Page 3 of A Kingdom of Death & Darkness
The soft shu-shush of wings opening and taking flight reaches my ears. It’s a sound I can never attribute to anything else. I look up, but the smoke obscures anything further than a few feet.
Seven grunts again, and I turn just in time to see him shoving another creature away from him. Bites riddle his exposed skin now, trickling down his body, and with each wound, he seems to slow while the creatures speed up.
He’s a feast to be fed on. And fuck if I’ll allow that to happen.
I reach for him, intending to do... I don’t even know what, but he bares his teeth at me.
“Stay back!” he roars, desperately swinging his blade, keeping their attention on himself rather than on me. They surround him while I’m left helplessly shoving my way through the stench of bodies that separate him from me.
The sound of wings is my only warning. One minute, I’m standing in the middle of a closing circle. The next, strong hands are gripping me under my arms and pulling me into the sky. Iscream and look over my shoulder, only to see the Thorn King with a stern expression on his face.
“Seven!” I cry as he lifts me up and away. “Go back! We can’t leave him!”
“It’s too dangerous—” I start to struggle, fighting his hold on me, desperate to get back to Seven. “For fuck’s sake,” he growls. “He’s just a vampire.”
“He’smyvampire,” I snarl. “And if you don’t take me back and save him, too, I’m going to make your fairy tale of a life a living fucking hell!”
His eyes meet mine as a deep chuckle rattles his chest. It lacks any true humor. “Oh, Crymson. Hell is already here.”
But he drops from the sky like a falling angel. The wind pulls at my hair as we freefall.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I shriek against his neck, clinging to him in an embarrassingly tight hold that I’ll deny until the day I die.
“Exactly what my Blood commanded,” he murmurs, his big hands holding me to his strong chest before his boots softly hit the ground.
Screams and smoke carry through the wind as I stare up into the most beautiful piercing pale eyes.
At my curious look, he raises a brow. “If he’syourvampire, we can’t very well leave him, can we?”
As he carries me closer to the fight going on, I get a look at the mass of bodies around Seven. He’s bleeding badly now, and he’s outnumbered. I have no idea how we can get him out of there.
“Where is your army?” I growl. “Help him!”
Thorn seems to hesitate before a whistling sound echoes around us. The moment that sound rings out, Thorn’s arm appears from the smoke, rushing in with shining fae swords, identical to the one Seven had. With impossible strength andspeed, they drop creatures as quickly as they appear. Which means he could have done it the whole time.
Anger fills me. How dare he let Seven suffer like that? How dare he not act sooner? He was going to let Seven die before my plea. Granted, I get that the fae and the vampires are enemies, but Seven is both. He’s half fae, half vampire, and the only single thing that saved him is my love.
What the actual ever-loving fuck.
The anger is so potent, I feel that strange tingling fill my chest again, the one I’d felt before back in the Vampire King’s castle. It feels like hot embers in my heart, like it could burn through my chest if I’m not careful.
“You fucking asshole,” I growl through my teeth, and the magic building inside me explodes.
Thorn grunts in pain, and his hands spasm where he holds me. I drop from his hold, falling to the burning ground with anoomph. I barely land on my feet, and I only stay upright because one of the fae soldiers bumps into me as a creature shoves him back.
“Seven!” I scream, immediately rushing through the battle, searching for him among the bodies. “Seven!”
The burning sensation in my chest begins to rise again as my panic sets in. I can’t see him. I can’t find him. Is he under the mountain of bodies squirming to my right? Is he lost in the smoke and shadows? Is he safe somewhere else?
The panic climbs my throat and chokes me, my hand coming up to scratch frantically at it as if that’ll help. The next time I open my mouth to shout, something else comes out, something guttural. Seven’s name leaves my lips, but the sound is tinged with magic, remade into a new word as the heat explodes out of me. The Dead nearest me go flying back, and as they do so, their absence reveals the vampire collapsed on the ground in front ofme, his body covered in his own blood, black beginning to ooze from the wounds.
“Seven,” I rasp, as strong arms come around me. I recognize Thorn by his presence before I see him, but the strength suddenly leaves my body. “Don’t you dare leave him behind,” I rasp, just as my legs give out.
A watchful piercing gaze stares down on me from above. The smear of paint across his face blurs with the fading of my vision. My eyes close before I can say anything more, but the last thing I see is one of the soldiers moving closer to Seven’s lifeless body.
Good. He should take my threat seriously, I think as my mind goes blank, and I know nothing else.
TWO
