Was anyone talking about that? Had there been a come to Jesus talk with the Sons about what was going down behind the scenes. Did they even give a flying fuck that Reveca had been off doing her bidding for her coven? She doubted it.
They patrolled what she told them to, even pushed a bit without her asking, and yes they did give her a heads up if they saw one. Like the fact that the future King of Trepidation was not a stupid fuck, but that was all another story, another layer of hell that had brought Reveca to the proud perch she was standing on now.
“I mean everyone, Reveca.”
She was starting to hate the sound of her name on his lips, at least in the tone he was using. Like she was a wayward child.
“You of all people should despise the dark gods and the destruction they bring. Instead, what are you doing? Waving a flag and letting them know they missed a spot of hope they should’ve demolished,” King roared.
“I do despise them, how dare you even question how I feel about them or the lengths I would go to ensure they can no longer hurt me and my own!”
“And you think a barter is your answer?”
“My barters are flawless,” she seethed.
King shook his head in frustration as he cursed under his breath. “Why must everything come to you the hard way? For once can you not trust your path?”
“My death, you mean. Trust that some unseen force will just change Toril’s mind after all this time and she’ll want to be my bestie?” A stray thought hit her mind. “Wait, are you trying to tell me to barter with her? Hold this threat over her head to save my life?” As brilliant as the idea might’ve been, to Reveca it was far too close to begging or bowing before a female she had despised on sight.
“Threatening her? That is where your mind goes? Hailing gods with dark magic and threatening deities, I suppose that would be the normal escalation after openly demanding the slaughter of your own.”
She laughed despite the restraint she was under. “I have not only demanded the slaughter of my own before, I have taken it, thousands of times.”
King’s eyes landing on her were as distant as she was to sanity. “And you will answer for those crimes.”
“Now you, of all people, are threatening me?”
“I’m telling you what you have already known, nothing goes unanswered.”
“I rather liked the idea of forgiveness given when asked.”
“Liked but not exercised.”
“Listen, if you want to insult me, treat me like the villain, get in fucking line. I’m saving your ass, the Sons ass, my ass and guess what—I’ll end the reign of a relentless whore who should have kept trucking instead of marching into my camp.”
“Can you seriously stand there and tell me that you do not remember the purpose of Throngs in the first place?”
“I’ll one up you and tell you I remember Throngs came first, they were the beginning and when the universe pulled a fuck all card they were forced into a policing role over the dark gods,” she said, donning her most sarcastic expression. “Perhaps that is why they failed? They were saddled with bullshit they didn’t ask for.”
King took a calming breath, but it did little to ease the tension in his body. “By threatening the life of a Throng… one known to carry the primal seed, you are stating your allegiance to the dark gods.”
“Did you grow that imagination overnight?” she scolded.
“The dark gods are the ones who destroyed the Throngs, the ones who knew once they did, the gods’ greed could and would run wild with nothing to stop them.” He balled his fist. “You destroying them, the last seed, promises those who rise will fall to the same fate in time. You didn’t threaten your coven, Reveca. You threatened every one of Jamison’s daughters, and if that was deadly enough, every rising deity.”
She cackled, as absurd as the sound was in the midst of their argument, she let the laughter bellow from the depths of her gut. “I get it now,” she said across a gasping breath. “This isn’t about me, or what I’m doing, it’s about you. You and the little girl who was hung up on you half a decade or so ago; you and your aristocrat gang of warriors. You’ve been waiting far too long for an upset in the heavens to allow anything to happen that might shade you in the same light as those you want to fall.”
His eyes flicked over her. “You’re mad with power, unbalanced. This is not you, Reveca.”
“This is what you do to me,” she spat with anger dwarfing her cold smile. “You’ve done it a thousand times if you have once.” She swayed her head. “I’d feel the power swell, the mojo, sweet drive and exaltation and I’d soak it up! Use every brilliant idea I had as quickly as I could because I knew one way or another it would be ripped from me.”
King searched her hard expression as sympathy hit him. She wasn’t far from wrong, at least when it came to the fact that they were on two different levels, seeing this war from vantage points that were so far apart that an entire universe could fit between them.
He had seen realms she had yet to lay eyes on. He had seen conspires of the darkness, seen revelations take place, one after another. In all his time, he had learned to balance his power and see long into the path of effect that every cause had.
She’d lived in the mortal world, in the trenches, among souls who fear an end that never comes, among greed that makes little sense once the hand of time has touched the spoil.
There was no doubt in his mind that a steady dose of his vim, power that had always been hers, was affecting her. She was doing what she had always done, savoring, and devouring what was there before it was gone. Making choices no one wants to be made.
His lover needed to dry out and to learn balance. Something that would take her longer to accomplish than the life that had given her the conflict. Good thing he was a patient man.
A glance from him made the grimoires disappear she had been working from; the markings on the stone were the next to go. Reveca screamed in rage. “How dare you side with them, is it your vote they are waiting on now? How can you side with a coven and deity that seeks to destroy me!”
“There will be no vote,” he said calmly.
