Page 47 of Of Vows and War: Special Edition
“Asher, please do not ruin your dress. My favorite seamstresses worked tirelessly through the night on your wardrobe for this trip,” Mia scolded.
Ignoring her, I stood and took my seat across from them, all the while imagining jamming my foot down her throat. Sterling must have noticed, because he giggled like a youngling at my side as the carriage took off.
“We are trapped in here,” I muttered, looking at Xavier. He sat straighter, eyeing me with a curious expression. But I could see that he too felt the unease of being in there. Vulnerable.
“This dinner is the first of eight. We must be strong in our convictions, our desires, and—most of all—our family.” Xavier and Sterling nodded, but all I could do was stare and picture the berries in my pocket. I wondered how many it would take to kill her.
Then, just as we began to move, the carriage halted, sending Sterling and I flying forward at the abrupt stop. Someone shouted from outside, followed closely by a piercing scream. The voice was a blade cutting through my plans, tearing my thoughts in half. A part of me thought this the perfect moment to catch Mia off guard, but the other half of me was stronger—the side that told me danger lurked beyond the carriage door and my fae needed me to help.
So, without a second of consideration for my own safety, I shoved through the door.
Blood caught my eye before anything else. It was already everywhere, coating the grass and trees and even the horses. A large group was fighting against guards clad in black armor andbearing the golden fae sigil. The fae attacking wore seemingly random clothes—normal ones, even. Plain tunics and trousers, nothing upon them matching except for one thing. Each wore a black cloth over their face, hiding all but their eyes. At the center of the cloth, right where their mouths would be, was the shining fae sigil…bleeding.
“Protect the princess from the rebels!” someone shouted from my right. A guard tried to jump in front of me, their sword clashing with one wielded by what I now knew to be a rebel. I ducked low, kicking my foot into the rebel’s knee. The Manipulator inside of me hummed with glee at the sound of the fae’s bone cracking in half. I wasted no time using my heel to stab into the rebel’s chest, picking up their sword and readying to fight.
“Asher!” Sterling’s voice cut through the screams and slicing of metal upon metal. I did not turn, did not do anything but dart forward towards a shrieking female holding her small youngling.
“Get out of here! Run!” I shouted to her. She did not move, appearing almost rooted in place. A growl tore up my chest as I saw what she was looking at. Before her in the grass was a male, his throat slit and eyes empty. She continued to sob, her youngling clinging to her.
Another rebel came at me mere feet from her, and I was forced to jump back before they could disembowel me. My sword was up in an instant, swinging towards the fae’s face. She dodged it, smirking at me. We circled one another, neither of us caring about the violence that surrounded us.
“You fight, that is not something we knew,” she said. All I could do was laugh, so disbelieving of what was happening.
They were killing our own. They were slaughtering innocents. Nothing was worth that. I would know, I had been a monster who did the same my entire life.
“Underestimating your enemy is a quick way to lose,” I offered. That seemed to strike her somewhere deep in her heart, because her smile fell and she let out a deep battle cry. Her first swing missed me entirely, but the second and third took an immense amount of strength to counter. She was strong, and I was sure she would shift soon if I kept blocking her strikes. So I went on the offensive, trying to remember all that the Trusted had taught me but mostly hearing Wrath’s voice as he called me insane.
First to draw blood was me, the very tip of my sword slicing through her forehead. She screamed in rage, trying and failing to return the favor. Out of nowhere, she turned and grabbed the crying female. I stilled, my eyes darting between them both. “Come with us, or I kill them.”
Her sword moved to the throat of the fae, her youngling wiggling in her arms and screaming so loudly it made my teeth rattle. My magic seemed to urge me to slaughter—to welcome the evil within me and disregard the innocents that would suffer too—but I was done with the purposeless bloodshed. Done with letting down those I had promised to serve. As the youngling cried out for their father, I let my mental gate open wide.
“Release them,”I ordered. The rebel did as directed, delicious fear trickling down her like sweat. With that, I promptly kicked the Shifter in the chest and let my eyes roam over the fighting fae.“Be still!”
Everyone froze, eyes wide and heartbeats pounding in time with the horrid headache that already began to wear on me. Shouts of pain and cries of sorrow still rang out, but not a single fae moved. Not even Mia or Xavier, though their mental shields were up. Hiding from me.
Tossing the sword, I reached down and hoisted the female rebel up by her collar. She did not fight against me. Tears randown her cheeks and her breathing was more of a gasping cry as she stared at me.
Anger clouded my heart, but my mind was momentarily clear.
“If you want to think me evil, then fine,” I shouted to the crowd of unnaturally still fae, listening as their fears of me coalesced in the air and kissed me in fond hello. “Call me a monster, a beast, a curse. I will gladly be your villain. But do not take out your anger with your rulers on the fae of this realm. For those who do will quickly learn why it is I who haunts your nightmares and looms within your waking thoughts.”
Because I knew the best way to prove how serious you were was to show the world, I threw the rebel to the ground and stomped my foot into her spine, shattering it at the neck. Screams could be heard from both sides, which I used to my advantage as I let my magic seep deeper into every mind near and weed out the traitors.
“You will all do well to remember this moment. No longer will the innocents die for the crimes of the wicked. If you have something to say about how this realm is run, then by all means, voice it. But, until then, those who wronged their own will pay.”
Silence was shattered by the sounds of bodies falling lifelessly to the ground.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Stassi
The prince was, to put it nicely, a pain in my ass.
Not only was he late, but he was also in an undeniably awful mood. That, and I was pretty sure he was secretly planning to kill me in my sleep. It wasn’t possible, but he still put me on edge. Big fucker couldn’t be trusted.
“You’re late,” I said from my spot at his desk. He had pushed me out of his bed last night ten times before he finally gave in and slept somewhere else. Despite that, he looked…good. Which was even more annoying.
Even worse, it made me miss my creature, who had been stunning in a completely different way. He was kind and sinful where Bellamy was rugged and grumpy. Even the prince’sdimples couldn’t make him look sweet or soft. But my creature, he’d been that. A rarity, in my opinion, to find someone who was both sexy and delicate.
