“Do you smell that?” The second Fury, this one with a button-nose, scooted to Silas. She was short and stumpy next to Megaera’s tall and wiry form. “It’shim. She smells like Silas.”
“I don’t understand how that is possible.” Megaera frowned. “Only true mating bonds cause a smell to translatebetween two different creatures, and as far as we know, very few creatures take true mates in this day and age.”
“Smell for yourself, Sister,” the second fury persisted, looking so confident that even Megaera paused. “I’ve always had a nose for souls.”
That was enough to convince the first Fury, and Megaera strode toward Silas. A long sniff, this one less hungry. Slow, careful, curious. Then a second inhale, like Megaera couldn’t believe the first.
“Either they’re mated…” Megaera stepped back from Silas, sizing him up like a puzzle. “Or he’s protecting her somehow, and his protection has washed her with his scent.”
I sucked in a breath. Was there actually a mating bond between us? Or was it something else?
“Let’s find out.” Megaera smiled that terrible smile. She had yellowed teeth and a slender, slightly-pointed tongue, as if she’d taken on the characteristics of the sky serpent she rode. “Let’s play a game, shall we?”
“No!” I screamed, even as Megaera extended her pointer finger.
The dirty-black nail flicked out. It was long, sharper like a switchblade. Megaera moved it toward Silas’s chest. She hesitated, just for a moment, as her finger made an indention on Silas’s shirt.
Then she stroked. Within seconds, Silas’s shirt was in tatters, completely stripped from his body. He was bare from the waist up, a thin trickle of blood at the point where the Fury’s finger had pressed into his chest.
“Let her go,” Megaera said to Silas. “Or you will die for it.”
Silas licked his lips, looked her in the eye.
“She is my mate,” Silas grunted. “I will die before she does.”
In reply, Megaera pushed her finger further into Silas’s chest, piercing his skin. Silas’s jaw clenched, a look of extreme pain on his face as his head bowed forward deeply and his teeth clenched. His body didn’t move, didn’t buck, didn’t even flinch, but I could tell it took everything in him to remain still.
I trembled. Then Megaera began to drag down with that rotten nail.
A bloody red line parted Silas’s chest, blood dripping down his abs as black lines shot out from the point of her incision. She was dissecting him alive. Slaughtering the man I couldn’t help but love right before my eyes.
“Stop!” I fell to my knees in surrender. “I will do anything. Just stop. You want me? Let him go, and I’ll offer myself to you.”
“Alessia,” Silas gasped. “No.”
I looked at him and just shook my head. I hoped he could read in my gaze that I knew—I knew we were fated to be together. Iknew.
I looked at Megaera, the Fury who would destroy me. “I am Fae.”
Megaera blinked, her mangy hair twitching at the ends as she shook her head. The sky serpents slowed, a blip in their incessant circling. The second Fury burst into screeching laughter.
“A Fae!” she cried amid gales of laughter. “All true and royal Fae were killed off years ago. Anyone who claims to be Fae these days is either a liar or has a history so diluted it poses no threat to us.”
But Megaera wasn’t laughing like her sister. Matted black eyelashes pinched together as she squinted between me and Silas.
“Mates share a scent,” Megaera declared. “And it is the Fae species who most notably took mates. Silas has always been a mystery to us, a bastard. Could he be part Fae? Couldshe?”
The second Fury stopped her laughter abruptly. “No. It simply cannot be.”
“I would agree it is impossible. And yet...” Megaera took another, deeper sniff, her whole body moving with it like she was consuming every detail of the bond between me and Silas. “The Darkest King has sent us here for a reason he did not say. Why would he care aboutdestroying some inconsequential island in the middle of nowhere, if it were not a threat to his very existence?”
Then Megaera dug her nail into Silas with a determined sneer. I felt the pain this time; it cut through me as if her hands were inside my skin and not his.
I didn’t have the restraint, nor the experience of Silas, and I buckled further forward until my forehead hit the cool marble disc. Tears of fury and pain and hopelessness dripped from my cheeks onto the smooth white surface.
Ruby blood mixed with a poison-black liquid, pooling down from Silas onto the floor in a terrible tie-dye. The sky serpents accelerated around the platform as if the smell of blood and death invigorated them. They were ravenous.
“Fates be damned.” Megaera’s voice was an unpleasant hiss that slithered down my skin, as if she’d infiltrated my very body. “She’s telling the truth.”
