Kenna
I just killed someone.
I watch the unfamiliar man twitch on the ground as foam bubbles from his mouth. His eyes glaze over–eyes I wonder if he inherited from his mom… or dad. I wonder if someone who loves him is waiting on him to come home. If he has a mate and children. Brothers, sisters….
I tear my gaze from the dead man and look out over the dark forest at the shadows creeping toward me.
There’s more of them. More men. More Rebels.
We’re being attacked.
My body acts on instinct as my mind tries to catch up to what just happened, and I whirl to where I saw Evander get stabbed repeatedly while he just–he just stood there and took it.
He stood there, screaming my name as I got carried away and didn’t even blink when he was being brutalized because I…
“You’re distracting in every way….”
His words from the night we kissed in Tiscoln rush through my head as I take a single step in his direction but pause.
He’s not moving. His chest isn’t moving.
Oh, my Goddess.
No.
No. No, no, no!
“EVANDER!” I scream, but Flynn and Connor are in their wolf forms coated in armor and sprinting in my direction as I hurtle toward Evander.
Behind me, I can sense the rebels approaching. They’re gaining speed. I can taste magic thick in the air.
Something inside of me shifts. Something that wasn’t there before. Something heavy and ingrained in every nerve and cell that makes me who I am.
Something, I realize with a start, binds me to the man the rebels just…just killed.
I know my eyes are burning with silver fire while I slowly, ever so slowly, turn on my heel to face the rebels. I feel both sides of me–my Firestone heart, and my Shadowsynger blood–converge, creating something unholy and unexplainable.
These are the powers I keep on a tight leash, powers that are so great they’re hard for even me to comprehend.
But these people hurt someone I love.
And I’m done being good, and being kind, and pretending to be weak so others don’t fear me.
I explode in a shimmer of silver flames that engulf every inch of my body. My Shadowsynger powers stream out of my hands like ribbons of pure, unfiltered darkness.
A startled yelp sounds nearby, and Flynn briefly runs into my line of sight but gets the hell out of my way the second I take my first step forward.
There’s no going back. I’m empty, nothing but a writhing shell of strangling powers waiting to be unleashed. My heart is in shambles on the ground next to Evander, and I don’t want it back until this is done.
I scream, and it’s a siren’s song. Shrill and pitched as it echoes through the forest and thunders against the distant mountains.
The trees tremble and bow away from me as I stalk forward, raising my hands and sending my ribbons of shadows barreling toward the forty or so men and wolves now darting through the trees toward me….
And awayfrom me.
Screams cut through the burning, crackling noise coming from my powers as I cut through the first line of rebels. Their comrades start to retreat, but I have nothing left inside of me that even remotely wants to show them mercy.
My shadows cut the enemy wolves to ribbons, and my silver fire turns them to ash. A new fire erupts with every step I take, turning the forest around us molten with a cold, biting kind of heat.
Darkness swallows the forest whole as the moon shies away from the carnage, hiding behind a cloud.
None of them are going to survive. I don’t know why they bother running.
I walk at a steady, unhurried pace behind them, my powers stretching a quarter mile or more as the last of the rebels fall.
I take a single breath, and my powers disappear, recoiling back into my body like what I’ve just done is nothing more than a party trick I can turn on and off. The moment my powers dim, I feel the crushing pain of witnessing Evander being hurt over and over again.
But my feet won’t move. I’m staring out into the forest, past the piles of ash, past the charred trees and upturned earth.
I can’t turn around because, once I do, I’ll have to accept that Evander isn’t here anymore.
Whatever is broken between us doesn’t matter. What the confusing feelings I have for him mean doesn’t matter at all.
I just can’t lose him. I can’t.
Someone calls my name. I close my eyes and turn.
When I open them, Flynn and Connor are leaning over Evander, both dressed in their Ghost armor.
But Evander wasn’t wearing his armor tonight. He’d been in plain clothes when he approached me in the forest while I was foraging.
Blood seeps through his shirt. The smell of death lingering around him finally brings me back to my senses, to reality.
I run to him, falling to my knees beside him.
“He’s alive, Princess Kenna,” Flynn says as he tears away Evander’s shirt.
Evander sucks in a sharp, pained breath and just barely opens his eyes. His clouded gaze locks on mine as the first tears start to fall from my lashes. “Don’t,” he says firmly.
“Evander?” I lean over him. I can heal him. He’s very hurt, yes, but I can prevent what surely will be his death if we wait any longer to do something.
“Don’t touch me with those tears,” he rasps, his voice catching as he tries to lift a hand to push me away but can’t do more than make his fingers twitch. “Don't–don’t do it. I didn’t know–I didn’t sense them before it was too late–I’m sorry–”
“Stop,” I tell him briskly. “Of course, I’m going to help you–”
“Don’t fucking touch me!” he cries out, teeth bared.
It’s like a knife to my heart. My lips part, but no words tickle the tip of my tongue. I just stare at him, at the haze in his eyes, and feel….
