Chapter 24

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

W inter drew in closer with icy fingers wrapping tight around the black walls of Never Keep, making even the most weather-hardened of us shiver as we strode through the echoing corridors and moved between our enemies.

Only the Flamebringers seemed wholly at ease in the Keep at all times, their magic warming their blood from the inside out. Those of them with the most power flaunted their use of the skill by dressing as if for summer with bare arms and shirts left half buttoned, swathes of flesh exposed in a taunting manner while the rest of us suffered the bite of winter.

"Fucking heathens," Dalia muttered as we prowled up the Grand Stair towards the Galaseum, the wide, curving stone steps now as familiar to me as those of the palace at Wrathbane.

"I don't mind it so much," Moraine disagreed, eyeing a group of male Flamebringers who had taken to claiming the front benches of their congregation, clearly the strongest among their ranks just as we were among ours. "All the easier to cut their throats."

One of the males turned to glare at us as he overheard her, baring sharp teeth as a growl rolled up the back of his throat. Wolf. Or maybe a Bear. Both bled out as easily as the other so I didn't much care for the details.

"Threatened?" I asked him sweetly, not pausing in my stride, my gifts shivering across the narrow slip of air which divided us from them. Yes, we climbed the stairs in unison, our feet moving from step to step as one, but a river of emptiness remained in place between our ranks and theirs always. Neither of us wanting the taint of the other to get too close.

Blood lust. Lust, lust and…a whole shit load of nothing beyond him.

I tilted my head to gain a look past the snarling ruffian at the man striding half a step ahead of the others, his hair dark but for a sheen of deepest red which clung to the strands, above eyes which held a void of utter nothing in them.

"Keep your attention to yourself, whore," the first Flamebringers sneered, spitting on the step I had been about to place my foot on.

Every person on the stairs slammed to a halt, the heap of blazing trash whirling towards us as the air neophytes tensed with fury.

My gifts snapped from me, snaring the brown-haired, green-eyed asshole in my grasp, seeking out his every want and desire, picking them apart like a stack of straw in my fist. He was predictably bloodthirsty, pathetically hungry, ambitious to the point of jealousy, the rot of which speared out towards the Flamebringers who all gathered around him, particularly the one with the soulless eyes. That could be fun to toy with, but I was feeling all kinds of petty and preferred the call of humiliating this piece of shit for the amusement of all those around us, so I went for sexual desire and smiled wickedly as I let him fall into the trap of my kind.

"What was it you called me again?" I breathed, my words a low threat as I built his desire to an ache which had him groaning, stumbling closer to me and staring as if utterly enraptured.

"You are the most beautiful creature I've ever laid eyes on," he moaned, trying to move closer but his friends grasped his shoulders to hold him back.

"Stay away from her, North," one of them growled. What a simple name for such a simple creature.

North tried to jerk free of them then fell to his knees, reaching for me and looking as pathetic as a whipped dog.

"Please," he groaned, reaching for me. "Let me touch you, let me sniff you, I need to lick your boots, brush your hair, explore every perfect inch of your flesh. Anything. Everything…"

Dalia sucked in a sharp breath at my side, her body going rigid and eyes widening at some vision the rest of us couldn't see.

"Release him," the unreadable one growled, taking half a step closer to me, but leaving that void in place between his kind and ours.

I let my gaze roll over him, sneering openly while trying to get a sense of what he wanted, to find a way into that blackened soul which peered out from within his hard expression.

Dalia released a breathy sound which was almost akin to a whimper and Moraine took a knife from her sleeve, baring her teeth in warning.

His name was scrawled across the face of a gawdy signet ring on his finger as if he needed the reminder of what it was. Kaiser Brimtheon. So he was one of the many orphans who had taken that name. I hadn't heard of him but then again, I knew little of the names of the Flamebringers – they didn't have high families in the same way our aristocracy did and beyond The Matriarch and a few key players, the rest seemed fairly interchangeable. He wasn't on my list either, luckily for him.

The seconds dragged as I tried to get a hold on him and I blinked as I felt the ragged brush of something against my soul as I did so – he was trying to get a hold on me too.

I smiled darkly as I realised neither of us could penetrate the mind of the other, wondering what measure of beast he might be.

North panted from his position on his knees, and I loosened my hold on him a little while studying the more worthwhile opponent before me, allowing him to reclaim some semblance of himself while my focus honed in on his friend.

"It's been a long time since air met fire on the battlefield," I cooed. "I think I'll enjoy our reunion when we make it there."