Hope hit her eyes, for all she knew King had the power to smite Toril from where he stood, erasing all of her justifiable fears.
“I am your jailer,” King said releasing his grip from her. “Welcome home, Love. The walls around you will be all that you see until your soul learns to balance as it was meant to be.”
She roared in rage as she stomped away and did her best to vanish from sight, nothing happened. Not an ounce of power could be felt strumming through her. “How dare you! You!” Her voice was near a cry.
It killed him to hear it, but he knew this was the only way to save her from herself. To reach the real her that was lost under all the fear he felt rippling off of her.
“She will slay me long before the day I find balance,” Reveca raged.
The distant look in King’s eyes as he vanished simply told her, more than likely...
***
On the second floor of Saige’s glorious mansion, in one of her finer suites, Talon laid in the center of a king-sized bed. It was Saige and the witches’ intent to strip him down so they could place the oils and herbs they needed on him, but when they went for his Kut, Judge gripped Saige’s arm. “He dies with his colors on.”
Saige, who long since lost the image of an old woman and was now the exact replica of her twin, Reveca, never found comfort around any of Reveca’s heathens. When a spell she had used long ago aged her into a prim grandmother figure her apprehensions lessoned. The warriors no longer stared at her with a mix of wonder, respect, and lust.
She was nothing more than a grumpy witch that their creator hated. Weeks back, another spell used to aid her daughter changed Saige back to her natural immortal state. It still shocked Saige when she would pass her reflection. Worse yet, she felt out of place, like a walking clown when she left her home. She wasn’t used to turning the heads of young men, or having oth
er women look at her like she didn’t have the right to exist.
The vanity of it all was something she’d had no time to digest. Reveca Beauregard had made a name for herself in the modern world, and the immortal. For the most part, immortals would rely on senses beyond their eyes to determine who was who. Mortals were a different story. At best, they recognized the otherworldly vibe Saige and Reveca both had.
It wasn’t easy stepping out into the public not knowing who was an enemy and who was simply a fan. Until Saige understood every aspect of her twin’s life in the city they had both shared, she was playing it safe. Keeping her focus on her studies, on predicting what she could by reading the past, hopefully in time to save lives.
As the dutiful daughter and student, the days she was living through now were times she had studied since she was a girl and her father spoke the first story of the greats to come, in the way of bedtime stories. If anyone should be prepared for this day, it should be her. But she had never felt more lost.
Events in her recent life had taught her that no matter what you think you know; you only know half the story, and never enough to play god and lay judgment on others. She’d laid judgment, more than anyone, on not only her twin but also who she ran with. Even now, with all she knew, with all the possibilities stinging the air she could not say for sure if any of her decrees of the Sons were right or wrong. Neither Talon or Reveca ever truly let Saige close enough to the others for her to see the good or bad in any of them.
What she did know was that right now the men around her were watching their father die. Their best friend, their protector. It was a pain that can never be explained, one that never healed. An ache like no other swelled in her chest as she stared down at the youth in Talon’s face. So much life she watched him cross, so many sides. This was the last end she’d expected for him. It was one she could not allow. Not now, not ever.
She wasn’t willing to thrash her power out at any one of the Sons and demand they leave while she worked. They’d never understand her motives, and she’d never forgive herself if she failed.
Saige was having a hard time fathoming what Talon was fighting. It was impossible for her to believe anything or anyone could destroy him. Not now, not this close to the end Saige had been waiting on. There it was—Saige could sense his pain, an agony no one deserved to feel, least of all him.
No matter how much her vim soaked into his flesh, he remained imprisoned. True helplessness swallowed her as she frantically looked at Jamison. The stoic revelations he had about where Talon was and why slammed into her chest. Saige set a hard expression and the intent to chase him there. She would not let Talon face this end alone.
“Wait,” Jamison bit out. “Just...wait.”
Jamison had hope; Saige could not stand that she was relying on something so fleeting.
Talon had paid richly for Saige’s coven. He had bent when there was no room to do so, and he swallowed curses and damnations all for the sake of a new tomorrow. One face to many, a different face to a few.
Saige’s gray stare flicked to Jamison once more, she could feel the draw to fight. He could ask her to wait all he wanted, but in no time at all, she wouldn’t have the choice. She’d defend this warrior. She’d make sure he knew he was not alone, that he never had been.
“Steady,” Jamison said as his power surrounded her as he kept to his work. “Let’s prepare.”
Jamison wanted to open a circle of protection; he wanted to make sure nothing else came into this war. It was smart, but taxing.
“Of course we’ll leave the Kut be,” Jamison said loud enough for the others to hear, they were already questioning Saige’s eagerness and her reasons. Jamison’s stare trailed to a patch on the Kut. It was one the coven had fortified with protection decades back. Most of its power was meant to hide them in the modern world, but there were ancient laws of protection too. Talon’s patch carried the most potent part of the spell. Saige had made sure of it.
