AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You can’t take us all on with your magic.”Delia’s cold announcement cut through the tension like a scalpel.“Let’s go, Perry.Or the Senate will drag your father out of his bookshop and execute him in the street.Don’t make him and your supermodel pay for your crimes.”
At least a dozen guards circled closer to the Legacy witch, each with a rifle or pistol drawn and ready to kill.Dust swirled from a push of wind coming off the witch, stinging Vori’s nose and eyes, but she didn’t move, didn’t back down.
Her consort pressed close, pulled her against him.“I have to go.”His words sounded so certain, but his gaze was full of heartbreak and confusion.
She shook her head.“We promised we’re in this together, but the deadline, the goblin glass, the blood vows?We’re too close to my realm’s extinction.I won’t be able to come with you if they take you.”
“I know.”The truth tore out of him like a confession, a dark secret.“This is not me leaving.This is me promising I’ll come back for you.”
Smoke and sorrow choked her, but she forced the words that she’d spoken when they’d been torn apart before.“Not if I find you first.”
“My shadow thief, my wife, my queen.”
The last nearly broke her.“Find your redemption—for you, for your dad.If it’s really destiny, we’ll find each other again before it’s too late.”Or maybe it was better if he didn’t if she would have to lose herself to the berserker fury.“Don’t be a hero.”She tightened her grip on him, ignoring the hurt in her shoulder.“Heroes die.I need you alive.”
He kissed her, a meeting of their mouths so tender that it rocked her to her core.It wasn’t a passionate demand for more.No grabbing or teasing.Just a simple brush of his lips against hers and the steadiness of his hand at her nape.
The quiet embrace screamed louder for its gentleness.Remember me, that kiss said.This was meant to be.This wasalwaysmeant to be.Except it wasn’t.
“Now go,” she whispered before she couldn’t.
With one last kiss and a look that almost sent her to her knees, he boarded the helicopter with the Legacy witch and her man.
Numb, Vori watched the rotors spin, the helicopter lift off, and Perry stare from the window as if this was all a slow-motion reel except for the noise that hurt her ears, the wind that tore at her clothes and hair, and the dust that blinded her and gave her another reason for the tears filling her eyes.He pressed a hand to the glass as if reaching for her, impossible given the guns and magic ripping them apart.
The guards left.Even Diego had gone.She watched until the helicopter disappeared into the smoke, and her heart splintered into a thousand cursed amethysts, all greedy for him.“I love you,” she told the emptiness.
“Then why didn’t you tell him before he left?”
Vori jumped at the voice that came from nowhere.A hazy image flickered once, twice like a hologram from sci-fi shows, lit from within and winking in and out.Except this was no illusion.The stooped figure, stringy hair, and hag face of sharp angles and lines were all straight from her childhood nightmares.
“Baba Yaga.”Her goblin skin slipped to the surface, and a burning ache tore through her from the injury that hadn’t healed.She would kill this witch for wrecking her life, making her promise things as a kid that no adult should have to consider.
“Not so fast, goblin queen.I knew better than to come here in person where you might actually hurt me.”
Vori didn’t bother to hide her snarl.“Did you come to collect on the blood vows?I don’t have the amethysts.”
“Petra does.”
Prickles spread across Vori’s skin, having nothing to do with the desert night air.“What happened between you and Petra?”
“I saved her first.Before I found you, I saved the wrong goblin royal.But you got the best life possible in this realm.The Maronov matriarch would’ve done anything for more children after those she’d lost in childbirth.Making the deal with her in advance of your arrival was some of my best work.”
“Am I supposed to thank you for screwing up which goblin kid to saveandfor screwing over my adopted aunt?”
“No, but consider what would’ve happened to that family you love if I’d placed Petra with them.She killed her first few foster parents.”
Of course the psycho had.The thought of what could’ve happened to the woman who raised her, to her cousins sent a cold rush over Vori’s green skin.“I’m still not thanking you, not when you made me pay for any kindness you showed me with blood vows.”
“I needed you to correct the mistake I made, because you’re the only one who could stop Petra.”
“I was a kid.”She struggled not to spit the words.“Not the fix for your problems.”
“No, you’re the queen of Kradnovtl who has come to clean up her realm’s mess.Embrace that rage.You’ll need it to defeat her.If you don’t accept your full goblin nature, if you can’t let go of that precious control of yours, both realms will be destroyed tonight.”
The rush of truth drove the anger down, down, down to the pit of her stomach, a vile and sour acid that burned.“I can’t beat her without crossing that line, without becoming more like my father.”
“No, you can’t.You didn’t fight when they took your witch, your consort.Were you afraid it’d cost your sanity or scared you’d lose him if he saw your true beast?”
