Ella
There’s nothing in my head but the sheer will to survive as Petra swings Ryatt’s sword. She miscalculates how heavy it is, and based on the way her arms tremble and bow, she’s never wielded a sword before, either.
The gem-encrusted hilt slides out of her hands, the sword whizzing through the air. A screech of pain sounds nearby, and I spare a glance in the direction of the sound.
A wolf—one of Petra’s warriors—is twitching on its side while blood pools around his body.
I don’t hide the smirk that stretches over my cracked lip as Petra slowly turns her gaze back to me. I step to the side, then step again, putting a few feet of distance between me and the deranged witch. All around us, warriors, guards, and even some of her slaves are starting to gather to watch the fight.
I mean to give them a show they’ll never forget.
If I can muster the strength.
Each step is painful. Each breath rattles through my lungs. My blank thoughts flash with images of Ryatt. He can’t find me without the bond in place, can he? He would have been here by now. What exactly has he been doing for three weeks while I rotted underground?
Petra said he’d been tearing the Roguelands apart. I don’t doubt it.
“Why?” I ask. “Why are you doing this?” I wave a hand at the slave women who look little better than me. “This was your coven–your family!”
Petra shakes her head as she follows me in a wide circle. “I was supposed to be Ravenna’s heir. I watched her cower and bow to Ryatt for years. That boy—that cocky, bullheaded child who grew to be King of the Roguelands by force alone—everyone bent the knee to him. He was the only thing that could stop Kane and his armies from enslaving all of us.”
“Then why work against us?” I ask, my voice breaking over the words. “You broke through Ryatt’s wards around the coven and brought Kane’s army to Moonrise!”
“Do you realize how powerful our child might have been? Me, the queen of the witches, and him, a Shadowsygner? It was destined by fate to be so, you bitch! The mystics saw Ryatt and the heir of Ravenna being mated during the Rite. We would have been successful. We would have had a child who’d grow to take over Eastonia and rule the way it was intended. Like Kane intended.”
My stomach hollows out, but Petra keeps talking.
“So much power,” she hisses. “I could have had anything. I could have done anything. The coven could have been so much more than Ravenna allowed it to be. I’d been trying to convince her to join Kane’s leadership for years. Together we could have—”
“He would have enslaved you all and stolen your powers!” I shout, my voice heavy and desperate.
Petra’s eyes flash with greed. “Maybe them, but not me. I would have been spared. I would have been the queen he was looking for. Someone to keep the coven in line. To forget about fate and selectively breed the witches for power like he’d tried to do for so long. He knew Moonrise was still around. He knew Ryatt kept it guarded. The last of the covens, with the last witch population in all of Eastonia. He promised me I’d sit on its throne.”
“In exchange for what?” Petra is starting to get closer to me as I continue to circle, but my bare feet are throbbing, and my arms feel heavy. I’m weak, so weak. If I’m going to kill her, I need to do it now.
But I need to know the whole story. Ryatt and I knew things wouldn’t be easy when we returned. But this…
“I just needed to get to you, Ella. You, in exchange for the throne I wanted. With you dead, Ryatt could finally see the truth laid out in front of him. The mate by his side was always meant to be me. I just needed to get you out of the way. Ravenna had no idea I was working with Kane. When the war started, I made my move. Ryatt’s powers were at their weakest. The wards of the coven would weaken. He’d warned us—warned Ravenna—and she tasked me with strengthening them instead.”
“But you took them down.” The words catch in my throat. “There were so many children in Moonrise, Petra. You brought Kane’s armies—”
“Weak children with even weaker bloodlines!” Her scream rips through the air between us. “Most of that generation is mixed with wolf anyway. Disgusting!” She spits the last word, her teeth gleaming in the firelight dancing all around us.
“Ryatt’s a shifter,” I grind out. “Yet you obsess over him!”
“I am his fated mate!”
“You are not,” I say, and it’s a struggle to get the words out. I want to lie down. I want to curl into a ball and close my eyes against the pain. “The mystics never saw you on the coven’s throne. They saw me. I am Ravenna’s heir. I am the Witch Queen. I am Ryatt’s mate.”
“Not anymore.”
She knows. Her cruel, cold smile tells me she knows the bond is broken between us. But how?
She clicks her tongue, edging closer, the circle between us shrinking. “Silver and wolfsbane cut through your shifter magic like butter, don’t they? You’re feeling so weak, aren’t you? Your powers were already weakening from the curse Kane placed on you before he cut out your mark.”
