Sydney
I roll onto my back, unsure how much time has passed. One second, I was tackling Gabriel into the fog-soaked pavement, and the next, I’m here, in a lightless room that seems to stretch for miles.
I’m not alone. Gabriel coughs nearby, followed by the sound of his leg dragging over what feels like tile.
My eyes eventually adjust to the darkness, and the ceiling comes into view several hundred feet above my head, domed and intricate, with sweeping murals from an age long lost to time.
“Where did you take us?” I ask, turning my head toward the slightly blurry figure resting his back against a shadowed wall.
Gabriel looks at me, his light brown hair brushing over his shoulders, much longer than the last time I saw him. His eyes narrow, and his mouth parts in a firm scowl. “I didn’t take you anywhere. You shouldn’t be here. You’re not the one I needed, and I’m running out of time.” He groans softly, physically dragging his leg up so it’s bent at the knee. I watch his leg begin to tremble before he lets it slump to the ground again with a wet splat.
It’s broken in several places. Good, he deserves it. “Running out of time for what?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?”
I roll onto my knees and stand, flexing my body to test my strength. I’m slightly sick to my stomach from the journey to wherever the hell we are, but also from the dank, moldy smell in this place. I walk toward him cautiously, crouching a few feet away. Gabriel rolls his head to the side, opening one eye to look at me.
“I knew you’d be a problem the moment I met you. We met at the ball, you know. You probably don’t remember. I was another faceless patron of the festival in a mask. I watched you leave your precious cousin behind and decided to formally introduce myself to Kenna to see if I could use her like I needed to use Sasha, but her powers weren’t compatible.”
“Compatible with what, Gabriel?”
“Kane’s orrery, of course. That’s where we are, a whole mile under Rifthold, where his fortress once stood. It was his most powerful possession.” He waves a hand into the darkness. “It’s how he knew the Beasts would return to try to topple his throne. My father was a believer of the old gods, you know. Kael, the god of night, the supposed mate of the Goddess, and their son, Annwyn, the god of the underworld. But the shifters only cared about the Moon Goddess because of Her gifts. She rebelled against Her mate and son in favor of Her people, who they kept enslaved, and for good reasons. We’d grown so powerful we could have toppled their empire and banished the lesser gods who made us in their image.”
“You’re talking about fairy tales.”
“Am I?” he laughs painfully. “Tell me, princeling, do you never question why your family possesses their special gifts and others do not? Kane wanted to prevent that stain from spreading, to keep the powers intended for the gods for the gods.”
“He considered himself a god, didn’t he?”
“He was one.”
“No. He stole power from others. Leeched them dry–”
“And those useless slaves deserved every second of it. Your aunt deserved it when he cut those powers from her with the same knife I cut powers out of Sasha to fuel my inheritance. Eastonia is mine. I am the rightful king.”
“You’re an inbred piece of shit who can’t even shift–”
He snarls, “You’re lucky my leg is broken, princeling. Otherwise it would be your blood spilled on the orrery.”
I smile down at him. I could kill him right now. I could squeeze the life out of him, but that doesn’t seem like enough, not after what he’s done to my mate and my family.
“You still can’t grasp what your mate is capable of, can you?”
“Enlighten me, Gabriel. You only have a few moments of life left. You might as well get it off your chest.”
“I was going to turn back the clock,” he breathes, his voice jagged with pain. “To a time when Kane still sat on his iron throne and ruled with his Firestone mask. I was going to turn back time to the day your father failed to kill Ryatt on that battlefield, when Kane’s forces failed to see the deception that was Ryatt, the false son of Kane. I was going to turn back time to the moment your grandmother was born and wipe her off the map so none of you would have happened, and the Alphas of Crescent Falls would have rioted against your grandfather and strung him up to the gates of the kingdom he was failing.”
“Had you done that, you wouldn’t be sitting here bleeding out from a compound fracture.”
He smiles darkly, his teeth stained with blood. “And you, Prince, would be a speck floating in the heavens, and your mate would be in the underworld where those of her kind belong, but we don’t always get what we want, do we?”
He reaches into his pocket and draws out a knife. The blade is pure silver, and the hilt is cast in iron with a startling rare moonstone of perfect clarity at the hilt.
“Kane’s blade was all I could salvage when I grew old enough to take over my coven. I was ten, you know. Just a boy. The boy, you see, who was destined to be king. There were even loyalists left to see to my care, and when Sasha showed her promise, I made sure to take what I could from her. But she was too young. There wasn’t enough power in her blood to activate the orrery. I couldn’t enact my plan until she came of age. I planned to keep her as my slave, my breeder if her powers could carry through our bloodline, but she was stolen from me. I learned only recently that it was Atticus, my uncle, who betrayed me.”
I close my eyes as fury I can’t contain rips through my body.