"Pyros strikes at your southern border daily," the possible Wolf, North, replied angrily, as if I'd been talking to him, though clearly the adults were speaking and the child had not been invited to join. "Just last week we took out a garrison you'd stationed at Pomair."

My lips twitched with amusement. "I'm sorry – I wasn't referring to the way your army nips at our ass like fleas on the tail of a Dragon. I meant real warfare – such as the battle of Osciron where I believe we flattened some silly little shrine you had built to the power of the flame and killed - what was it, Moraine?"

"Eight-thousand of their finest soldiers," she said coolly. "I recall we surrounded them and used the superior element of air to turn their own flames against them and burn them all ali-"

The Wolf lunged, some howling nonsense about his dead brethren pouring from his lips and my smile widened as his pack of mutts dragged him back again.

The Reapers were close. It didn't matter how much we might have all liked to kill each other – this wasn't the place.

Dalia released a noise which was almost a whimper and I stiffened. Whatever this Kaiser asshole was doing to her needed to stop.

I tugged on my hold North, reminding everyone that I had one of them in my hold too and he groaned as if he was coming in his trousers. "I need to touch you," he begged.

"Touch yourself," I suggested innocently and the Flamebringers who were fighting to stop him from lunging at me all cried out as they fought to stop him from unveiling his clearly rock hard dick in the middle of the corridor instead.

"Fight it, North!" a girl cried in anguish. "Don't let her reduce you to this!"

"How long until your friend breaks under the weight of her own terrors, I wonder?" Kaiser asked, his eyes never leaving mine, the threat there clear.

My jaw ticked.

"I will very much enjoy cutting your throat on the battlefield one day," I promised him.

"We'll see," he replied, not seeming remotely concerned about the target I'd just place upon him, but that would change when he tasted the point of my blade.

I snorted dismissively, looking to North who had managed to shove his hand into his trousers despite the four assholes trying to wrestle him back. I released my hold on his lust and shifted my attention to another desire which was plaguing him, yanking hard and making him piss himself before sweeping away up the stairs with Dalia's arm in my grip to make her move too.

She took in a shuddering breath as whatever had incapacitated her fell away, her eyes wild in a way I'd never seen before as they swept over me and then back to the Fae who had attacked her.

"I will rip his guts out and make him wear them as a necklace when we meet on the field," she snarled and neither of us commented on the way her limbs were trembling from whatever he had just done.

Moraine met my eyes as she subtly took Dalia's other arm and we made our way to our place in the Galaseum. She said nothing but we didn't need words. We'd finally taken note of our enemies and were simply adding their names to the ever-growing list of those who would need to die for our kingdom to claim its rightful victory in the Endless War.

The day passed in a long and arduous fashion, our instructions in the Galaseum focusing on physical illusions today, meaning the magic had to be good enough to make someone actually feel the presence of whatever we had created and not just see it. It had been challenging to say the least, though I felt I had grasped the mechanics of it by the time we were dismissed.

The refectory was no longer a source of contention between the rival elements. Each of us had selected a quarter of the room to claim for our own and the days when some jumped up water idiot or earth asshole tried their luck at sitting in our chosen place were over. Of course we had claimed the quarter of the room closest to the windows where we got the best view and didn't have to be too near to either the latrines beyond the Flamebringers or the line for the food by the Raincarvers.

"Have you heard the news from Wrathbane?" Cassandra cooed from her place at our table.

Though it was endlessly tempting for me to demand the entire bench for the sole use of myself and my sisters, I had grudgingly been forced to accept that claiming twelve places at mealtimes for the three of us alone might have seemed like a lack of unity within our ranks to the watching enemies. The obvious downside being that I was forced to endure the inane prattling of those who chose to dine with us – all too often the high born heirs to aristocratic titles who were looking to gain the favour of the Sky Witch, even if they did so while muttering about my low birth and weak blood behind my back.

"Perhaps it's been confirmed that her mother really did fuck a wild Wolf thinking it was her father while they were running beneath the moon in shifted form," Dalia pondered, not bothering to lower her voice.

"Excuse me?" Cassandra snarled, her fingers strangling her fork as she glared around at us.

"Everyone says your mother fucked. A. Wolf," Dalia said more loudly this time, drawing focus from around the room. "As in an actual wolf, not a shifter. She just went full bestiality one night and then claimed she'd thought it was your dad after the rest of the pack saw her."

Cassandra's mouth opened and closed multiple times while her face turned a deep red.

"There is no such rumour about my mother," she snarled in a low tone.

