Page 19 of The Last Heir of Elsewhere

With slow, sluggish clarity I realized he had appeared out of thin air, which could only mean one thing: he’d shadow walked into existence.

Thus far, the rebel soldiers we’d come across had primarily been human, but apparently not anymore. Either Ambrose Dullahan had been recruiting among the most powerful High Fae, or he’d kept back the best of his soldiers until the castle was won.

Both possibilities had terrifying implications.

In one swift motion, a strong hand yanked my cloak and made me stumble backwards. I let out a piercing shriek, and reacting on pure instinct, I kicked out, my foot connecting with the male’s knee. The rebel tripped, and I scrambled back, stumbling to regain my footing.

His hood fell back and our eyes connected.

As I’d thought, it was a fairy that looked back at me. All Fae were lovely, but as compared to the Everlasts, this male was almost plain looking, with hard, dark eyes and pale blonde hair pulled back in a knot at the nape of his neck. Source-forged scars crossed his face, and they pulled tight as he grinned at me. I didn’t recognize him, but upon seeing me, his eyes lit up with excitement.

“There you are,” he said in a low rasping tone. “The mortal queen, right? You’re the one we’ve been looking for.”

My blood ran cold. I knew, of course, that Ambrose Dullahan was searching for me, but I’d been lured into a false sense of security by the word of Cross’s spies. Seemingly, the Dullahan would not wait the several weeks we’d expected to come searching for me. Perhaps then, he wouldn’t bat an eye at killing me here and now.

I took a step backward, my hands curling into fists at my sides. “Don’t touch me,” I hissed.

The rebel laughed. “Or what?”

Anger sparked at the back of my mind, and I focused on the sneering, arrogant face of the Fae. My hands shook, and the telltale heat of magic crawled up my skin for the first time since the battle at the castle. Distantly, I realized that perhaps I needed to be in danger for it to work. That perhaps practicing within the thieves’ den truly had not been enough motivation, and only now would I know what I was really capable of.

But then, I looked around at the dozens of people filling the harbor, and the flames just below my skin seemed to flicker and die.

I couldn’t do this. Not now…perhaps not ever.

Nearly every time I’d used my magic, either consciously or unconsciously, afflicted creatures seemed to spring from nowhere, like moths drawn to the flame. The afflicted were not sentient creatures, they were the echoes of former Fae, warped by Wilde magic. They could not be controlled, and calling them to this harbor would only put all our lives in greater jeopardy.

Real fear washed over me, such as I hadn’t felt in sometime. Not the fear of losing something precious to me, or of battle, but of knowing without a doubt that I was too weak to fight back. If I could not call forth any of the magic I hated as much as I relied on, for fear of destroying my friends, then the Fae would kill me. Just like I’d always expected them to.

I took a slow step back, knowing it would not matter where I ran, the rebel would follow.

Out of nowhere, a silhouette emerged from the darkness behind him. Bael, towering and muscular as compared to the other male, materialized out of nothing. His intense yellow gaze was furious, predatory, like that of a lion stalking its next kill.

Feeling the shift behind him, the rebel turned his attention from me to Bael, his eyes widening in fear. With a swift and fluid motion, Bael reached out and gripped the male’s neck.

The rebel let out an inhuman scream, which was cut short as Bael twisted his head sharply, snapping the bones with a sickening crack.

I watched the body go limp in the prince’s hold, but he didn’t stop there. He glanced up at me, meeting my eyes, and kept twisting.

My heartbeat sped up, my skin heating as I watched. I recalled Scion once telling me that Bael had ripped out twice as many hearts as he had, and it was my hypocrisy that didn’t allow me to see that. I saw it now, as he tore the scarred Fae’s head from his neck, holding it from a rope of unkempt hair, its vacant eyes staring blankly into the night sky.

I saw, but I didn’t care.

Tossing the head to the side with a wet thump, Bael advanced on me. I didn’t flinch away as he grabbed me with his blood-stained hands, and forced my face up to focus on him. “Did he touch you, little monster?”

My mind worked to follow what he was saying, when all I could see was his heated gaze. A deeper flush covered my entire body, and a hum of awareness traveled through me. Truly, I could have kicked myself. It was neither the time nor place to be thinking of how those bloodstained hands might feel tracing over my skin.

After a long beat, in which the fight around us seemed to fade away, I shook my head.

The prince smiled, showing every one of his too-sharp teeth. “Good. If he had then that would have been far too quick a death.”

Before I could formulate an answer, he’d taken a tighter hold of my waist. Without asking my permission, he dragged me forward, the shadowed darkness swallowing us.

We only spun for a fraction of a second before reappearing. The same scent of sea air and sounds of shouting, metal on metal, told me that we’d only moved to the other side of the dock. Bael quickly dropped me, and my feet hit the ground too hard, my feet wobbling slightly before I could steady myself.

“Run. I’ll catch up with you.”

“What?” I demanded.

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