Page 162 of Fate and Flame
So confident.
My stomach turned, though I was unsure why. We sat on a platform at the top of a hill, watching a grand performance, or so I thought it was, until the familiar scent of death, of blood, struck me. But how did I know that smell? I sat back into my chair and stared blankly forward. Watching as a great dragon flew across the battlefield below. I saw the muscle in my king’s jaw twitch. The dragon lit our soldiers on fire. Ashes on the wind.
Wind.
“The boulders you stupid fucking giants,” he bellowed and then turned to me more softly and said, “We will let them have their battle, but in the end, you will rain death upon them all. I do enjoy the show, though. Don’t you, darling?”
I turned blankly back to the battle. Why should I use my power? I didn’t care about any of them. The king believed we were bound. I believed otherwise. The only thing that pulled at me was a lone flicker in my mind. A single lingering flame that felt important. Though I wasn’t sure why.
The dragon lasted longer than I anticipated, but eventually we watched him fade over a hill behind us. My king relished in his triumph. I turned to watch the soldier’s brutal, lethal attacks. Our opponents fought like dancers. Again, that wave of familiarity passed me by. A great masculine cry of pain cleaved the battleground like a warrior’s song of anguish. I turned just in time to see a minotaur fall. A gleam in my king’s eye as he chuckled. My heart still jumped at that scream as sorrow filled me.
The inky black feeling of wrongness began to pour over me, so powerful I could hardly sit still in my seat. As if my body were paralyzed and my muscles ached for movement. To push past that frozen feeling. To jerk myself to life. I watched two fae warriors that led their army down the hill with an obsession I couldn’t fathom. Though I tried to pull myself away, to see the rest of the battle, I always came back to them. To him. The warrior who inched himself closer and closer to us as he fought. His muscled body. His vengeful eyes. I thought maybe he would be the one to kill me. The bloodlust was strong enough.
They fought many high fae as they pressed forward. They fought like they’d fought together their entire lives. They moved as a team, watching each other’s backs as they pressed forward, leaving a line of fallen fae in their wake. One dark haired, one messy blond.
They were slower now than they had been when they started down that hill. The momentum fading as their bodies tired. I held my breath as one of our own, my king’s cousin as I had been informed over our evening meal, approached them. At the same time, a group of four harpies shot down from the sky, screeching and reaching their taloned feet forward like they would pluck them from the ground.
They sliced their swords through the air but facing five directions at once was impossible. A harpy lunged, grabbed the lighter-haired one by the arm, and lifted, trying to pull that massive male from the ground. His arm became shredded meat as her talons ripped into him.
The darker fae looked over his shoulder to check on his male just as another harpy barreled through the air, tumbled into him, and started clawing him as she held him pinned to the field. I watched as the male from our army turned on my king’s harpies and began swinging his sword at the one pinning the darker fae to the ground. Their wings blocked a bit of the scene as the other two dipped and clawed and pulled back, but the darker male was back on his feet within moments, breathing heavily as he turned to save the other.
In the distance, a female’s scream rang over the warring crowd. “Kai. Kai,” she shouted. She ran as if the wind pushed her. As if every frantic step was rung in desperation. She fell and got back up, covered in blood that wasn’t her own. Still, she ran. But it was too late for him. He’d fallen below the winged harpies, and though both of the others attacked with a vengeance, the third male, the blond one that had fought side by side with the southern leader, did not get up. Instead, he was enveloped within the screeches of victory from the harpies who tore him to shreds.
I watched the dark male turn my way. I felt his eyes burn into my own and then look back to his fallen brother. And then back to me as he began running, and something in his decision to come for me brought that flame to life within me. It forced the ice to begin to melt. Something about that male mattered to me. And then I worried; something about the fallen one mattered to me also.
Fear struck me as clarity was just within my grasp. As my breaths began to quicken and my heart began to pound. As I learned the male beside me was not my king, but my enemy, and the male running to me, for me, was my everything. And then my head snapped to where the minotaur had fallen and the scream that had pierced my heart.
Back to the king. Fenlas. My mate. That flame became a roaring fire as it seared me from within. As everything crashed back to me. A bond that could never be severed. That was what we had. Ameriala. Autus may have bound me to him as well, but it was artificial. What Fen and I had was real, raw, and chosen. It was stronger than anything Autus could do. I felt the tether to Autus thin as Fen got closer and closer to me. And then I felt him. His agony and his heartache.
Gods. Kai. Gaea. And the battle continued. My heart twisted at the force of reality.
He is mine,I snarled into my mind.
The king running for me froze in his tracks, stopped halfway, and fell to his knees. Because even though he was promised, too, even though he was my Guardian, I had remembered where I came from. I remembered. And I did not need a savior. Not this day.
Make sure it fucking hurts.
Autus had his back to me. He said something inaudible as he watched a new army come from the north in shining armor rain down upon what was left of his army after my southerners had ripped them to shreds.
“It’s time.” He turned to face me. “You will call your magic forward. Now. You will end this.”
There was a pull deep within me. He had bound me to him, and I felt a jerk of my own desire to follow his commands. But never in my life had I let anyone tell me what to do. Bound or not, my will was still my own. Without Nadra here to amplify his magic, had he used it, his words were merely suggestions.
“Yes, my king,” I said in a sickly-sweet voice. I reached my hand for him, though my skin crawled when he took it. I closed my eyes and saw Kaitalen. His infectious laugh. His strength. His loyalty. I saw a beautiful female with striking feline eyes. The vision of the future that we’d promised each other but now would never have. He’d taken them both from me.
“Leave my army intact,” he commanded.
One single thought and the king was on his knees before me. My mind my own, my magic completely controlled. Focused, thanks to a little old hag who made sure I could protect myself one final time before she finally found her own way to escape this world. A bulging vein popped out of the king’s forehead, a matching one pulsed in his neck.
The world stopped. I looked into that bastard’s hateful eyes. He fought back, mentally pushing me as realization fell upon him.
“What are you doing, you wretched female?” he rasped.
I felt a wall go up behind me as Fen held back anyone who would interfere. He was nearly drained, the exhaustion jolted through me.I gritted my teeth, torn between obliterating everything, ending it all so that this entire world could start anew and pinpointing that magic. I wouldn’t be enough to simply kill Autus. It would never be enough.
That faltering, the single hesitation grew as King Autus struggled back to his feet. Coated in a false sense of empowerment, that fucker had the nerve to place his hands upon my throat and squeeze. For a moment, I let him.
Kill them all and free the rest.
