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My head spun, and my confused mind still tried to sort things out.
And now with Tianna and her guards all coming at us with the promise of murder and violence, I needed to pull my shit together.
“I told you we shouldn’t have trusted that bastard,” Blaze grated. “He just wants to have our mate all for himself. In the past weeks, he’s been trying to turn her against us.”
“Don’t blame me,” Elvey said. “I was going along with the ride. You only played the role too well. Now, I’m wondering why that is.”
“Oh really, you four are still bickering while we’re being chased and in mortal danger?” I rolled my eyes.
As we spoke, the smoke and purple light rammed into my White Light shield again.
I felt a tremendous pressure against my magic. Soon, Tianna’s dark power might break through as she drew a blast of energy from the black heart.
“Daisy is right,” Elvey said. “Let’s settle this between us later, boys. We have a duo demon king and dark Fae bitch hot on our tails.”
“Our mate is always right, gentle, and reasonable,” Rai said, and I was a little taken aback by his soft tone versus the harshness he’d used since the start of the Challenge. He’d been the nastiest toward me during the game. Just recalling it made my heart ache.
My mates must have felt my pain radiating through our bond.
“You thought we didn’t know what Tianna really is,” Blaze said in agony. “We peeled through her glamour at first sight, but we couldn’t let her know. She smells worse than a rotten egg.”
Rai agreed. “All the time.”
Blaze glared at Rai for interrupting his narration while we ran from our pursuing enemies. “My brothers and I had to breathe through our mouths in order not to be gagged to death.”
Regular humans might not be able to talk effortlessly during racing, but we were dragons and Fae and it came easily to us.
“We used her game to play her,” Iokul said, pride and confidence in his voice. “Our glamour, borrowed from Elvey, beat hers.
“The four of you talked through the mating bond but shut me out?” I asked, my voice flat, nearly cold.
“You wear your emotions on your sleeves, sweetheart,” Rai said in the same tone one would use to soothe a cornered, feral kitten. “If you’d realized what was really happening, the usurper would have known. We couldn’t chance it. We had to hurt you. We had to make it believable before we could retrieve her secret. We’re sorry we hurt you.” His voice turned worried and fierce at the same time. “We’ll make up to you. We’ll do anything to get you back.”
“Hurting you was like carving pieces of our hearts out,” Blaze said. “But we told ourselves that it’d be over soon, that we could hang in there a little longer. You once said there was nothing we couldn’t get past, so we’ve been holding on to your promise. We know you never go back on your word.”
Wait a second, was he manipulating me by using my former vow against me? He was turning the table, for fear I’d leave him for good. Though I wasn’t happy about how he’d turned things around, I could relate to his panic.
They were now all gentle and adoring again, but this quarrel wasn’t over between us. They should have trusted me and let me in instead of shutting me out. These weeks had been hell for me. And I hadn’t come back from it yet. Not even close.
“Will you forgive us, honeybee?” Blaze’s words were light, tender, and desperate, and both Rai and Iokul held their breath.
The old endearment almost made me choke. For a heartbeat, I wondered if I really had them back. The hurt still pulsed in my heart like a living thing. I wasn’t exactly the vindictive type, but the part of me that hated them had let them go. I would forgive them. But I wasn’t sure about taking them back now while my emotions were still so raw and messy.
Sphinx’s last warning picked this time to reverberate in the chamber of my head.Heart doesn’t know. Heart betrays. Heart breaks. Heart divides. Heart deceives. Only the greatest sacrifice and boldest move wins the wickedest game.
We’d won the wicked game, and Tianna was fighting her last struggle.
“I can’t deal with this right now,” I said.
“Daisy is right, we need to take care of the enemies first,” Elvey said.
Behind us, Tianna bellowed in rage.
She’d heard our conversation from the distance.
“Kill them!” She kept screaming. Maybe I should tell her to enlarge her vocabulary instead of shouting the same murderous words over and over again. She would probably be too mad to listen.
A battle cry rose ahead. A new group of Tianna’s sentinels showed up at the head of the passage, sandwiching us.
