Ignoring the searing agony in my wrists, I inhale slowly. Each shallow breath I manage to force my lungs into drawing, I take a little of his energy, careful trickles so that he doesn’t sense it and immediately rear back. Most people are too careful to touch my bare skin at home, but he always knew that I was too afraid of them to risk using the ability as he hurt me, that the torture would be ten times worse if I was stupid enough to try something.
“She’s pregnant?” I choke out, my windpipe being crushed in his tight grip.
Call your abominations back. He thinks I sent the changelings to storm the castle.
He growls, but it’s Valdis that snaps, “No, you self-centered bitch. She’s bringing Cody back. Why the fuck else do you think she let you live all of these years?” Apollo shoots him a glare, but now that he’s started his vehement rant, he isn’t ready to drop it, clearly needing to get it off of his chest after all of these years.
“You provided just enough energy to keep him from fully dying.” His frigid glare cuts into me. “Eighteen years of not being able to say goodbye because she refused to let him go, forced us to cling to the damning dregs ofhope,” he spits the word like the foul one I know it to be. “To look at you day after day, the woman that tried to kill our son, continuing to exist while he lay in that bed comatose while we were forced to keep his body alive.”
If it wasn’t for the crushing weight on my body, I would have lost the ability to keep the bile in my stomach. “Why did no one tell me?” I rasp out. “So I could have tried to do something!”
It takes a conscious effort to ignore the scent of my burning flesh, to remember to suck down more of Apollo’s energy between my words. My eyes water, and not from the blistering pain this time.
Apollo sneers above me in disgust. “We weren’t letting a monster like you near our son again. A necessary evil to keep around to maintain the stasis he was in, but we weren’t about to let you finish draining him.”
Another mental pull, and I can tell that he’s starting to notice his abilities weakening, even if it’s just slightly. But it’s enough that I can start getting a sense of the energy, how to wield it.
“And she thinks a sudden jolt of a massive amount of energy will be enough to resuscitate him?”
He releases my throat so that he can slap me across the face and I hiss. “Don’t speak on matters that don’t concern you, girl. What we do with our son is our business.” He grips my jaw. “I’ll make you this deal once and only once.“ His eyes flash as that binding magic stirs to life. “Call back your army, leave our kingdom and family alone, and I’ll remove the bounty from your head. You’ll be allowed to live out your days up here with the rest of the abominations without our interference, so long as I never have to look at your face again. You come down for supplies, you do so as far away from our land as you can get. Deal?”
I mull over his words, noting all of the loopholes. He only offered withouttheirinterference; he could easily send someone or hire someone to hire someone else to assassinate us. All he’s technically agreeing to do is remove the formal bounty on my head, but that wouldn’t stop anyone else from issuing one or even just killing me in general. He never claimed he wouldn’t kill me, and I don’t know what deal Elorie forced him to make and likely somehow this would negate that one.
“No.”
Before I can lose my spark of courage, I slam my head forward as hard as I can, busting his nose. Valdis is as surprised as Apollo, the oppressive force on me weakening slightly as he jolts. With him still straddled above me, I draw my leg up to knee him in the crotch. There’s no such thing as cheap shots when your life is on the line.
There’s a couple of shouts as I hear Atlas at the door, knowing Valdis will try to subdue him and leave me to Apollo. I barely make it a few inches back, trying to scramble to my feet, before Apollo is there, fisting my hair and yanking me to my feet with him. There’s a click as Atlas cocks his gun and my warning shout is lost to the sound of him firing.
Over Apollo’s shoulder, I watch Valdis throw a hand up to create an invisible barrier before whipping it to the side, changing the bullet’s trajectory the same moment Apollo whirls us around, the two of them in sync from decades of fighting alongside each other.
The momentum has me spinning an extra few steps, only his grip on my hair keeping me from going too far, but enough that I’m able to see Atlas’ horrified face. Shutting my eyes, I let the power I’d siphoned rush out of me all at once. Apollo releases me as he stumbles back, cursing, the same moment the bullet hits my collar bone.
Instantly, the heat I’m throwing off forces the metal to melt as it makes contact, pooling on my skin and running a burning trail of molten metal down my chest rather than piercing it. The shock is enough for Valdis to lose his hold on the changelings, and they don’t hesitate for so much as a fraction of a second.
Azazel gets to him first, breaking one of Valdis’ arms as he raises it to defend himself. A second later he’s tearing into his throat, his human teeth doing little to hinder the savagery of it.
Raziel on the other hand, has a cooler sort of calculation to his attack, a cold rage that mirrors Lucien in its intensity. He fakes left, giving Loki time to get to her feet and pull Apollo’s attention two ways before capitalizing on it. Darting behind him, he grips his head, gritting his teeth through the burning pain as he jerks it to the side with an audible crack. Apollo’s body slumps to the ground face first and Loki crosses the small distance to place a foot on his spine before stomping, ensuring there’s absolutely no way he’ll be able to recover.
Even the changelings don’t siphon energy from the two men that spent my childhood tormenting me, as if the thought of mirroring their forms disgusts them too.
I sink to my knees as the air rushes from my body, consciously reminding myself to breathe before I spiral. Atlas is suddenly there, using my shirt to try and swipe away the molten metal still burning my skin from my body. I’m aware of the pain, even the slight air current brushing over my various burns hurting, but that disconnect I forced into existence is only exacerbated by the mental blow they delivered.
“Fuck, Cambria, I almost,” Atlas trails off, hands trembling as he pulls the collar of my shirt back to examine the extent of the damage. He gently traces his fingertips beneath the marks on my neck, my cheek.
But all that I manage to say is, “They let me think he was dead.”
Nothing to put him at ease, not even a tear shed as I process all of the terror of the last few minutes. Just a sort of numb horror at how everything could have been different, how much guilt I’ve suffered with. Maybe it’s better that I thought he was dead rather than be in the tortured state that the people I thought were my parents for so long have been trapped in. Hoping. Not able to say goodbye and move on, but have it a constant state of fresh grief.
“What are you talking about?” he murmurs, smoothing a hand over my hair, looking for somewhere safe to touch.
“My brother.” Because blood or not, I won’t think of him as anything else. “Elorie was only siphoning from me to keep him alive and gather enough energy to bring him out of that stasis I apparently put him in.”
Dorian curses, him and Lucien catching the tail end of our conversation as he enters the room and slides to his knees in front of me. “We need to get some ice on those.“ He cringes. “Fuck, we didn’t set a tray up in the freezer.”
“Because ice is neither a necessity nor is it food,” Atlas breathlessly teases, mirroring my rant the first day we woke up in my apartment after they showed up in Faerie.
Lucien’s gaze lingers on my throat before glancing at the corpses, and then the changelings, mentally filling in all of the blanks. When he sees the damage to Loki’s back, he doesn’t even hesitate to offer a hand in her direction.