“He had her hidden well, I’ll admit. I made the moves I had to make, hiding in secret, but my coven grew larger, and I finally had the numbers I needed to find her, but I needed more power. I had some mystics kidnapped to drain them, to fuel my blade, and it worked, but not enough to fuel the orrery. I needed even more, and then your generation started making waves. Kenna, the Firestone and Shadowsynger hybrid. I could have kept her as a breeder, too, but I needed… someone like your sister, if I had lost Sasha forever.”
“My sister?” The words leave my lips in a snarl that makes the corners of his mouth curve into a smile.
“Oh, Misty is going to be exceedingly powerful. I’ve seen it, you know, in the stars. In what brief moments the orrery activities for me. Curse breaker. Kingdom toppler. She will part the southern sea and bring war to lands we’ve yet to explore all in the name of love.”
“You’re lying.”
“I guess we’ll never know.” His eyes flutter as he begins to pale. “You and I could have been so powerful together, you know. Your powers are pretty useless to me, but your manners are… sadistic, deep down. Feral, savage. You hide those parts of you well behind your tailored clothing.”
I lunge at him, dodging the knife, and grabbing him by the neck.
It’s a mistake. He’s stronger than I thought.
Pain blooms as I rear back. His silver blade hangs from my stomach before clattering to the ground at my feet.
Silver. I can feel it creeping through me, weakening me, eating away at the healing powers trying to knit the festering wound back together.
“Now neither of us can have her.”
“You sick fucking bastard.”
“Kill me now, princeling, before your body gives out.”
“I owe you nothing, especially not a merciful death.”
His eyes glimmer with pain. “How did she taste, Sydney? I thought Sasha’s blood was the sweetest thing to ever touch my tongue. I dream about it often.”
I clench my fists and fight the urge to give into his taunting. He wants me to kill him. He knows he’s in a bad spot, that he’s lost, but I can’t give him the satisfaction of a swift death.
“A son, I hear. Congratulations are in order, are they? I wonder if Blake will be like his mother. Maybe one day he’ll grown to know the truth of our kind and follow the path I so graciously laid out for him–”
“He will never even know your name.”
“As so. He won’t, will he? Because Sasha’s precious friend is up at your gilded manor gutting her from chin to navel to collect her blood right as we speak. Tell me, can you feel your bond with her right now?”
It strikes that I can’t. “Hadley wouldn’t do that.”
“Hadley was one of the more… excited of my followers. She loved breaking rules, and what easier target is there than someone young, alone, and angry at her brother for leaving her behind to serve Crescent Falls as a lowly warrior? She melted like butter in my hands, Sydney. She will kill Sasha because I commanded it of her. She’s been waiting for this moment for years.”
“You’re a monster. You’ve ruined so many lives.”
“I am a god,” he rasps. “Like my father and his father–”
“You are a liar.” I step toward him. “A worthless, powerless liar.”
Snarling suddenly cuts through the darkness, echoing off the walls.
Gabriel grins madly. “You should have killed me when you had the chance. Now, I might get my way after all.”
Four sets of enormous eyes sprint toward me, long, jagged teeth coming into view. Rogue wolves–tall and thin, gray and mangled. Their eyes glowing a deep crimson.
I grab the knife and throw it at him with all the strength I have left before using the last of my dwindling powers to shift.
Gabriel chokes out a cry and then slumps over the knife, where it pierces him through the heart before lodging itself in the stone wall at his back.
In my wolf form, I can see everything clearly. The darkness blooms with muted color, and several hundred feet away, I see it.
A massive orrery, three times, if not bigger, than the one at my parents’ castle. Above it, the night sky comes into view from a gaping hole in the ceiling.
One of the rogues launches itself at me but I duck, turning to grab it by its hind leg with my teeth. It’s surprisingly light as I swing it as hard as I can into the wall, where its half-rotted body splits and shatters into flesh and bone.
I can feel my powers dwindling. Blood stains my fur crimson as I snarl at two of the approaching rogues. I grab the first one by the neck and slam it down onto the ground as the other locks its jaws on my back, yanking me backward.
The fourth rogue approaches slowly. Larger than the last, it’s waiting, I realize, judging every movement I make, deciding its best course of action.
Quite suddenly, it dawns on me that this is a losing battle.
I’m ready to die. What’s a life in the heavens when I have that every time I see my mate holding our son?
The third rogue picks me up and tosses me at the feet of the fourth.
I can barely move. I’m stuck in my wolf form with no power left to shift and go for the knife that is currently sticking out Gabriel’s chest. Silver eats its way through my veins like acid, rendering me useless.
‘I’m sorry, Sarah,’ I cast through the bond, yanking tight on those golden threads, and struggle to my feet to face death like a man.
But a blur of golden movement darts past my periphery, and the rogue screeches in pain. Behind me, the third rogue darts in a circle, chasing something… white.
My heart beats once, twice, but gives up on the third, and everything goes black.