Page 74 of The Fated and the Damned
I winked, not bothering to answer as the horn he blew into drowned out any words I might have shared. Táltosok came running back, and they moved around me like water in a river bend as I stalked towards the bull threatening Kitarni.
She rolled, over and over, barely missing the blows from that beastly man as he hefted his weapon, thudding it into the earth. When I caught up, I gripped his arm tightly, wrenching the man’s arm back so fast it almost ripped out of its socket.
When I faced the bull—dried blood and clumps of skin still clinging to the mask—I leaned in close and whispered in his ear. “Not my fucking wife.”
Both my blades plunged deep into his eye sockets and out the back of his head. A quick death, but a gruesome one. The man deserved no less.
I removed my swords, flicking the blood from my blades with a quick shake of my wrist, then ran to Kitarni. She groaned, pressing a hand to her side to staunch the bleeding.
“Let me see.”
The wound was bleeding freely, but it wasn’t deep. A surface cut to one side of her waist that wasn’t life threatening. It did, however, need dressing. Of course, there would be no telling her what to do. She batted my hand away and managed a smile in between panting. “Paws off, you over-bearing chicken. I’ll be fine.”
I sighed, ripping a strip of my shirt off and binding it around her waist. Not ideal, but it would do the job. I extended a hand and hauled her to her feet, brushing away the hair plastered to her face. “Pull from me.”
She huffed, but didn’t argue, clasping my forearm. The breath rushed out of me as she drew, not even needing to draw my blood as that foreign creature inside me opened its eyes and surged to meet hers. The exchange took mere seconds—just enough to stop the bleeding and allow her to fight without hindered movement. The wound would likely scar, not that either of us cared about that.
“Thank you, darling,” she said, reaching on her toes to plant a kiss on my cheek. When she pulled back, her eyes were wide. “Dante.” Her low voice sent a shard of ice spearing through my stomach. “We’ve got company.”
She squared her jaw, staring at something over my shoulder. I turned, expecting to see more cultists coming our way. Instead, I found a stampede of forest creatures sprinting our way. Lidércek, tündérek, and all manner of supernatural creatures stormed towards us, their eyes black and their skin slick with oozing corruption.
Fuck.
“Run,” I barked, pulling her along by the wrist. “Get back to the frontlines.”
She kept pace beside me, racing back to our brethren as the horde at our back advanced. Shrieks and hisses rent the air and even my bones went cold at the unearthly howls. Sorrow filled me too, that it had come to this. That we’d be forced to turn on once gentle spirits and beings that hunted only within their own borders.
But nothing was worth Kitarni’s life. I’d kill them all if it meant protecting my own.
We had almost formed ranks with the others when a flash of movement to the right caught my eye. My father was stuck mid-fight with a group of men, his longsword glinting in the night. I cried out his name and his gaze turned to me.
It all happened so fast.
One moment he was blocking a cultist’s blow, the next a sword was sticking out his chest. My heart skipped a beat and I found myself changing direction, running towards him with all the strength I had to give.
“Protect your lord,” I cried. “Protect the lord of the keep.”
Táltosok instantly answered the call, sprinting towards the ring of cultists surrounding my father, but they were too far away. I saw glimpses of him through the throng and my rage amplified, so hot that the beast inside me finally roused from its slumber and sought to answer my pain.
I caught Lukasz’s eye from across the field, his brown eyes stricken with fear, his brows pulled taut. The muscled chest beneath the bloodied breastplate he wore heaved as he sprinted, his dark skin slick with sweat as his black boots pounded across the dirt.
My brother’s throat bobbed as a million emotions seemed to pass over his face, and when he looked at me once more, his shoulders sagged, the realisation seeming to hit us both like a blow to the face.
We were too far. Too far to do anything but watch as the enemy closed in around the man who’d been the best damn parent we ever could’ve asked for. My chest constricted as Lukasz’s eyes shuttered. Seeing him resigned to Father’s fate … it was enough to crack something in my chest.
My eyes flickered and that deep well of power inside me—Kitarni’s power—yawned open, the magic bursting outwards, curving like the moon as it disintegrated all cultists in its path. I didn’t have time to be awed by its might, because once the bodies blocking my vision turned to ash, I was left with the image of my dead father, ravaged by what seemed like a hundred scores to his flesh.
His hand still clung to his blade, his eyes wide and unseeing as they stared into the night.
Tears threatened to fall, but I blinked them back, resting a firm hand on my brother’s shoulder as we both sank to our knees in the blood and dirt, ignoring the battle around us.
“We will avenge him,” I swore. “He will not have died in vain.”
Lukasz’s brown eyes glimmered, a stray tear sliding down his cheek. “Father only ever thought of his family and of this kingdom. Nothing he ever did was in vain,” he said softly. “His legacy lives on. We will make him proud, Brother.Youwill make him proud.”
My emotions caught in my throat—a lump I couldn’t swallow down or cough up. Everything felt unbearably stretched. My skin was too tight over my bones, my heart pumping too hard for my body to keep up with. Pain, I realised. Utter pain I had never quite known, even when the woman I’d called Mama had forsaken me.
Choking, I slid to my father’s side, gazing at the sky above for some small scrap of reason.
