Page 69 of Marked By the Dark Lord
Istared at my empty hands, frozen with shock, unable to process what I was seeing.
Outside the tent, the bedlam was slowly dying as the square emptied after the explosions. That wasn’t my concern. My focus was on my hands. Hands that a moment earlier had held Mila’s dying body. She’d felt so frail and weak instead of just tiny.
For a moment, she’d felt like Iexpecteda human to feel. Something I was totally oblivious tonotfeeling in her before. She’d been my tiny witch, but I’d used that as an apt label rather than an insult.
Perhaps more apt than I’d expected.
“A Fae death?” I whispered, my fingers closing and opening again, as if her body would still be there, just invisible. “Impossible.”
It should have been. There was no way she could have slipped past me like that. All the times we’d touched. We’d fucked, I’dbeen deep inside her, listening to her moans as I filled her tiny body and stretched it full, and yet I’d never noticed she wasFae?
“Not possible,” I restated to nobody, getting to my feet, lost in the puzzle that was the woman.
My pain was fading swiftly, only to be replaced by confusion. Mila, it turned out, was not dead. Not quite. I hadn’t lost her.
But did I ever have her? She hid this truth from me the entire time, somehow. Lied to me about who she was and what she was doing. All of that was fake. She was fake.
And so was what I’d felt between us.
My heart was already hardening as the realizations started to add up. She was a decoy. Designed to get me out into the open. Nothing more. I’d revealed myself to her in a moment of weakness, and now, the entire life I’d built for myself was unraveling.
All because ofher.
All because she’d lied to me.
“You’re a fool,” I hissed, looking around the tent for answers to questions I hadn’t yet fully formed.
Aside from one.
Who was Mila, really? And why was she working with Kraw’ok, my brother? She wasn’t even of House Duloke! The blue marbles and smoke gave her away as House Mirgave. The biggest rival of Duloke for the rule of all of Faerie. She wasn’t an ally. She was an enemy.
None of it made any sense!
She’d tricked me that entire time. But how? Who could have tipped the Houses off to my true nature?
There was only one answer to that. One being who knew who I was, who could have given me up.
I stormed out of the tent, a ball of red fury that scattered people from my path. Those who were too slow were simply bowled over. In my rage, I didn’t even notice. Too intent was I on my target.
I’d long avoided giving any reason to challenge him. There had been no need, for we had been in accord. Something, however, had changed that. Had driven him to oust me from The Place Behind. Why he had chosen to do it that way instead of simply asking me to leave, I didn’t know.
But I was about to find out.
The door to his private chambers flew open with a heavy blow of my foot, and I walked out onto the platform that looked down over the lush garden with its river and hot stone, heated by reflected sunlight down through the Black Tower. As I expected, I found Dannorax lounging comfortably in the heat.
His head came up at the unexpected intrusion, flames gathering in the back of his mouth, signified by a rushingwhooshof air toward the dragon.
I had my magic up and hardened, ready to deflect the flame at one of his prized giant flowers.
“Rokk, what is the meaning of this?” the dragon burbled angrily, the words distorted by the fireball he was prepared to unleash.
“I should ask you the same!” I shouted angrily, drawing in more magic and preparing a strike of my own.
The dragon tilted his head slightly but did not back down. “Explain.”
“You did this,” I snarled. “You exposed me, told them where to find me. Why? I demand an explanation of this injustice!”
The dragon drew himself up to full height at my challenge. The air trembled, but I flung aside the oppressive nature offear that poured from the dragon, a natural intimidation tool designed to weaken all those who faced him. The wave hit my magic and shattered into a thousand tiny pieces. I snorted in disdain. He knew better than to try that shit with me.
