Failed to unmake us.
Failed to break us.
He thought himself a god.
But he’d unwittingly proven something here today.
Even gods could bleed.
12
~Winter~
The door to my chamber flew open with unadulterated fury.
Right on cue.
Ruxnoth scanned the room erratically, then found me lounging on the couch casually.
He was covered in dirt and dust, his bare chest and face bloodied, and his clothes torn.
So, yeah, I’d sort of had to… pull him through the earth with my shadows halfway through when my forced-teleportation yanking him back to Sanctus had cut out.
Because I was still healing and not at full strength, the rest had taken a lot out of me, so I’d gotten tapped out.
He burst toward me, eyes blazing, and wrenched me off the couch, then slammed me so hard into the nearest wall that it cracked in several places, and rattled my bones.
“You will suffer for that!” he roared in my face, as he wrapped his hand around my throat, making me gag. “Horrifically!” he bellowed, tightening his grip, and digging his nails into my skin painfully.
“Want me… healed. Not the… way to… go about it,” I rasped, battling to speak every word against his brutal grip.
“How dare you?” he snarled, still too amped up to let logic take the lead.
It was definitely interesting seeing him like this.
I narrowed my eyes, making my amber magic flame at him. It startled him enough that his grip around my throat loosened a little. Enough for me to seethe, “How. Dare.You?”
“Excuse me?” he growled.
“You almost fucked up everything.”
He yanked me off the wall, and slammed me back against it again.
Albeit, not as hard as last time, just enough to wind me.
Because he didn’t like the challenge, but he was also unsettled now by my words.
“What are you talking about? And I will give you due warning to mind yourself.”
“You dare to force me down here, get inside my head claiming we’re the same with our abomination status and promise me a safe and better life here with you, rip me from my other life in the name of this better fit existence… only to then turn around and do that?”
“What?”
“Latching onto the Dracoryn Realm and attempting a conquering wasn’t part of the deal. Especially not at this stage, when I’m still healing—thanks to you, by the way. But you got impatient, only had the power to pull off a partial latch. And my magic you siphoned and fed to Tiberia and Matteo was bleeding into it. That signature can be read by so many up there and on the mortal plane. Not just my family, but so many of their allies, all who are no doubt trying to figure out a way to get to me. If I hadn’t cut you off, they would have traced me here, and you by extension. Like I said, it would have fucked up everything. This has to be done all at once, securing the entirety of Sanctus ontothe mortal plane and the adjoining realms—Dracoryn, Light Fae, Dark Fae. A one-shot deal at full power for us both.”
Yeah, not happening. But the tangled web I was weaving had enough truth and elements of irrefutable logic along for the ride that the believability was sound.
His hand slipped from my throat and he took a slow step back. “You did that to spare me?”
