His lips brushed against my neck, and I shivered as he kissed the hollow column gently. “Take Aria and ride ahead, seal her in my room, and post guards outside of it. Do not leave her alone, Lore.”
I turned my head, listening as hands slipped around me, screaming out as he touched the wounded breast that had still yet to heal as he’d wrapped his arms around me. My body trembled with the pain, and I clenched my teeth as I swayed against the new body.
“Careful of her wounds, she is hurt more than she’s letting on. Tell no one who she is, not until we’re ready to protect her if they move to murder her for the blood that runs through her veins.”
“On it,” he said, pulling me against his body. Leaving me blindfolded, Lore started the horse at a gallop as we moved away from the voices. “Sorry, Aria.”
“No, you’re not. Don’t even try to say you’re sorry. It was his plan since the moment he set foot into Haven Falls to slaughter us all, and you were in on it.”
“Yeah, that much is true. You were supposed to be brought back with the others to face charges, but he couldn’t bring himself to kill you.”
“Magical pussy, I guess.”
“Nah, Aria. You’re something special, but you also have someone powerful protecting you. But, you have Knox too, and he isn’t willing to let you die yet.”
“I wish I knew who. Maybe he’d go to war against Knox to get me away from him.”
“Just don’t piss Knox off—and no one is crazy enough to go to war against him,” he warned. “You have no idea what he has been through.”
He was wrong. I was more than willing to wage war against Knox.
“Knox told me about his wife and his child, but I also know I wasn’t a part of what happened to them. I know that by the blood that runs through my veins, I am his enemy. He forgets that I wasn’t raised here, none of my sisters were either. That wasn’t by choice. That was because Hecate and the council demanded we remain in the Human Realm.”
“It doesn’t change anything, Aria. It doesn’t change what happened here. Imagine watching your child die a thousand deaths, each one worse than the first. They weren’t pretty deaths either. Imagine the most violent deaths that you could envision unfolding before you, and all you can do is sit there and hold your tiny child through each one. It took Sven four years to succumb to the last death, and Knox held him through each one. For four entire fucking years, he sat holding his dying child. No matter what form of death came for Sven, Knox held him until he succumbed to it. Liliana couldn’t bear it, so she hid in her room and refused to come out for the duration of his life. She forced Knox to live through that terror alone, and I wasn’t her biggest fan because of it.
“On the day Sven died his final death, we were called away to settle a fight for one of the high lords of the nearest town to the palace, but when we got there, he told us he’d never called us, to begin with. We rushed back to the palace, but it was too late. Liliana had found a witch hidden on our land and begged her to provide a spell that would send her into the afterlife with Sven. It did the opposite. It banished her to the one place she could never be reborn, or find eternal rest. It consumed her soul and sentenced it to the Void of Nothingness.
“We later discovered that the witch had sent a message to Liliana with the location of her cottage. It was an offer of help to ease her grief; she had never found her, but had been called to her. Add it up, Aria. Your bloodline ended his family’s lives. Imagine losing everything and knowing that the only way to prevent it from happening to other people is to cut off the head of the snake that is striking us down.”
“And so you started a war?” I asked, but he tightened his hold against me, and I held the cry in as it pushed against my breast.
Noise erupted around us, and people called out to Lore as the sound of a large gate opening met my ears, scraping over the ground. I could see nothing past the thick silk that covered my eyes, but I could smell dried meat, and the earthy scent of mead being placed into barrels to be stored. Wheat was being ground with cinnamon as someone else added yeast into the mixture. They argued over portion, and I inhaled the taste of the cinnamon in the air. Children laughed in the distance, and a baby squealed with hunger. Women catcalled to Lore, offering him their bed for the night as, somewhere close to them, someone beat against a carpet, clearing it of dirt. My hands were bound before me, and Lore’s arm had replaced Knox’s, shielding me from those around us. If I had to guess, I’d say Knox had brought me to his palace, and that meant my chances of escaping him were slim, all things considered.
“Keep your mouth closed, or I will cut that skilled tongue off myself, and that would be a fucking tragedy.”
I didn’t speak as he entered what I assumed was a courtyard, calling out that the king was en route and that the people should assemble. My heart hammered in my chest as he stopped, pulling me down with him carefully.
“Open the doors,” he demanded, and we went through quickly, or I tried to until my foot struck a stair, and I started to trip. “Steady.” He rushed me through the inside of what I assumed was the palace, helping me up countless sets of stairs, which he finally gave up on, hefting me into his arms, moving faster as we ascended them.
My heart raced as heavy footfalls sounded around us. The smell of freshly polished steel hit my nose as Lore adjusted me in his arms, issuing quick, rapid orders to men, who answered in the same strange language they spoke. Once we stopped moving up the stairs, he walked slower as the sound of a doorknob turning and hinges clicking into place met my ears. We were finally at what was to be my prison cell.
Chapter 58
A door opened and closed, and then the blindfold was yanked off, and I blinked to adjust to the light of the room. Lore frowned, moving to a large box. He opened the lid and removed a shirt, sniffing it before pulling it over my head and down my body, covering the cuffs. Next, he pushed me toward an open balcony door and stopped me before I was through it, turning to stare down at me.
“Watch, but don’t make a fucking sound, or I’ll choke that pretty throat until you’re a fucking mute, understood?” he asked. I nodded, turning to watch the large party that we’d been with earlier enter the gates. Lore pushed me to the corner of the balcony, concealing us in the shadows.
The soldiers obscured Knox’s presence, but the moment they parted and spread out in the courtyard, he came into view. I closed my eyes against what he held in his armor-clad fist. Amara’s head was held by the hair, a trophy that made the cheers for their king’s return go silent.
“I give you Amara Hecate, the daughter of Freya Hecate. An original bloodline witch,” he roared, and the crowd went crazy.
And just like that, he claimed my kill, fucker.
Knox wore full armor, but gone was the obsidian that matched his men’s. He wore a silver chest plate that was covered in ravens, with a larger one etched into the middle. His skull mask was more silver than bone this time, proving he had many. His crown was gone, replaced with horns that stuck back instead of forward. He looked like the legends of the knights of old, and yet his armor was more advanced and easy to move in. Metal protected his neck, and underneath was a wicked covering of thick chainmail. The shield on his free arm was also etched in ravens, with the initials SK in the middle of the design, reminding him of what he had lost.