All but two. Two males.
Every female was gone.
War. War. War.
My life as I knew it forever changed by this damnable war my father savagely demanded, tearing into the ‘enemy’ with reckless abandon. He used my own people as weapons, like toys for his pathetic games with the Queen of Light.
The great scourge had ended my future happiness in one bloody night. I wanted to rip out my heart and let it bleed down onto Fairy, which had taken and taken and taken. Anything to stop the agony. To stop seeing dragons littering the ground like fleshy rubbish, their wings snapped and their heads lying sideways and holes where their hearts should have been, pools of dark blood surrounding them.
Iroaredagain.
The only survivors flanked me.
Their pain joined mine, making the moon tremble in fear, winking out to hide as we flew and flew and flew away from the massacre and the loss. Away from the man and the woman I hoped rotted in the misery of their own making.
I never wanted to see this land again.
Never.
“Trixie!” I laughed and ran after my daughter—nap time was officially done, and my bundle of energy was raring to go.
I followed her across the backyard as her tiny, stubby legs worked on, racing away from me. Her red pigtails bounced with each hard-won step, her gap-toothed grin showing as she giggled over her shoulder. She squealed through her missing teeth, “Daddy! Bet you can’t catch me!”
I lifted my arms high and curled my fingers into claws, baring my fangs and growling like a monster—more like a honking duck—while I jogged quickly at her heels. Putting on my most theatrical scary voice, I growled, “Where do you think you’re going?”
“Orchard!” she shouted and laughed, pointing a little finger where her mother loved to paint in the sunshine. “I see Mommy sleeping! She’s taking a nap like we did!”
I dipped down and looked to where she was pointing, peering under the low-hanging tree limbs as I kept pace behind her. My jovial expression immediately wiped clean off my face, my breath catching in my throat, as true Fae fucking fear blasted my chest and trickled down like ice into my veins.
Moving faster than I ever had before, I jumped forward and scooped my child up into my arms, and stopped brutally in place. My fangs flashed at the unknown elves surrounding my soul mate.
Blood covered the left side of Minnie’s face, her body lying face down in the thick green grass of the orchard. Her chest still lifted and lowered, but she was unconscious, her skirt rucked up around her waist, baring her body.
Her legs were spread…
I pressed Trixie’s face against my neck, turning my child’s head away. Tilting my head down, I peered at the men through my lashes—their certain death shone in my eyes.
I whispered darkly, “That is my soul mate.”
They didn’t move to run. They knew.
They knew.
An elf with a flamboyant mustache licked his bottom lip. Blood covered his face in healed defensive marks from her fingernails, and he slowly smiled, oily and disgusting. “We actually came after your daughter there, but this worked just fine too.” His nasty smile grew, hiding his fear. “Don’t worry over much. She was unconscious for most of it.”
I swallowed hard and held my daughter tighter when she whimpered, my child finally understanding something was amiss. Breathing deeply, I spoke quietly, “Why did you come for my heir?”
Another elf cracked his neck and started lacing up his pants, these men understanding their lives were at an end—eventually, when I was done with them. “There’s a contest in the dark corners. Whoever can retrieve your daughter’s head wins a fortune.”
I instinctively stepped back, pivoting my body to the side and holding Trixie away from them. “Who’s running this contest?”
“King Elon’s brother. That drunk, crazy one.” The remaining elf pulled his long hair up into a bun at the top of his head, dried blood all around his mouth. “Says she’s some kind of bringer of doom that the last soothsayer told of. He shows this disturbing quote from their royal library to anyone looking at it about dying days and the rebirth of a name, fire, and blood. It’s legit. He’s even proven the coin.”
“Sounds like a Fae fucking reach to me.” The first elf shrugged his beefy shoulders. “But coin is coin.”
I held completely still and flicked my eyes to the side at a flash of distinctive silver braids. My muscles clenched painfully with the need to beat and beat and beat these men until they were unrecognizable. To erase the memory of her precious blood smearing their skin. To never see this day again.
My chest heaved as Marlon quickly slipped from behind a tree and silently walked toward me. Not muttering one word, I handed over my daughter to him. Marlon marched away just as quietly as he had arrived, hushing my daughter gently.