Dalia just shrugged and speared a potato onto her fork, shoving the whole thing into her mouth and chewing obnoxiously.

"There isn't!" Cassandra insisted, louder this time while several others sniggered and a few of her friends exchanged looks which said they weren't sure what to believe.

I hid my laughter in a bite of my own food.

"Well," Dalia muttered in a voice just for me and Moraine. "There is now."

"You're evil," Moraine said, clearly delighted.

"I try," Dalia agreed.

Cassandra spent several more minutes trying to argue her mother's innocence before changing tactics and rotating back to her original topic.

"There's going to be a royal wedding," she said loudly, raising her chin. "My family have of course been invited to attend and I'll be taking two days' leave from Never Keep to do so. The Reapers have allowed it for those of…worth." She shot me a smug look as though already knowing that I wouldn't have received any such invitation even if I was the best conscript of our birth year.

But I didn't give a fuck about some poncy invite to a fancy event full of aristocratic assholes like her. No, my throat was thickening on a far bigger question than whether or not I was to be invited to the event of the year.

"Which royal," I hissed, my knife lodged so deeply into a carrot that it clearly held no hope of recovery.

"Oh, I'm so sorry. Were the lower class members of our gathered warriors not granted this news already?" Cassandra preened, trying to claw back some kind of respect from the others at the table.

"V," Moraine said in a low voice.

Dalia's hand grasped my knee beneath the table in warning.

I'd already thrown my knife though.

Cassandra shrieked, hurling herself backwards from her chair as her plate cracked in two, my knife piercing it dead centre and impaling itself in the table, carrot and all.

I was on my feet, kicking cups and plates aside as I strode straight over the dining table, not giving a fuck that every head in the room was turned my way, my fork clasped in my fist like a sword.

I jumped from the table, landing with my boots either side of Cassandra's head and making her release a scream of pure terror as I reached down and grabbed a fistful of her blonde hair, yanking her up just far enough for her to be looking my fork dead in the eye.

"What a pointless way to die," I breathed, holding her there on the cusp of death. "Finding yourself impaled upon a piece of cutlery simply for being an insufferable cunt."

"Prince Dragor," Cassandra gasped, clearly not stupid enough to make me wait any longer. "He will marry the Collingsdale heir a week tomorrow with the rising moon."

Ice slid down my throat, coating my spine and racing for my toes. I blinked. A single moment passing as those words struck me. I was his. He'd made me swear it.

But he had never promised to be mine.

I dropped Cassandra, tossing my fork down on her chest and stalking from the room, ignoring the thousands of eyes which were watching me go, not even caring that the Reapers appeared to be making their own moves towards us.

I'd done nothing other than climb across a table and toss some cutlery around. There were no fucking rules against that.

The silence in the refectory burst like a dam the moment the door swung closed at my back, but I didn't care. I kept going, the pain in my chest this thundering beat which seemed to be racing towards a climax I couldn't control.

I was walking at first but then I was running, my breaths sharp and jagged like they were stabbing my heart with every choked inhale. I didn't see the hallways or walls, stairs or carpets but then my hand was on the door to my room, my fingers fumbling the lock until I was falling through it.

A ragged cry escaped me as a rush of wind erupted in my ears and this prickling, burning sensation tore at my eyes.

I grabbed the closest thing - which turned out to be the rack containing most of my weapons - and hurled it to the ground with a snarl of utter fury.

Something wet splashed against my cheek and I fell still, my fingers pressing to the drop of water just as a second fell, rolling down the back of my hand.

I blinked furiously, my chest rising and falling in deep, broken breaths as the ringing in my ears just got louder and louder.

The door banged open behind me and I whirled around, a dagger flying from my free hand while I scrubbed my face clean with the other.

"Get out," I snarled, my knife hitting the doorframe beside Cayde's too calm face and he arched a brow at me.

"I don't think you mean that."

"You don't know shit about what I do or don't mean," I hissed, stalking for him, my hands colliding with his chest as I tried and failed to shove him from my room.

"I do," he countered, his hands wrapping around my wrists and caging my palms against his chest. "I know that if you'd meant it that dagger would have struck my heart, not the door frame."

"I've told you – you're not worth the headache of hiding a corpse and-"

"I saw you," Cayde interrupted, his grip almost bruising as he leaned down to speak into my ear, his breath caressing my neck.

"Oh, you have functioning eyes? Good for you." I jerked my arms back, meaning to dislodge his grip but he didn't release me. "This dance grows tiresome," I hissed.

