I turned my head, not wanting to take my eyes off my mate. His eyes were half opened, and his head fell back, making all that inky black hair I loved digging my fingers through fall limply. The color of his skin was an unnatural deep gray, while his lips had turned blue. Blood fell from his open mouth.
Not today,I repeated Eiran’s words. Neither Elias nor I were dying today.
When I shivered, Finley stepped beside me and took off her long-sleeved shirt to drape it over me. While I wanted to burrow against Brenton’s chest, I shifted, and Brenton let me go to stand on my own. I slipped Finley’s shirt on, grateful for the warmth it provided, but it couldn’t reach the frigidity that seeped into my bones.
I trailed quaking fingers across Elias’s cheeks to his lips.
“You’re not dying today,” I told him, mirroring what I’donce told him back in Colina after a lirio and nyxx attack just outside the food bank.
Nalari had once said those words had saved his life, our bond forcing him to breathe and live because I asked it of him. Would the same be true with our bond gone?
“I forbid it, Elias.”
Hayden hurried to me when I beckoned him, the sword he carried in his one hand vanished when he put it in his inner pocket of magic.
“Who else can bend space?” I asked the several fae crowding around us.
A female I didn’t recognize lifted her hand.
Nodding, I turned back to Hayden. “Take our king to Leah to heal him. Stay with him and guard him and Leah. We have unknown traitors in our home. You will not permit them to harm your king. I’ll go to him once we know who else is involved. Do you understand?”
He held a fist to his chest and bowed. “Yes, Your Highness.”
Still holding Elias, Alastor gripped Hayden’s shoulder, and they disappeared together.
I turned to the female who could bend space.
“I need you to take the traitor to the prison cell,” I told her. “Finley and Brenton will go with you. Once he is secure, you may return for me and the rest of our group.”
The three fae who would stay back with me nodded.
“I can stay back so that you may go,” Finley offered. “If others are hiding in the woods, my magic can stop them.”
But her magic wasn’t as reliable as my mage magic.
I called to the fire that surrounded Pietro and made the flames rise. “As can mine.”
“Ted,” Brenton said low. “Your hand’s burned. You should see a healer.”
I studied my left palm, where I’d held my hand over the fire as I offered it my blood. It was burned, although not nearly as bad as Elias’s several burns.
The fury inside me molded into something else, something dark. It was a primal, almost possessive need to protect my husband and mate, the male who held my heart. An instinct to kill the ones who meant to kill him.
It made me understand and appreciate Elias’s command to kill Javier’s father. Given the opportunity, I would’ve done the same for him had I walked into the same scenario he had. Hell, I would do the same once we’d tortured Pietro and bled him of every confession he held in his blackened heart.
Deep inside me, my soul luxuriated at the thought.
“You or George can question him, but his death will come at my hands.”
Chapter
Thirty-One
TEDDY
I stayed closeto the cells that held the humans prisoner, watching their features as we all took in Pietro’s torture. I watched, reveling in his screams and pleas until I was satisfied Pietro didn’t harbor any more secrets. Brenton and George continued their torture even after he gave them the names of the fae and humans living in Niev who had worked against Elias and our people.
We knew which of our warriors worked against us, where each fae or human lived, although most of the traitorous fae were those who still lived in the castle. We knew where they hid their weapons, and where a group of humans had hidden in the wasteland of Respandora. Had Alastor and I already started working on healing our ancestors’ land, we would’ve found them along with their weapons made of iron.
