“Go,”Kael whispers urgently. “We will come back and fight.”
I force my hands to release their grip on my weapons and drag my focus to the ring searing into my skin, burning the flesh beneath it. I think of home and the glow of the portal behind me pulsates with a blast of white light.
“I’ll come back for you,” I choke out, though I don’t know if she can hear me, or if she’ll ever hear me again. “I love you, Mom.”
The words batter against the walls of my chest, but it’s my mother’s face that rips me open, the skin peeling from her cheeks as her red eyes begin to close.
My legs feel carved from stone as I wrench them backward toward the portal I feel prickling at my back. By the time I feel the magic dragging my body through dimensions, my sobs choke me–violent, ugly sounds clawing out of my lungs.
My body screams at me to turn back, to claw through the veil and fight still, but my mother’s last words cut sharply through my mind:I can survive anything as long as you are safe.
The portal drops me onto my knees in the grass of our gardens outside the castle, sealing with a violent snap behind me.
My chest heaves as I hear my fathers’ voices crying out around me, every breath wracked with sobs as they ask where she is.
“Mom,” is the only word that makes it through the raw mess of my throat from breathing in the mist.
It escapes as a broken cry as I fall to my side and curl into a ball.
It’s all my fault. She wouldn’t have been there if I didn’t insist on forging my own path in the human world despite her warnings of the danger.
I wasn’t strong enough to save myself, and I wasn’t strong enough to save her.
CHAPTER 25
ELIAS
The room looks like it’s used for meetings in which nothing good ever comes for those who oppose the rulers. It reminds me of some medieval exhibit. There’s one long wooden table with nicks in it that resemble nails dragging along it and what could be indents from weapons. Surrounding us are stone walls with heavy wooden beams overhead.
It’s surreal being here in the magical realm, and in the castle of the vampire rulers, nonetheless. I never tried to picture what it would look like, considering I’ve never wanted anything to do with this place, but it does hit the nose on gothic old times.
Briar’s three dads sit across from us, which is a strange thought to wrap my mind around to begin with.
Which one is her actual genetic father? Or is that just something magic poofs away and all three contributed?
The one in the middle doesn’t move, not even a twitch–his stillness feels like a blade pressed to my throat. The one on his right watches every shift we make, eyes sharp, cataloguing. The last leans forward, closer to the table, a knife already resting under his hand. He doesn’t bother to hide what he wants: to make us bleed.
My knee bounces under the table, though I force the rest of me into stillness.
I’m not afraid of them. If anything, I want to shout in their fucking faces, but one stern look from Dante as we sat down has kept my jaw locked shut since.
Last I saw Briar, she was running from them in tears, and none of her dads followed. That shouldn’t bother me as much as it does.
The man in the middle leans forward at last, the room crackling with rising tension with the shift. His voice is clipped and calm, and it’s clear he’s the one who gives orders, based on the way he takes the lead. He mentioned he was the king before we went through the portal, but the complexities of their roles and all of them being her dads has my head spinning to understand the ways of vampires.
Perhaps all three of them are kings here. Who the fuck knows.
“I am Dracula,” he offers.
Callum’s breath stutters loudly enough that I hear it from my end of the table. Dante goes rigid between us, shoulders squared as if bracing himself. Even I feel the shift in my own energy with that name being uttered, but I clamp my jaw tight and refuse to give him the satisfaction of seeing me flinch.
Everyone knows of Dracula from tales, movies, and reimaginings. He’s a thing of legends that I didn’t think existed. Yet here he is, in flesh and bone, and as a father of the woman we just watched get tortured for a month.
Surely this can’t end well.
My hands clench at my knees. All I hope is that they at least give us a chance to help them if they plan on taking my uncle down.
I thought escaping that prison would absolve me of any remaining emotional ties, but not once has my burning hatredfor Terrance faded since we left the compound. If anything, it only burns brighter with the time I have to think of how we let him manipulate our trauma and emotions the night he captured Briar.
