The cries of the shifters were too much, too loud. The smell was acrid, overpowering. It was so much worse than what I was used to. The rattling of bars rang in my ears, and when I looked around, tears formed in my eyes.
The same shifters I’d tried to free were now forced three to a cage. There were leopards with bears, wolves and tigerscrammed together. Greer’s mates were again forced into a cage of their own, only this time they’d been cut apart, hanging dead where all could see.
Bile rose in my throat as I turned to find a naked female forced into one of the tiny cages used for the small prey shifters. Her hair was bloody, skin broken and not healing, but even from here, I knew who sat huddled in that cage.
“Thea!” I cried, lurching forward. But as I did, the image bled, and Dante thrust me into another dark nightmare.
This time when the darkness cleared, I stared through a window into a room filled with smaller cages and children. Infants and toddlers crammed into a pen, while the ones who could stand were thrust into cages like the one Elias had been raised in.
I tasted vomit in my mouth. My body reacted despite me knowing it wasn’t real, that none of it was happening. Thea wasn’t in a cage—she would never be in a cage. She was safe and far away from Dante.
You really think she’ll stay that way?Dante hissed.Be honest with yourself, Ivy. I can have all of this, and it is within my grasp.
I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t. A sob tore free as I watched my sister get thrown into a tank and forced to take her future siren form. A tail replaced her legs as she struggled to break the surface of the water, but any time she got close, electricity rippled across the top, forcing her back down into the pool’s depths.
Maisie and Ginny were trapped in cages, too young to be put in their own tanks. So, like the child shifters, they were trapped behind bars, naked and afraid, already bruised and bleeding.
The sight of them had me falling to my knees, but Dante was there to hold me up, to force the vision upon me as the demon punisher walked through the cages with a twisted smile and his whip in hand. I couldn’t scream, couldn’t break through the glass to get to them. I couldn’t save them.
Dante laughed and we went through the darkness againinto a new kind of hell. Every dark, twisted vision he revealed to me crashed against the walls I so desperately tried to build against him. And every time I felt the crack, my magic fractured within me, dimming with each dark reality I knew would befall upon the realms if he won.
Thea in her cage being bred to raise a new kind of army—an army only Dante had control over, an army of beasts no one had seen in a thousand years. My sisters, trapped in prisons of their own, never to escape, forced to serve Dante and his enforcers. Greer’s mates, flayed and left to rot as a reminder of their escape and the freedom they’d gifted the shifters of the cages.
My own mates, dead for being mine. For choosing to accept our bond and love me.
And the realms, torn apart by magic that was never meant to be released like this, that was never meant to be wielded by Dante, or anyone like him.
99
Orion
“Your father would be terribly disappointed in you,” the Luna Court emissary hissed, their true nature showing through the careful mask they always liked to wear. “You have betrayed everything he trained you for.”
“My father trained me for nothing,” I replied easily, calmly. As we circled one another, I tried to keep Ivy in the corner of my vision, her fight with Dante too slow—too terrifying to draw my attention from. “I was never his soldier to begin with.”
The emissary sneered, lips pulling back to reveal sharpened canines. “You’ll regret turning against your court.”
“And I will ensure you regret turning against your Queen,” I said, slashing my sword through the back of a mage who stepped too close. “Soon, I will flush you and your fellow traitors out. The Luna Court will be rebuilt, but not by the likes of you.”
The urge to kill him and keep him from ever raising a hand against my mate rose again within me, but I held back. The cuffs in my belt for those like him would mean he saw true justice, not just the gentle hands of death. It would mean he and all those my father manipulated into joining him and Dante would see cells for the rest of their lives.
And I very much liked knowing that I would always know where they were. In death, they were free.
But in the darkest parts of our prisons, they weremine.
“You are too lucky,” I murmured, pointing the end of my blade at him as he wove his own shadowy weapon. It was nowhere near as skilful as mine. Shadow weaving used to be an art mastered by only the most skilful of Luna Fae, and instead it was now wasted on weak creatures like the male standing across from me.
“Lucky?” he spat, eyes darkening. “Why would I be lucky, traitor prince of Luna?”
“You are lucky because my mate would rather seek punishment for your wrongs rather than death. You are lucky because I won’t kill you today.” With those words hanging between us, I struck. The weapon in his hands faltered, nothing but smoke compared to the living, almost real blade I held. The sloppy shadow work melted apart as I cut down his chest, exposing his alabaster flesh to the raging storm around us.
The male cried out, falling to his knees. But those silver eyes so common to the Luna Court remained locked on mine as I pulled a set of cuffs from my belt.
“You should kill me,” he hissed. “I will not go willingly.”
“Let the people you harmed decide that,” I replied, allowing my sword to disappear as I rounded him, grabbing his arm and setting the first cuff around his wrist. “Should you die, that will be their choice to make—not yours, and not mine.”
As the other cuff went around his wrist and he slumped into the ground, my gaze went to Ivy. Slowly, the other mates in her circle moved to surround her, becoming a physical barrier between her and the rest of Dante’s army struggling to reach them.
