Ever Wrath (14 page)

“FRIENDS…SO GOOD
to see you again.” Darren clapped his hands and sent the horde of orcs, goblins and demonic faeries back several meters before they stopped, sneering and grinning their devious smiles as they gave him a wide berth. “We must welcome our guests. My brother and my sweet, dear, long lost Shade have finally come to join me once again.” He squealed like a five year old getting a lollipop, making Shade’s horror morph into sheer hatred.

“Darren. You dare come near her, I’ll kill you.” Dylan held the sword up as his brother approached. Darren stopped in his steps, mere inches from the threatening tip of the
blade pointed at his neck.

“Brother. That’s no way to greet family.”

“You’re not my brother.” Dylan’s furrowed brow surrounded the daggered look he threw his brother.

Darren’s smile faded somewhat
, his eyes darkening. As he narrowed them, it wasn’t hard to see how very similar yet how very different they were in almost every single way. Where Dylan was full of life, warmth and strength, Darren was nothing but empty and frigid.

“Let’s be civil, my dear blood. I know you are not
as hard as you make out to be. Surely, Shade wouldn’t love you so much if you were.” He sneered and stepped forward until the tip of the sword was squarely on his neck, drawing a tiny pinprick of blood from its razor’s edge. “Do we not still share the same blood… Brother?”

Dylan’s sword didn’t sway, but Shade could feel an ocean of sadness
floating off him as he faced his worst nightmare. Would he really kill his own brother? How long had he prepared for such a moment? Shade followed his stare over to his brother and back again. Would she be able to do the same if it was her own brother?

No. It would be impossible
to imagine herself and Benton in such a situation. She hoped she’d never have to look at Benton the way Dylan was looking at Darren.

Yes
, this weasel was the most twisted, vile creature she’d ever met, but was it worth Dylan losing his own soul to kill his brother? A sickening twist jolted her out of her stunned observation, and she sucked in a breath as she watched it all play out before her eyes, looking for the moment when she could intervene.

“We may share the same blood, but we are
not brothers. You made sure of that.” Dylan’s voice came out unnaturally cold and unfeeling, something that sent Shade’s blood turning to ice. “Every step you took, you severed our ties. So help me, our mother rolls over in her grave, but I cannot say that you’re my brother anymore.” Dylan swung the sword, aiming to slice Darren’s head off, but it slammed against a metal cuff on Darren’s forearm. It gave Darren enough time to pull out a short sword from his side and block the next swing from Dylan’s sword.

“I’m not as stupid as you
think I am, big brother. I’m quite capable of killing you, too, even if I wasn’t favored in the Teleen Guard, as you always were.” Darren gritted his teeth, the strain of the combat beginning to show on his face.

He buckled
under another strike from Dylan and crashed down onto his knees but still held the sword back, his face reddening.

“You
never cared about guarding our people. You only cared about hurting others and playing your childish tricks.” Out of breath, Dylan didn’t show any signs of defeat. Instead, he pushed down on the sword, smirking at his brother as all the years of pain took their toll.

“
Well said… mostly true. If you’d only let me have Evangeline and had got Jack out of the way, things might’ve been different. But you had to let them escape. You wouldn’t let me have her!”

“She was never yours to begin with. It’s forbidden to force someone to love you.”

Darren laughed. His sweat poured down his face, and his veins popped out along his temples, pulsating with effort as his energy waned away. “You may be right, but not all of us are destined for a mate. Not all of us are so lucky, as you were. Some of us face eternity alone. Would you have me so alone for eternity? I doubt you’d keep your sanity either with such a dire fate,” he hissed.

Darren
yanked out a dagger from his belt and swiped at Dylan’s thigh, sending him stumbling back. He wobbled, grabbing his thigh with a surprised look on his face. Shade ran to him, keeping a watch out for the horde of Unseelie who were still watching the scene hungrily, waiting for their turn to brawl. The knowing smiles on their faces as they snickered made Shade turn back toward Dylan, a sickly dread growing inside her.

“D
ylan? What’s wrong?”

His
twisted features were filled with agony. He collapsed to the ground, holding his leg where dark red blood oozed from between his fingers, mixed with a black taint. It wasn’t a deep wound, but he weakened before her eyes, and she grabbed onto him as his body shook from the pain, right before a prickling stab of agony smacked into her thigh, too.

“What’s happening?” She clenches her jaw tight, sweating as whatever happened to Dylan beg
an to work across their bond and share his injuries with her.

“It’s poisoned, Shade.” He strain
ed to stay upright but swayed dangerously.

“Darklings come with many advantages for the Unseelie. You see, I’ve learned
much in my time here, Brother.” Darren’s snarky voice was full of sadistic satisfaction. Shade peered up at him, but his eyes were filled with nothing but a vacant insanity. “First of all, their touch is quite deadly,” he continued. “It is the perfect poison, and its abundance here lets me have all I want. It’s not hard to extract their poison once they touch another. I just drain some blood from their victim before they die and coat my weapons with it. Not quite as potent as a direct touch from one, but it’s just as lethal.”

