ISLOWLY REGAINEDconsciousness, becoming aware of a soft hum first and the burn in my neck from the healing second. Cracking my eyes open, I listened intently, making sure Isaiah wasn’t near me as I feigned sleep.
The humming continued, and I glanced toward the sound to see Isaiah sitting against that same tree. He was tossing a rock up and catching it, clearly bored. I needed a plan, and struggling against my bindings would end with him breaking my neck again. He had taken my rings so that I couldn’t summon an ablaze weapon, but maybe I didn’t need one. I had used Oblivion so easily here. I could do it again, especially for her. Keeping my breath steady, I continued to fake sleep and concentrated on the one thing that would help summon it quickly.
Her.
Oblivion ripped from me like a handful of angry vipers. My head whipped toward Isaiah. He jumped to his feet, but it was already too late. I was already on him.
We rolled on the dead ground in a flurry of punches, rotten leaves and debris clinging to us. I hit Isaiah hard enough to break teeth, splitting his lip and rolling off him. Back on my feet, I sprinted for the bridge. He tackled me before I reached it, knocking the wind from my lungs and tossing me onto my back. I heard the crunch of my nose when his knuckles made contact with my face.
“You go in there, and you will get us all killed,” he snapped. “The Otherworld hates you and sides with Mer … Nismera. At least let them work out their plan. Otherwise, we aren’t just fighting all her wrath, we are fighting theirs.”
“I don’t care.”
Isaiah moved, blocking the bridge once more. The gargoyle’s eyes seemed to flame at the challenge as if it watched. The forest stilled, waiting to see which option I’d choose, but there was no choice. I would always choose Dianna.
“Get out of my way.” I snapped.
“No.”
I tackled him again. The force of the impact knocked the wind out of both of us, but Isaiah was prepared this time. He rolled and tossed me past the edge of the bridge as we tumbled down the steep incline. He managed to get to his feet first, while I scrambled in the wet foliage. His foot connected with my ribs, and when he tried to kick me a second time, I grabbed his ankle and snapped it. He yelped and dropped to his knees. I slammed my fist into his face, splitting his cheek. I rose, prepared to race toward the entrance, but he tripped me.
Isaiah lunged, his ankle already healed. He straddled me, his fists pounding into my face, once, twice. “You’re a selfish bastard to risk it,” he snarled.
“You’ve never been in love,” I said, catching his fist and pulling him close.
My head cracked against his recently healed nose, and he cupped his face, blood pouring from between his fingers. I pushed him off me and rose.
“You do this, and all you do is damn us!” he yelled, not bothering to charge me again. “Is that what you want? How can you protect us all at the same time? All it takes is for one of us to fall, and you have no army, Samkiel. Be fucking smart. Think with your head, not your cock.”
I turned toward him, my chest heaving. “I’m not thinking with my cock. It’s my heart, something you clearly fucking lack.”
Isaiah looked as if I’d hit him, and I wondered if I wasn’t the first person to say that to him. I did not know or care.
“I know it’s hard for you to comprehend. I doubt you’ve experienced a fraction of what I have, but let me explain it in the simplest of terms. Dianna is not some simple consort or conquest to me, nor is she some vessel I can empty myself into when I feel the need and then not think of her again. She is everything to me, the very blood in my veins. Beings dream of paradise, of everlasting bliss when they eventually die and leave this life, but that’s what she is to me. I can’t imagine a world without her in it, and the thought that Kaden has dragged her into the one place I cannot step foot in makes me beyond volatile. I need to be by her side. Not for her protection, but for my own sanity.”
His eyes darted toward my hands and arms. I didn’t need to look down to know that Oblivion coiled there. It sang to me, feeding off my fear and lethal rage, pushing me to kill him, run to her, and butcher the rest. I was tempted, but then an icy cold wind wrapped around me, Death whispering a reminder. I couldn’t, and worse, Isaiah was right. If I stepped foot in there, I would start more than one war. But how could I not? It was Dianna, and she was the other half of my soul.
“I’m not asking you to let her rot there, but give them time. Kaden is not stealing your blushing bride. He knows as well as I that if she dies, we do too,” Isaiah said, his anger easing a fraction. “Isn’t that what kings do? Try for peace before destruction? What kind of ruler will you be, Samkiel? One they will follow or will you rule over a graveyard because you couldn’t wait five fucking minutes?”
I thought the low growl came from him, but I felt my eyes burn in the dim light and saw his answer in kind. “Fuck!” I yelled, turning from him and stomping back up the small bank we’d fallen down, the moldering and warped trees seeming to feed upon my rage and despair. I stomped away from him, my body littered with dead forest debris. “Fuck.”
I heard him snicker as he pushed himself up and followed me to the entrance of the bridge. The firelight taunted me, begging me to move as I began to pace its entrance like a restless beast. My thumb and forefinger worried my bottom lip as I scowled and cursed those gates.
“If she has so much as a hair out of place,” I growled at Isaiah as he wiped the blood from his healing nose.
“You’ll what?” He spat blood on the ground. “Kill us? You can’t, and Kaden knows that, too. He will not risk her.”
My laugh was mocking, the sound devoid of humor. “You haven’t been around him in a long time. You don’t know him anymore.”
“Oh, yeah?” he challenged, lifting a pierced brow. “I know he loves her.”
“He does not,” I said, taking a step forward, and Isaiah took one back.
“Oh, he does, and trust me when I say my brother has loved no one like that before, nor will he again.”
“He damn near ripped her to pieces to drag her back to him,” I yelled, the sound loud enough that my baritone reverberated through the forest. “Not to mention, he murdered her sister in an act of retribution.”
“By Nismera’s orders,” Isaiah rebutted.
