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RAFFERTY
The hold I’ve maintained on the dark energy in my body for over a millennia is slipping. True, it started the moment I met Ember, but the longer we’re apart, the more that plunge is not looking like such a bad step to take. After all, if I were to embrace it, conversations like this one would be a hell of a lot easier.
I could bend the coward to my will. I could make them all submit.
“You are telling me that you would rather allow Faerie to fall to the ancients than stand up and fight?” Bea demands.
I’m letting her talk because, if I do, I may end up ripping this fae’s head clean off his shoulders. He’s even more frustrating than Thorish, who is currently lingering beside Bea yet making no attempt to try to help her.
“If we fight, we lose,” the fae replies. Elected leader of his village, Mac claims to have the interests of his people in mind. I’ve never understood those who claim peace is the only way to avoid war.
I’ve found it’s the opposite, in fact. If you are a strong, capable, blood-thirsty bastard, people tend to want to avoid conflict. Not start it. Unless, of course, you’re a backstabbing brother with a jealousy problem. Though, perhaps if I’d been harder on the fucker, he wouldn’t have been able to—
“The ancients will tear us apart,” he insists, pulling me from thoughts quickly spiraling out of my control.
“The other villages they destroyed, they did not provoke these creatures, and yet they were allslaughtered,” Bea tells him. She’s trying to rationalize, to convince, but I can already tell it won’t work.
Cowards rarely step up to the battle line when it’s time for blood to be drawn. Though they are almost always the ones yelling from the back about how thingsshouldbe done.
“They were harboring Rebels,” he shoots back with a pointed glare at me.
I stand, straightening to my full, towering height, and allow the dark energy in me to fuel my anger—even as carefully tethered as I have it. “Harboring Rebels, you say? Rebels that have been fighting—and dying—for your freedom since Odrahn overthrew Fearghas the First?”
“Odrahn never came for us.”
I lean down, splaying both palms on the table between us. Around our group, the pub goes completely silent. They’re all waiting for me to explode. For me to lose control and tear this coward apart—and they might just get their wish. “He did not come for you because myRebelsstood in his way. We held the lines each and every day his men tried to push through to kill your men, rape your women, and enslave your children. Or have you forgotten his brutality?”
Mac looks down at the missing fingers on his right hand. Fingers he lost because he held a blade against one of Odrahn’s soldiers when the fucker cheated during a card game. “I doubt anyone will ever forget Odrahn,” he replies. “But we can all certainly agree things were simpler when Rebels weren’t fighting back. If we’d all just—”
Outside, someone screams. Adrenaline surges through my system, and I withdraw my blade at the same time I head for the door. No one else makes a move—not even Mac—to investigate the source of the terror.
I peer through a crack in the door, scanning the night just outside.
Another scream. This time closer.
A body thuds to the ground just in front of me, though I am unable to make out anything more than a shape in the cloudy moonlight. Until—a massive form drops to the ground, clawed feet digging into the dirt just outside. Leathery wings flap to the creature’s vast sides as its horned head tilts.
Dammit.
“What is it?” Mac whispers. I turn, surprised to see him standing beside me. He peers out through the crack and covers his mouth on a gasp. “You must kill it!”
For some reason, that order resonates with the darkness inside of me. And, for another reason entirely, I cannot bother to care that there is likely no one else here who can slay such a creature.
I look to Bea. Her hard gaze lands on mine, and I turn back to Mac. “Must I?”
His golden eyes widen with the terror those two simple words inflicted. For once, this man might need to get his hands bloody. “You have to! You are honor bound to—”
“To do what, exactly? Honor bound, I was. To Fearghas the First. He is the reason I continued fighting. The reason I kept trying to re-instate peace in this world. But as you’ve so pointed out, my fighting did nothing but cause you more pain, did it not?”
Another scream.
“It’s going to tear apart my village!”
I lean down, hoping he will see the anger reflected in my gaze. “Then perhaps you should have stood with the Dirty Rebels.” I rip the door open. “Go get him, leader!” I roar and shove Mac outside.
“Rafferty!” Thorish roars. “You cannot do this!”
I pass right by him and stop beside Bea. “Then perhaps you should stay and die with them.” Turning to Bea, I try to ignore the disappointment in her gaze. “Let’s go.” She doesn’t argue, doesn’t push back, though her pursed lips and furrowed brow tell me she does not approve.