“A curse.” It’s not a question. The words ring through my head like a death knell.
“I gave Kane the spell to use. It’s old magic. Something from a time long lost.” She smiles wickedly. “It’ll eat through your powers until they’re nothing, wolf. Every day, you’ll grow weaker. Haven’t you felt it? Don’t you feel it now that you're no longer bound in silver? Your powers should be regenerating by now, shouldn’t they?”
My hands slowly close into fists.
“Nothing but divine intervention can save you now,” she says, “and unfortunately all the gods are dead. They no longer listen or care about us mere mortals. Why would they care about the plight of an ugly little half-breed slut like you?”
I feel it then. My fear, pain, and anger give way to a flicker of deeper feeling in my chest. A slight tug. That shred of the bond that’s left between Ryatt and I.
“He didn’t cut it all away,” I admit. “I can still feel it. Our bond is weak, but intact. Kane screwed something up.” I shrug. “He misspoke your spell.”
She sneers. “That’s impossible!”
“I used to think all of this was impossible.” I wave a hand around the room and the onlookers around us. “This kind of evil. You’re a monster, Petra, just like Kane. You’re only a queen because these people are either terrified of you or enslaved by you. You’re not worthy of them. You never were, and I think Ravenna realized that, too.”
Petra’s face turns a fiery red.
“Ryatt knew that from the beginning.”
She snaps, all teeth and pointed nails.
But she’s just a woman against claws.
Like a dark storm, my ebony wolf erupts through the rough homespun dress, tearing it to pieces. Power I hadn’t been able to muster in my human form flickers to life as I lunge at the witch. A bolt of her power whizzes past me, coating my back in flecks of the coldest ice.
But I’m faster than her. I leap, my claws curling her into her shoulders, and sending us both hurtling toward a wall.
With a crash that sends waves of pain through my body, I crush Petra to the gnarled stone of the hell she built as her new coven.
Behind me, shouts of protest and the keening of the enslaved witches as they realize what’s happening echo in my ears. Chaos ensues. I barely have a moment to pick up a screaming Petra by her neck and slam her into the wall again before someone is trying to wrap a heavy chain around my neck.
I whirl, sending three of her men flying across the room.
Petra struggles to gain her footing and starts calling out desperately for help. Men are shifting into wolves, and the enslaved witches are watching in horror and awe.
But one of them takes advantage of the piles of shredded clothing left in the wake of the dozen wolves now bounding toward me. A single key catches the light of the fire.
My sacrifice for their freedom.
This is going to hurt.
An enemy wolf slams into my side.
I don’t want to die this way. I can’t die, not when Petra is still alive. I can’t die because I have to protect my baby, above all else.
The thought of that baby turns my mind to fire and murderous rage, and then everything gets a little… hazy.
Howls and whimpers rise to the ceiling as my wolf begins to burn with my silver flames. Crimson light devours the room around me, and I can only pray that the other witches got out in time. All the while, the bravest of the wolves try to stop me, to get me on my back, but Westfall trained me well. They can’t catch me. They can’t sink their teeth into me long enough to halt my progress as I bound across the room and annihilate each and every one.
Time is a blur. My pain and fear have dissolved and left only bloodlust that I’m not sure I’ll be able to shake when this is all said and done.
When the last wolf falls, I slowly turn to where Petra is cowering against the wall, surrounded by my flames. I slowly walk to her, the flames licking over my dark coat but not burning me. I stop when I reach the sword she so carelessly tossed and shift back to my human form.
My fire dies out as I pick it up and walk naked back to wear Petra is still shielding herself, chanting desperate spells and making bargains with her gods.
I swing the sword through the air to test its weight.
“The gods are dead, remember?” I smile, standing only a foot or so away. I reach through my flames and rip her crimson robe from her shoulders. “I think it’s time for a new god to rise, wouldn’t you say?”
“You will die from that curse before you have a chance to even glimpse the Firestone throne,” she hisses, “you filthy—”
I swing the sword right through her dainty neck. Petra’s head rolls to a stop just as my powers flicker out, and the fire turns to wisps of smoke.
“Goddess above,” I mutter, pulling on the robe. I sniff, leaning the sword on the wall so I have free hands to try to wipe Petra’s splattered blood from my face. I grab the sword again and turn, looking over the room. “Enough of that.”
Dead wolves and wolf-sized piles of ash mar the floors.
But thirty shocked witches are staring at me from the entrance to this house of horrors.
“Anyone know how to get out of here? My mate is looking for me, and he’s probably reallypissed right now.”