“I saw such horrible things there. Irina, a human, had something inside her. It was consuming her, eating her from the inside out. They had ripped apart her rectum, and something inside of it kept it open, I think. In the morning, she was dead, and the thing inside of her was escaping through her mouth. The others, they were missing limbs or pieces, like they were slowly being taken apart as they ate their bodies. My sister walked right by them, and she did nothing to help, and that isn’t something we do. We are supposed to protect the weak. She bragged about their torture and explained in vivid, disgusting details what would happen to me. She wanted me to die like the other girls had died. She hated me enough that she was crazed and excited to watch me be raped and brutalized in front of that crowd of people.
“Brander said it was three days that I have been gone, but I can only recall waking in the cell the day Amara appeared, and maybe one time before that, but I couldn’t stay awake. I could feel hands touching me. I could feel hands touching my face, and other parts of me, yet I don’t remember any of it. It was as if I was in a dream state, and it was happening to someone else, but I know it was me. I felt everything that happened, and yet I couldn’t see their faces, and I couldn’t wake up from the nightmare. When I first awoke, I smelled their scent on my flesh, as if they’d touched me enough times to leave their scent on me as I slept. Everything before I awoke in the cell is a blur, and yet their taunts continue to echo like they’re speaking down a tunnel, and I am on the other end of it, trying to make out what they’re saying.
“Then there’s what Amara said she had done and was planning to do in the Nine Realms. Amara said that she has been moving pieces around, granting the witches permission to wage war with other factions of immortals within the Nine Realms. She said that the witches have been doing it for over five hundred years without us knowing or suspecting a thing. I don’t know if it is the truth, or if she lied to make herself sound more powerful. I don’t even know who the hell that evil woman was because she couldn’t have been my sister. That would mean I have lived my entire life with evil right beside me, and I never even noticed it. How stupid would that make me?”
I leaned back, letting his heat take away the bone-deep chill while he remained silent behind me.
“I once asked my aunts how we could enforce the laws if we weren’t a part of the realm, and Aurora said that to trespass against the ones we had in place was treason. Now…now, I have to wonder if maybe we were wrong. I don’t think we should have left anyone else in control of our realm. If what Amara said is true, then the witches are doing whatever they please without us knowing it. If it was happening five hundred years ago, that would mean my aunts were knowingly a part of it, because we hadn’t entered the realm of humans yet. I guess I could see some of the need to take down monsters; if any of them were akin to Gerald, they deserved to die by whatever means necessary. Some beasts don’t deserve to live, not if they terrorize others, or can’t listen when told to do something, I guess. I could see their reasoning for trespassing against laws and attacking creatures, but then it is still treason, is it not? I don’t think we should have ever left the Nine Realms to go claim the tenth one. It seemed to me that they are far too innocent for our kind to live among. I wonder what we will find when we return to the Witches’ Realm, now that we are being forced to see if they have trespassed against the laws. I wonder if I will agree with them because of what I have been through and be glad they slaughtered others within the Nine Realms.” I had begun rambling, and he’d gone stiff behind me.
I turned to peer at him over my shoulder, and then faced him only to find him glaring at me through an angry stare. A shiver snaked down my spine as I opened my mouth to speak, but he moved, crushing his lips against mine until I moaned from the intensity of it, but it was a different kind of kiss. It was violent, as if he was kissing me to end my mouth from saying anything else. He pushed me down to the ground, moving my legs apart until I cried out when he touched my flesh. Knox paused, breathing angrily as the tick in his jaw hammered wildly. While he fought to control his anger, I lay silent, staring up at him as he shook his head, glaring down at me as if he was fighting something I couldn’t see. He turned me abruptly onto my side, curling against my back, and hissed out his next words coldly.
“Go to bed, now,” he snapped gutturally. “We ride the moment the sun rises.”
Chapter 56
I awoke alone, shivering against the cold morning air. Sitting up, I stared around the empty tent. It held only me and the blanket I’d slept in. I’d felt Knox leave in the middle of the night, but he hadn’t come back, and I’d been too exhausted to go after him. Standing up, I slid my hands down the ruffled dress and rolled up the blanket, pushing it back into the satchel, which, in reality, was the size of a large duffle bag. I exited the tent, staring at the armed soldiers and the skeletal mask of the King of Norvalla.
My heart jerked against my chest as I watched him stepping closer to me. He paused, tilting his head in the mask he wore, studying me. Unlike the last time, his eyes were oceanic waves that rushed over me. He laughed coldly as my breathing grew labored, and I dropped the bag onto the ground.
“You didn’t rescue me,” I whispered as I sensed the other men closing in around me. I stepped closer to the tent, watching his eyes studying me as the realization of who he was sunk in.
“I told you, little lamb, someday you’d get eaten. It’s someday.”
I turned, running with everything I had left in me, zigzagging around trees as branches snapped beneath the thin shoes I wore. I could hear them giving chase, the sound of men calling out orders and directions as I rushed headfirst into a forest that led to…I had no idea. A branch crunched beneath a boot close to me, and I veered the other direction, slipping beneath a fallen tree only to slam into something hard.
I stared up at Knox, who watched me in his armor with something dark in his gaze. He started to bend down, and I kicked out, knocking him down before I got back up to my feet. I started to run away, only for his hand to wrap around my ankle and pull me back down onto the ground hard enough that it knocked the wind out of me. I turned onto my back, kicking against him, and I screamed with frustration as he got to his knees, settling between mine, watching me fight him.
“Let me go!”
“I can’t do that, Aria.”
“Knox, let me go.” I stared up at him in his armor, his power rushing through the woods from his pores, which he no longer hid, making me realize just how fucked I was.
“If I let you go, you’re as good as dead.”
“The Council of Immortals will never let you get away with this!”
He smiled coldly, pushing his hand against my throat before he brushed his lips across mine and whispered against my ear. “What council would that be, sweet girl?”
“The one that rules over the Nine Realms while we are gone!”
“I don’t think they care anymore,” he smiled wickedly. “Not since I took their fucking heads and mounted them on stakes outside my palace. You and your kind abandoned this land, and you left those who ruled in your stead to brutalize the people of the realms. You and your kind, my sweetest little lamb? You’re the worst of them. You murdered entire families because they wouldn’t bend a knee to the Queen of Witches. It’s a new day, Aria Hecate. When the dawn comes, the Nine Realms will no longer be yours, but they will be bathed in your bloodline.”