“You can’t do this, you have no right!”
“I have every fucking right! I watched my people being slaughtered by magic from your fucking people. I held my son through one thousand deaths that the Queen of Witches bestowed upon him because I wouldn’t bend my knee to that whoring murderous bitch! After my son died, my wife went to a witch, and she begged her to take her immortality away so that she could join him in death, so they did. Only they gave her a potion that ended her soul forever, destroying any chance she had to join our son in the next life or find me in mine. They took her away from me, and they did so in a way that she would never escape death’s torturous grasp,” he snarled as his grip tightened on my throat until air wouldn’t pass through my airway. “You say I have no right? I have every fucking right to end the witches’ reign, and anyone who would oppose the new leaders of the realms.”
Knox watched me gasping for air and pressed his forehead against mine as lights exploded in my vision, and I stopped struggling. Knox’s lips brushed mine, and he pulled away, watching my body jerk violently as my brain starved for air. My body seized, and his hands released me.
“Fuck!” he snarled, taking his hand from my throat as I gasped for air, turning onto my stomach as I gagged, crawling through the dirt to escape him. “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” he asked coldly, slowly following me as I crawled on my hands and knees, slipping through the wet, frost-covered leaves.
“Home,” I whispered gutturally, barely able to make words leave my tongue past the damage of his hands.
“You have no home left to escape to, Aria.” He watched me struggling, following me soundlessly for several moments before using his foot to push me onto my back. “As we speak, Haven Falls is being captured, and all inhabitants are being rounded up and brought back to the Nine Realms to face charges by the High King of the Nine Realms for treason against the realms they abandoned. They are to be put to death so that their magic will return to where it belongs, to the people they left behind.”
I stared at him in horror and shook my head vigorously. I sat up slowly, staring at him as he watched me absorbing the news of what he had done. Using my claws, I clasped my hand together and closed my eyes before his power pushed against me, forcing them to open. He smiled, kneeling down to stare into my eyes as he lifted his mask, watching me.
My eyes locked with his as I drew the Celtic symbol for sisterhood in my palm and smiled up at him sadly, slamming my hands together as magic roared through the land. It shook the trees, and Knox grabbed my palm, staring at it before he stood, issuing orders as his men rushed away from where we stood. I watched him, amused as he bent down and ripped me up from the ground.
“What the fuck did you just do?”
“You will never find my family, Knox.” I smiled, and he shook me as his men watched in silence around us.
I laughed soundlessly, ignoring the tears that rolled from my eyes with how stupid I had been, but I had taken precautions against him. He’d fucked up, he’d told me he would ruin me, and I wasn’t about to go down without a fight.
“You will pay for that, Aria.”
“How, Knox? How can you make me pay any more than I already have? What the fuck can you do to me? Beat me? Violate me? Rape me? Destroy me? Fucking bring it, motherfucker. I am no one’s bitch! You want me dead? Fucking do it and get it over with. Do it!” I screamed with tears running down my face as I stared him down in open challenge.
He watched me, holding my dress, glaring at me through cold eyes before he released me abruptly. He stared at me silently, stepping back as someone came up behind me, pushing me down to my knees. On the cold ground, steel touched against my neck. I smiled sadly, staring him in the eye as I stretched my neck across the blade, ready to die knowing my family was safe. If this was the cost to protect them, I’d pay it a thousand times over again.
“Any last words, Aria?” Knox asked softly.
“Yes, I’ll say my prayers,” I smirked, preparing to whisper the witches’ prayer. “I am the fire of the cauldron that heats the realms. I am the wind that fills the land and sails the ships upon the rough seas. I am the earth that grows the crops and feeds those within the Nine Realms. I am the water that bathes the soul. I am of Hecate, created from within her soul. I am the magic that creates the land and feeds it power. I leave neither child nor a mother behind who will grieve me, only my magic to be returned to the land from which it was given. I give it back on this day. I now go to my grave without regrets. I go to where pain cannot touch thy soul. I leave this vessel of flesh and go to lands of plenty, and land of promised peace. Blessed be, for the ones who will go on, do not weep or grieve for me, for I am finally free.” I lifted my eyes to his and smiled wickedly as I held my arms out with my palms held up. “I am ready to die—go time, fucker.”
He stared at me through mere slits and shook his head. “No, no, I will burn down your fucking world, and you will watch me do it.” He kneeled down, staring at me as he grabbed strands of my silver hair, rubbing it through his fingers.
“That’s anticlimactic, Knox.”
He shook his head, and a dark smile tugged at his lips. “Your sarcasm won’t work, Aria. You’re wrong, you know. I will find your family. Just as I found your mother and took her head. Your Aunt Hysteria and her daughters? Their skulls are what I have built my throne with. We covered my throne room walls in the skulls of your people. A reminder of what my purpose is, and soon, my entire kingdom will be covered with them.”
“You killed my mother?”
“Before I came to your shitty little town, I took her head.”
I laughed, and then threw my head back, laughing even more as he watched me. His lips pulled into a tight line at my response. “Oh, is this where I’m supposed to cry because you killed my mommy? Nah, wrong bitch, Knox. If you hadn’t done it, I would have eventually; but my sisters? You won’t find them, because no matter how strong you are, I don’t fucking bend my knee either.”
“You will bow for me.”
“Hard pass,” I chuckled as my arms were grabbed and put into cuffs behind me. “I only get down on my knees when I want to, and I don’t fucking want to for you anymore.”
He studied me as if his mind went back to that room with me, and his thumb traced over my lips as if he were imaging them around his cock. “You will break the moment I deliver your sisters’ heads to you and make you clean their skulls for my throne. Only pureblooded Hecate witches adorn my throne, the rest only get to line my walls. I wouldn’t sit on anything less, little lamb.”
“Knox, I don’t plan on sticking around long enough to clean shit for you. You need help cleaning shit, hire a maid service.”
“You won’t escape me,” he said, touching my throat where it felt bruised. “You’re mine now, Aria. You will see none of your family again. You will never taste freedom, nor feel the sunshine glowing on your pretty flesh unless I decide to allow it.”
“You’re wrong, King of Lies,” I said, smiling impishly. “I am no weakling, and no matter how far you bury me in chains, I will fucking rattle them until they break, and I am free of you. You want to burn my world down? Fine, but you will watch me rise from the ashes. Legends always rise from the ashes.”