the vomit on my shirt and looked over my flesh for any serious injuries.