His wicked smile infuriated
her. Wouldn’t it be fitting to wipe it off his face with her own Darkling blood shoved straight down his throat?

“No!” Shade stood
up, gripping her sword, ready to plunge it into Darren’s chest. She felt faint, but it was easing up slowly. The piercing pain in her thigh also subsided, to her surprise, and she glanced down to see the wound healing through the hole in her jeans. “What the…?”

Darren’s smile
disappeared as he realized Shade’s bond to Dylan didn’t affect her as much as it should have. She should have been in the same agony as her bonded mate, not just because of their marriage promise, but because they were bound in blood by the Land of Faerie. She should have been retching her insides out onto the floor from the severe pain. But she wasn’t. Why?

The same r
ealization hit her, and she lifted her sword toward her tormentor, a smirk replacing the frown. “Guess you didn’t know that I’m part Darkling now. One tried to kill me once but gave me more than I ever could imagine. Its magic is my magic. The poison won’t kill me; I’m immune to it.”

Darren’s
rage spilled over his face as he eyed her up and down, his eyes growing full of fear. “Impossible!”

“Oh,
but it’s so very possible. You see, Arthas almost succeeded in killing me with it. I’m part light and part dark magic. I lingered near the boundary of life and death so many times, Darklings don’t even recognize me as alive anymore. But I still have everything you don’t have: a loving family and power given to me by the land that loathes you. Its magic saved me, and I’ve embraced both parts of my magic. I only need to ask, and they do my bidding. Everything you guys throw at me, I assimilate and make my own. Now, you want to give me the antidote for your brother, or do I have to pry it from your rotting, dead fingers?” Her eyes flashed black, her darkness crawling out from the Darkling’s kiss on her arm and happily flourishing as it melded with her powers.

Darren’s
eyes widened in surprise. His hand subconsciously fiddled with a pocket on the left side of his tunic, giving away the location of what she desired most.

A-ha.

She jumped to her feet and rushed the traitor Teleen, angling her sword to his side and turning in a flash. He had no time to defend against the slice of the sword across his back. His screech was sickening, but he recovered quickly enough to meet her sword once more. They continued to brawl across the platform, twanging swords and punching at any vulnerable areas.

Beside them
was the edge of the platform where nothing but space and a drop off led to the wide staircase room below. They were several stories high, and it appeared that the castle had grown several feet while they had been fighting.

“Wait… wait!” Darren shouted as she pinned him against a wall. The Unseelie had cleared out of the way of their struggle as they watched the fight, hollering and hungry for violence. “I’ll give you the antidote. Just don’t… don’t kill me.” His desperation caused his body to shake as her sword sat pointed against his throat. This only made her press it down harder, garnering a yelp from Darren before he reached down to pull the flask from his pocket. “Here!” He tossed it at her, hoping she’d look away and give him a chance to escape.

Instead,
Shade let her air element encircle the bottle, gripping it to suspend its descent. It now hovered behind her as the wind proceeded to whoosh over the expanse of soldiers with a furious slap. It sent them back several meters. The bottle danced a moment before flying into her free hand, right before she pushed the blade straight into his neck.

Gasps
and mutters of protest rippled through the surrounding crowd as she yanked her sword back out and let Darren’s body collapse to the ground in a resonating thump. Dark red blood tainted with black pumped rhythmically out, spilling from the wound in his throat as he died, his empty eyes staring off into nothingness as the lights in them faded and his gurgling gasps turned silent. Standing over his still body, she felt her darkness retreat and a flush of sickness pass through her.

The dark magic was wrangled back in, pushed into the depths of her
soul until she called for it once more.

A rumble under her feet shook the platform, sending the
remaining soldiers, those too stunned to run away when she’d killed Darren, cowering in fear down the stairs and away from the precarious space near the edge of the drop off. She didn’t blame them, not since a large gaping hole in the wall to her left revealed the night sky and the flickering of fire surrounding the castle.

What’
s going on?

As quickly as it had come, the shaking stopped.

Kilara was starting her destruction of the castle.

No, it can’t b
e.
She squinted out the opening in a panic before darting back to Dylan’s still body on the floor of the platform. It was still night. Why was Kilara doing this now? She said she’d wait until sunrise. Why wasn’t she waiting? It didn’t make any sense.

Shade didn’t
know how many hours of darkness were left, but right now, she was more concerned with her mate who was still suffering intense pain from his poisoned wound.

Poised over him
, she uncorked the bottle, which was filled with a luminous orange sludge. Slipping her hand under his head, she propped him up and let the liquid slide into his slightly opened mouth, praying it would work.

Please…
please work.