She wanted to disagree with Jamison then, argue that what she sensed this warrior going through no patch could help, instead she coated her hands in rose oil and moved them over his chest fighting to hide the well of tears in her eyes when she felt how fleeting the beat of his heart was.
Adair was holding her father’s hand in her lap. Her eyes were squinted closed. No one had to ask what she was doing, they all knew she was hailing her mother, if not cursing her. “Release my magic,” she seethed to Jamison as he worked through setting the early stages of building the circle.
“I’m not holding it, she’s ignoring you.”
After a growl, Adair stood up and staring at Judge demanded. “Take me there.”
Orders or not, Judge would never deny his woman a request, not one that gave her hope of saving her fathers life. He reached for her and went to leave but hit a wall of nothing. A moment later Dust entered the room.
“Tell them to let us out,” Judge said to Dust.
“They’re not holding you,” Dust said moving past the barrier like it was nothing more than the air it was.
Judge moved his stare to Talley to gauge his take on the matter. The male was too busy focusing on Talon to care what Judge was puffing his chest out at.
“You’ll never make it in time,” Dust said again, only slightly irritated that a command he had given downstairs was being questioned once more. “He needs us here.”
“I can’t stand still,” Adair’s voice quaked. “And I can’t watch this.”
Talon seemed almost boyish as he laid with his arms out to the side, his shirt pushed up revealing his chest and the scars of close calls he had when he was still a mortal. Though his eyes were closed they were moving rapidly, his body would tense, his expression would turn hard and then confused.
“Let her go to the coven downstairs, let her help weaken Ambrosia in any way they can,” Saige said in the softest voice she had.
When Dust’s stare landed on her, Saige shied back a bit. The eyes of another looking into her image were always the first indicator in deciding if she had met a friend or foe of Reveca’s. It was shocking to see someone wearing a kut looking as coldly as Dust was at her.
Dust narrowed his eyes in question the way most did when they saw Saige then the coldness vanished and another wave of hope boomed into the room as Dust gave a simple nod of approval.
“Wait,” Dust said to Adair before she left the room. He ticked his head for her to come to him. Judge did not welcome the action, but Adair put her hand on his chest before she rushed to Dust.
By the time she had arrived, Dust had reached the tips of his fingers into the bowl of fire Jamison had been adding herbs and oils too. When they emerged, his skin was stained in ash.
Holding Adair’s stare with the same curiosity Dust had always had about the female he reached for her palm and turned it to face him. With immortal speed, he drew runes on each of her palms and up her arms.
“Ambrosia is pulling from you. She has anchored her actions around your daughter and you. Magic respects the blood of sacred family above all. It is giving her grace because it feels she had a right to be present in your life, in your daughter’s, and by default Talon’s.”
Adair went to speak, but no words came. It was hard to digest a mother like Ambrosia. To come to terms with the most whacked conception of all time. What she did know was that Talon had always been a part of her life and Talley and Finley were her family.
“You can pull all the magic in the world to you, sail or manifest in the realm of fire, stand between them and plead an argue all that you wish, but in the end, none of it will matter more than you surrendering the link between you and her. Mother to child.”
Nervously Adair glanced at the other witches in the room, the slight bow of their heads stated their agreement.
“Her or him, that is my choice,” she asked.
“It will not be your choice,” Dust said quietly. “You are only disarming her in one small way.” He nodded to the marks on her. “Those will protect you
from making a mistake.”
“Like?” Adair pushed, mistakes were her middle name when it came to magic, she was barely keeping up with any of the lessons coming her way.
“Like empowering her.”
“I would never—”
Dust spoke over her, “What we think and feel only link perfectly in rare occasions. If the tiniest part of you desires to know the woman who bore you, your power will aid her.”
Dust moved his stare to look at Talon. “No matter how you feel about either of them, Talon deserves an even playing field. Aid the witches. Mind your intent. If you think you can’t, step away from the spells.”
This was the first time anyone had witnessed Dust taking on any kind of leadership, much less offering comforting, painfully truthful advice, and insight on the ways of witches.
Judge reached for Adair as she came to him, and then gave Dust a shallow nod. It was as close as he could get to giving the male approval right now.
Talley was a statue at the foot of the bed tensing when Talon did, flinching when he saw the pain wash down his expression. Dust stood back as Saige moved her hands above Talon’s body, taming the dark energy around his.
“I feel death reaching for him,” Talley said. “Can I not do anything to pull him from this, pull him through it and to me.”
Talley’s resurrection, his second one rather, along with Mia’s was a supernatural power no one had the chance to study as of late. At least the one person who was digging into it, Bastion, was off limits now. Talley had heard every rumor from zombies rising to him having the same gifts Reveca had, the choice to save fallen warriors.
Talley didn’t understand any of it, what he did know is that he could look at just about anything that once had life, or still did, and gauge within reason when life had or would end. He’d known for a while this night was coming. The fire in Talon was dying, and there wasn’t a damn thing anyone could do about it.
No one bothered to answer him. Talon seizing for nearly half a minute had everyone prepared to witness the end of a great man, a legend. No one took an easy breath until Talon had.