"Let me be plainer then," Cayde replied, leaning closer and dropping his voice, his mouth caressing the shell of my ears with his words. "I saw you with your thighs parted as you perched on your desk in your room back at Wrathbane and Prince Dragor made you come for him with his fingers buried in your cunt while accusing you of being wet for me."

I blinked at his words, twisting my neck to meet his steady gaze, the revelation jolting through me and leaving me scrambling for a moment before I dredged up a waspish retort which came a beat too late to be delivered with the scathing dismissal I was aiming for.

"What's the matter, Cayde? Are you jealous?" I taunted.

"That's the funny thing," he said, dragging me closer still so that I couldn't see anything beyond the honeyed gold of his eyes. "Because I think I am."

He released me so fast that my fingers almost didn't fist in his leathers quick enough to stop him from withdrawing. I tightened my grip, my gaze falling to his ruinous, hateful mouth before pushing up onto my toes and capturing his lips with my own.

Cayde stilled, the heat of his mouth against mine a traitorous burn as I crossed the wall I had so faithfully promised to build around myself. But as his hands closed around my waist and he stepped into me, backing me into the room, I couldn't find it in me to care.

The door banged behind him as he kicked it shut, his tongue invading my mouth, his kiss stealing the sting of reality that the news about Dragor's wedding had set searing through me.

I moaned against his lips, tugging him towards the bed while he steered me for it, the two of us always in this battle for domination, control, supremacy.

I fell back onto the bed, never once letting our mouths part, the length of his cock driving against me through both of our leathers as his weight came down over me and I parted my legs to better accommodate him.

His fingers unclasped the buckles securing the shoulders of my battle leathers, tugging them open and revealing more of my flesh as this rampant heat built between us, this need to banish the months of tension which I had so adamantly denied existed with me and him.

I wanted him to claim me, to make me forget any oaths or promises I had been so foolish to agree to and to force my flesh to forget this aching wound which was peeling open inside me.

My hands made it to his belt, fingers caressing his cock where it strained against the material beneath it before I started to loosen his waistband, wanting nothing more than to feel him sinking inside of me, breaking my oath and serving Dragor with a taste of his own betrayal.

But as I tugged his belt loose, Cayde's hand fell over mine and he pulled back, breaking our kiss, looking down at me with unconcealed want as we both panted in the absence of that connection.

"Not like this," he growled, seeming to be convincing himself more than me. "I don't want you because you're hurting over him. I want you when you've fallen for the trap of me and ache for no hands on your flesh barring mine. I want you in my cage, little lamb, begging me to take you because there is no other who could satisfy the ache between your thighs or the desperate needs of your lonely heart. I'll have you all. But not while he can still claim you as his creature. I need you to be mine."

I frowned at him, the words so at odds with the constant rivalry that flared between us and the hatred that invoked, nothing spilling from my lips as he forced himself to withdraw.

I sat up, resisting the urge to tame the tangles his roaming fingers had knotted into my hair or wet the lips which had been bruised by the passion of his kiss. I said nothing at all as he buckled his belt, ran a hand over his face and exhaled heavily, as though doing this came at some great cost to him when it was me who was now suffering a second bite of rejection in a single hour.

He left, the door snapping closed and the heavy fall of his boots retreating down the stairs.

I looked at the girl in the mirror across the room, her leathers peeled open, her features written for poetry, body designed for temptation, and I hated her. She was as empty as the vast expanse of the sea. Just as brutal, just as powerful, just as easy to ignore when your feet were on dry land.

My shoulder blades itched as if that old wound couldn't help but be counted in my failings, in what I lacked.

I didn't cry again. Crying was for those who had something left to hope for, something to yearn for or strive for, even if it seemed beyond reach. I was simply being reminded of precisely what and who I was. A tool for a prince, a fantasy for a passing moment, an echo of a girl and a shell of a Fae.

I stripped out of my leathers and dressed for bed in silence, nothing but the wind and snow rattling my windows to break the monotony of nothing that surrounded me. Not until the door cracked open again while I lay in my bed in the dark and two shadows slipped into the room.

I feigned sleep as Dalia and Moraine climbed into the huge bed with me, my fingers coiling tightly around Dalia's as she took my hand in hers, my head falling to rest against Moraine's shoulder as she wrapped me in her arms.

We said nothing. It required no words anyway. Because we three were the shadows without affection, the weapons forged for war, and no one outside of this room cared for us beyond that use. But we forever had each other. And that was always enough.