Page 18 of Above Cursed Winds

Everyone bristled at the loaded question, but Key showed no signs of surprise or remorse.

“Everything happened as it was meant to.”

Jeremiah felt his switch flip. “My best friend died because he was meant to? Are you kidding me?”

Vaulting to his feet, Jeremiah let his six-foot-five frame tower above where the foreseer casually perched atop Nero’s desk. Key didn’t seem phased by his aggression, but Nero moved to flank her, his gaze locked on Jeremiah.

Nothing could halt the words tumbling out of his mouth. “You knew that the Citizens would execute him, and you did nothing to stop it? How long did you know?”

He was shouting now. The only saving grace Key could possibly have was that the vision had come too late to save Gideon’s life, that she’d had attempted to intervene but had been unsuccessful in contacting them to avert the disaster.

Everything within Jeremiah went deathly still. His rage, his grief, and his animosity for the woman before him; everything he was and everything he could be spun out of balance.

“Five centuries before Gideon’s attempted execution.”

Jeremiah reflexively jerked forward. Hostility a mad pulse below his skin, he veered for Key, still uncertain what his intent was. When his fists curled, his muscles tensing for attack, a whisper of discord flared in his mind.

That Key was a woman. That she was unarmed. And that she had personally meant him no harm. But Jeremiah’s hostility had overflowed, had barreled into his mind like a freight train and had nowhere left to go but out.

When Nero appeared in front of Key as if by magic, Jeremiah eagerly turned his wrath on the Raeth sovereign. His fist nailed the other man with a punch Nero wouldn’t have needed foresight to see from a mile away. And yet, the sovereign did nothing to stop it.

Chapter Nine

The sickening sound of flesh meeting flesh echoed in Zia’s ears, every molecule of her being revolted by the disturbing scene in front of her. Not only had Key revealed she’d known about Gideon’s attempted execution for centuries, but she’d done absolutely nothing to stop it.

By rights, Jeremiah had grounds to be angry.

But it gave him no excuse to attack Key, and Zia couldn’t decide if she was more upset about Nero taking the punch for Key or at Jeremiah for letting his anger get the best of him. Regardless, she stepped in.

A fraction of a second after Jeremiah’s wayward punch, she held a dagger to his throat. Her teeth were bared at the Elemental who’d attacked her sovereign.

“Step away, Jeremiah.” Low and deadly, her voice gave no quarter, the intensity of her own anger fueling the fire.

By some miracle, he did.

One step, then two.

Then he turned that malicious glare at Nero, hatred glazing over his features. “Did you know that she’d foreseen it and didn’t tell me?”

Zia schooled away the shock of his statement, the raw emotion in Jeremiah’s voice making her chest tighten in inexplicable empathy. Without warning, the entire scene unfolded in her mind, his memory so potent and disturbing her gifts couldn’t help but relive it.

Jeremiah roared as the first bullet entered Gideon’s abdomen. He shifted as if to go to protect the man he’d known for centuries, the man who had been his best friend for just as long, but his body protested.

Hundreds of feet away, the dam groaned with an ominous sound, but it didn’t collapse—Gideon’s work was holding, and Jeremiah needed to continue ensuring that their work remained invisible to the human eye. If he moved, it’d compromise everything.

“Did you think I could forgive Victor’s murder, Gideon?” Torrin’s harsh tones lashed out of him, the anger rising behind his sneer. “Or did you think I’d simply forgotten? No, friend, when I promise vengeance, I deliver.”

Gideon’s hand had clamped around the gunshot wound in his abdomen, his breath sawing in and out of him as he braced his other hand on the rock before him. The Citizens’ leader walked in an ominously slow circle around him.

“Don’t you think pain humanizes us, Gideon? That the suffering you experience now brings you closer to the mortals who rule the planet you so clearly love?”

When Gideon made no effort to respond, Torrin’s knee connected savagely with his jaw, the momentum of it throwing him backward and splaying the Elemental on his back.

Terror bled through Jeremiah as he caught sight of the garish hole that’d swiftly bled crimson over the fabric of his tuxedo. Even as Gideon’s hand braced once again around the injury, he continued to drag air into his lungs.

He sluggishly swiveled his head toward the plant life that grew liberally over the walls of the canyon. Reacting instantly, the greenery surged toward him with the promise of healing.

But Torrin didn’t miss it. Instead, the human merely arched an eyebrow and headed toward Gideon’s outstretched hand. In a flash, he’d placed a booted heel over the Elemental’s wrist and fired a single bullet into his hand.

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