“You’re going to die if you don’t let me help you,” I whisper, and it takes all of my energy to get the words out.
But Evander starts thrashing, crying out in pain as Flynn and Connor try to hold him down. He’s bleeding so much, and every drop of blood I see burns into my soul.
“Don’t let her–don’t let her do it,” he commands his friends, but they’re shaking their heads, their faces washed with concern and grief. He starts to tremble, and his words run together, and then his eyes are rolling back in his head. He bucks off the ground, and even mortally wounded and seizing, he’s strong. So, so much stronger than Flynn and Connor, who are struggling to keep him on the ground.
Flynn bares his teeth, frustrated, and Connor looks stricken as he fights to keep Evander under control.
“Don’t let her–just let me die–” Evander chokes out, his voice lined with desperation. “It’s better–for–her–”
“What is he even saying?” I cry out through my tears. He won’t hold still long enough for me to get a single tear into his mouth, and my powers are strangled and tired from… from killing so many people.
My heart wrenches as the reality of the last ten minutes hits me directly in the chest.
“Kenna, listen to me,” Flynn shouts, straining as he leans his weight on Evander to keep him down. “You have to save his life. You have to ignore everything he’s saying right now, and everything he’s going to say after–”
“Flynn, don’t,” Connor growls.
Flynn glares at Connor, shaking his head. “This has gone on long enough. Evander doesn’t deserve this! She doesn’t deserve this!”
“It’s not our place!”
I look from man to man. “What are you saying?”
Flynn holds my gaze, his eyes sharp with mingled frustration and subdued rage. “You are his mate.”
I open my mouth, but I can’t find the words I need to convey…. Not even my surprise. It feels like something just clicked into place. Like maybe I’ve known all along, like my heart has always known that he's mine, and I am his but…
I look down at him and feel like I’m being shredded.
I crawl to him. Evander is on the verge of going under. His breath rattles with each exhale, and his eyes are open but unseeing.
He lied to me. He told me wouldn’t lie, and he did. He’s been lying for years. He… he kissed me, twice, knowing what I was to him but never told me that I am his mate.
He would have rather died than me learning the truth.
My shock and grief simmers until I feel nothing but the cool, smoke scented breeze against my skin.
I let three tears fall into the palm of my hand and tilt them toward his lips. It’s enough to keep him alive, but not to fully heal the wounds I’m sure were caused by poisoned blades. This close to him, I can smell the wolfsbane.
Good. He deserves to suffer a little. Maybe it will be a taste of the suffering I’ve gone through for months looking for my mate and only getting glimpses of that bond every time I was… every time I was around him.
The tears fall onto his tongue and dissolve in a flash of pale gold, and he stills.
I rear back and stand, then walk backward, my heart hammering in my chest. My blood racing is the only sound I can hear as my mind reels over the memories of us, of the balls in Crescent Falls where I felt the bond in my own weird, faint way, and he still….
He knew, and he didn’t tell me. He knew I was there to find my mate and it was him the whole time.
He told me he hated me and stayed away for years, making me believe our friendship ending was my fault.
A sob works its way up my throat and strangles me.
Evander groans, shoving Flynn and Connor away as he tries to sit up.
He blinks, reaching up to run his hand over his face, and then his eyes meet mine.
There’s real pain there. The kind of pain that cuts so deep there’s no magic in the world that can touch it. A pain that festers.
And he deserves it.
“Kenna–”
“How could you?”
He licks his lips, his eyes searching mine. “Please–”
An echo of trembling power coasts through the forest as three shadows appear before us.
My dad looks murderous as he steps into view, his black outfit and cloak shedding the remnants of the power he used to jump all this way. It falls like diamond dust from his cloak as he stalks toward me.
Granger and Commander Artyom look around the clearing, shocked, before Granger rushes toward Evander.
Evander and I are still looking at each other though. I can’t look away. I just can’t believe–I can’t believe he’s my mate.
I can barely feel it, but it’s there. That little spark, that faint little nudge against my heart.
Maybe that’s why he didn’t want this with me because I’d never be able to feel it like he can.
Evander mouths my name before his view is obstructed by his father and the commander, and then my dad is in front of me, his hands on my arms, leaning down so we’re face to face.
“Are you all right?”
He glances over the top of my head at the chaos I rained down on the rebels and the forest.
“No,” I whisper, and launch myself into his arms, hiding my face in his cloak as I let myself come completely undone.
I can hear Granger and Commander Artyom asking what happened, how my dad felt the surge of my powers all the way in Opal Hill, where they’d arrived less than five minutes before I used my powers on the rebels. .
My dad is listening to Flynn and Connor explain the course of events but keeps his arms protectively around me, holding me tight.
“Kenna,” he breathes, “how did you–are you sure you’re okay?”
“Please just take me home. Please!”
“Evander’s hurt. We need to heal him before we jump–”
“He’s not coming,” I grind out loud enough that all of the men nearby can hear. “Take me home.”