Page 61 of Blood and Roses

Their lips were about to touch when a screech cut through the music. Balthasar pulled back, searching for the sound. A small group of Gwaed Gam were in defense positions.

"Stay out of the way," Balthasar said, and he vanished, reappearing between the angry Gwaed Gam.

Rosa couldn't hear over the commotion in the room, but she saw Balthasar's face twist and change. He grabbed one by the throat, ripping it out before tossing the body aside. Rosa steadied herself against the wall, the show of angry violence caused by the man she loved knocking the air from her.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

"Lay down your weapons, or I shall relieve you of your arms," Balthasar said.

The Riverclear men hissed threateningly at him, their fallen comrade bleeding out on the floor beside them.

"You're an embarrassment to the Gwaed Gam," Anton Riverclear spat. "How dare you force us to make peace with these creatures that have hunted and slaughtered us for centuries!"

"Can you say we haven't done the same to them?" Balthasar asked. "We descend from them, or have you forgotten that? We are the same people despite our differences."

"I am going to have to interject." Ryn's voice made the room fall silent. "We arenotthe same kind. You are abominations—the failed experiments of one selfish and dishonored family who fled to this realm like scared cowards."

Eli stood tall and straight with the look of a man whose future was being taken from him.

"Come home, Black Star, and stop this abominable charade," Ryn demanded. "Your queen demands you return to her. You lost a kingdom. You have no right to try to build another."

Balthasar's ears popped as the glamor that Ryn had laid on his fae broke, and their weapons were exposed.

"I wanted to make peace with you, Ryn, despite the pain you have caused my family over the centuries. I've spent the last fifty years trying to convince my people that you are honorable enough to make a treaty with. You were the one that suggested it after all," Eli growled.

"Why do you think I did that? I knew you would bring all your useless kind together, and I could get rid of them all at once. Honestly, after the way your own father died, you should have known that the Autumn Queen does not make treaties or bargains with your filthy kind."

Battle fury surged through Balthasar, filling him with strength. His eyes fell on Rosa.Eli brought her here to be safe.

His father looked at the opposing forces and Ryn's sneering face. He pulled a pen from his pocket and the glamor melted off it. A long obsidian blade grew in his hands like a shard of midnight.

Ryn's eyes widened in rage. "You hadWidow's Furyall this time? How dare you touch it, you Unseelie scum."

"How dare I touch it? It is my birthright! I was hoping to give the queen a taste of it tonight, but she was too much of a coward to face me. Her subjects' blood will feed it instead." Eli blurred, bringing down four Seelie warriors with one swipe of his blade.

Bedlam broke out around them as Gam and fae tore into each other with boiling hatred and betrayal. Balthasar leaped up the wall and pulled three swords from the Vane coat of arms. Balthasar dropped a sword, and Saul caught it, bringing it down to cut a fae's head in two.

"Brother!" Lily shouted as he landed back on the bloody floor. He threw her another sword, not bothering to see if she caught it. Lily had taught him to use a sword; he wouldn't have to worry about her. He needed to find Rosa.

A fae was binding a Southgate vampire in brambles, the twelve-inch thorns piercing through him before it hit his heart and reduced him to dust. Balthasar drove his sword into the fae's spine, tearing it up and out his shoulder, the brambles vanishing.

Other Gwaed Gam were struggling with the glamours as they tore and cut at their own faces and each other, fighting off invisible monsters. Balthasar felt the magic in the room, felt his own Unseelie blood calling out to it.

"Rosa!" He searched, fighting his way through the heaving, bloody crowd.

A high-pitched whistle echoed through the hall, and the younger Gwaed Gam clutched their heads as blood began to pour from their nose and eyes. The Seelie broke through the ballroom windows and fled out the doors. The Gwaed Gam pursued them, their screeching calls echoing through the house. Balthasar flipped the tables, searching for Rosa.

"Balthasar!" Saul appeared, bloody beside him. "Bal, they got her. They got her. I tried to stop them, but I couldn't catch them."

"Got who?" Balthasar asked, his blood running cold.

"Rosa! Ryn has Rosa!"

Rosa had watched,frozen in horror as the battle broke out in a heated mess. Limbs were being torn off, and blood was showering everything about her. She grabbed a carving knife from a roasted pig and climbed under the table. Kicking off her heels, she crawled, shaking in fear at the noise and screams on the other side of the tablecloth. Panicked tears ran down herface, and she slipped over in the blood that was pooling on the floors.

She had to go for the entrance, hoping to escape into a servant's passage. Rosa peeked out from under the table to see Balthasar cut a fae in two with one swing of his sword. He looked like the blood god of a nightmare fairy tale, his fangs bared in fury.

She climbed out from under the table and ran for the doors, almost tripping over the corpse of a Gam with its face torn off. In the corridor, more Gam and fae were fighting as they tried to escape the house. Rosa didn't look behind her as she went for the tapestry that hid the door into the tunnels.

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