“What have you done now, littledóite?” he rasped.
Look your fill at the sky, little dóite. You will never see the light of day again…His final words to me that night made my hands clench as my wrath reignited.
“I have done as promised,” I said, the coven silent as a tomb around us as I pointed to the ground in front of him. “Nowkneelbefore your rightful High Priestess.”
His rage was tangible, and he looked like he wanted to respond to the demand with his typical vitriol, but he refrained. He hesitated a long time, and I could have just forced him down, but I was glad that I had stayed patient. There was nothing more satisfying than the sight of him sinking to his knees of his own volition rather than being made to do it.
I stepped near enough to grab him by the hair with the strength of my fey mate. He tried to stab me with a knife that he was hiding behind him, but I caught that arm and broke his wrist to quickly disarm him.
“Did you know what he was doing to me?” I snarled once he had bitten off his scream of agony.
“I didn’t tell him to do anything—” he tried to defend himself, but I yanked on his hair to silence him.
“But did youknow?” I shrieked furiously.
My father tried desperately to maintain his defiance, but hecould not make direct eye contact with me, and it was enough of an answer for me.
“That is what I assumed. Everyone in this coven knew the sick things they were doing to me down there.”
“I should have killed you that night,” he lamented.
“No. I think this was how it was always meant to be. The Dagda chose me to bring about the reckoning of the Phoenix Coven and purge your infection,” I goaded.
“You are mad,” he hissed.
“Perhaps. But whose fault was that?” I whispered back before setting my hands ablaze with fey fire that burned right through his wrist and seared one side of his head.
My father screamed, and I let him flail backward so he landed on the stone floor before me. He clenched the stub of his arm to his chest as he tried to scoot back from me, his left eye partly covered by his sizzled flesh.
“Luke’s body was used to restore mine after he ruined it so thoroughly. I thought that was poetic. So I intend to useyouina similar way. I will consume the power of the entire coven,” I explained as I stalked after him.
I stepped on his ankle to halt his retreat and held him still as Rian’s shadows unfurled from my hands to begin climbing his body. He screamed as they ate him alive.
Within moments, my father was dead. The last of the phoenix-blooded was sacrificed, the magic in their tainted blood now dust in the hallways of their collective tomb.
The flames burning throughout the coven taunted me when I turned to walk into the middle of the rune circle.Monster, monster, monster,they chanted at me as I tilted my head up toward the blood-red morning sky.
I retrieved the dagger from the sheath on my thigh and drew it across my palm. Enough blood had been spilled that I knew all the gods must be watching, but I wanted to make sure I still had their attention. Not only the dark one who demanded this sacrifice in exchange for a new life, but my beloved Dagda who had chosen me first.
I dared to call on my god the way I used to do. It was something I’d been avoiding since Rian retrieved me after years of screaming for a salvation that could only reach me through the flames. Not because I resented the Dadga for not being able to answer, but because I was terrified that I had truly been abandoned. I was terrified that being forced to turn to another, to the one who had answered my screams in the dark, would alienate my fire god.
But most of all, I was terrified that the sacrifice that had been demanded would be condemned by the one who loved me first.
But as I felt that beloved one move close to me again, my heart thawed like the sun had come out after a long and frigid night. The Dagda embraced me with a warmth of such love and approval that it made me instantly break down in tears. Because I wasneverabandoned. When the light could not reach me, it had simply allied with the dark in order to save me instead.
Which meant it was time for the ritual.
Chapter thirty-two
YOU HAVE DESTROYED ME
Nuala
Just as I had never been taught how to defend myself with my power, I wasn’t privileged with any knowledge of the spells that the men in the coven had guarded so jealously. My magic had torn out of me much too young in response to the trauma of seeing my mother burned alive and the threat of imprisonment. I had almost destroyed the coven, and then my power was locked away to rot inside of me for decades. Now it was a rabid beast that was good for little more than savaging the world around me.
So when I began murmuring in a foreign chant, it was with the guidance of the Dagda.
“What are you doing?” Rian asked as I knelt to put my hands on the runes. “Nuala, this isblood magic!”
