Page 84 of Faeheart
But Lady Briar’s silence was answer enough.
I watched my father’s world crumble in that moment, watched him truly see what his beliefs had led to. When he looked at me again, his eyes were filled with horror and something that might have been regret.
“Elias,” he whispered. “I... I’m so sorry.”
“Father—”
“Touching,” Lady Briar spat. “But irrelevant. The ritual will be completed with or without your cooperation, Marcus.”
She began to chant in an ancient fae tongue, her magic flaring up around her. But before she could get more than a few words in, a red tendril of magic pierced her body, cutting her voice off instantly.
When I looked back, I saw my father, his hand on the cube, red magic swirling around him.
Chapter 32
Wild
Red light filled my vision before my mother’s clawed hands slipped off my neck. Suddenly I was falling. Everything around me blurred as several things happened at once. I felt my mother’s strange magic release its death grip on my link to the tetrad bond. All at once I could feel my mates, their hurt, confusion, and shock as they watched something unexpected take place. Next, I felt the pain of striking a cold stone floor, my body too weak and damaged to do anything to break my fall.
Pain lanced through my body as I hit the marble floor, but the relief of feeling our tetrad bond fully restored was overwhelming. Through the connection, I felt Elias’s desperate love and Atlas’s protective fury, while Caden’s gentle healing magic immediately began flowing toward me. My bruises and cuts began to mend, the pain fading quickly.
Above me, my mother’s perfect face was frozen in shock as she stared down at the crimson tendril piercing her chest. Her emerald eyes, so like mine yet devoid of warmth, flickered with disbelief as she looked from the wound to Marcus, Elias’s father, who stood with his hand pressed against the obsidian cube.
“You... you dare...” she gasped, her voice barely a whisper as blood began to trickle from the corner of her mouth.
“I won’t let you hurt any more children,” Marcus said, his aristocratic features twisted with anguish and determination. “This ends now, Morgana. No more. You are finished.”
The red magic flowing from the cube intensified, and I could see the strain it was putting on Marcus’s body. His face was pale, sweat beading on his forehead as he channeled the artifact’s power against my mother, attempting to absorb her magic. But there was something else happening, too. The cube itself was beginning to crack, hairline fractures spreading across its obsidian surface as conflicting magics tore at its structure. It seemed my mother was fighting back.
“Father, stop!” Elias cried out, lurching forward. “The cube will take you too!”
But Marcus didn’t release his grip on the obsidian surface. Instead, his fingers seemed to sink deeper into the artifact as more crimson tendrils erupted from its cracking surface, wrapping around his arm like hungry serpents.
I tried to push myself up, but my body refused to cooperate. Through our bond, I felt Elias’s panic rising as he realized what his father was doing. He was sacrificing himself to trap my mother’s soul, to put an end to this attack, and to save his son from certain destruction.
“Get back!” Atlas roared, diving toward Elias and pulling him away from the increasingly unstable artifact.
My mother’s perfect form began to distort, her fae features elongating as she fought against the cube’s pull. Her emerald magic flared in desperate bursts, but each flash was weaker than the last as the crimson tendrils drained her essence.
“You fool,” she hissed at Marcus, her voice warping into something inhuman. “You don’t understand what you’ve unleashed.”
The cube’s surface rippled violently, the cracks widening as more souls pressed against its weakening structure fromwithin. I could see faces forming in the obsidian, mouths open in silent screams as they sensed the sweet release of freedom approaching.
“Elias,” Marcus gasped, his body trembling with the effort of controlling the artifact. “You need… to get the artifact out of here… now!”
“But it’ll kill you!” Elias cried back, reaching out toward his father.
But he just smiled. “Then I will have paid for my sins.”
“There has to be another way!”
His father’s body was drawn further into the cube, the red magic consuming him up to the shoulder. “Please,” he whispered, his voice barely breaking through the commotion. “Before it’s too late.”
Caden was suddenly beside me, his gentle hands lifting me to a sitting position. “Can you stand?” he whispered urgently.
“I think so,” I managed, though my voice sounded like broken glass in my throat.
Through our bond, I felt Elias’s magic surge as he reluctantly prepared the teleportation spell we’d planned together, his raw power weaving complex patterns in the air. Atlas and Caden immediately added their energy to his, their magic flowing through our tetrad connection.
