Page 4 of Heir of Broken Souls

“To tarnish my memories of it even more than he already has?” I shrug, watching as the flames eat away at the hounds’ skin. “He thinks it still means something to me. It does, but not what it used to. The cottage holds more of Easton now.” And he couldn’t possibly know about that one. Emory, a brilliantly wicked spell cleaver who also helped me with the spell that saved the Fae, placed it under a mountain of concealment magic.

The king hiding out in the treehouse is another one of his many chess moves, one that he no doubt was hoping would strike my heart. Little does he know that nothing is left of the old Delilah. She died the moment Ace was decapitated and Hazel stood beside the enemy.

Knox drags the other hound into the pit of fire, his face pensive as a thousand thoughts flit through his ocean blue eyes. Yet not one of those emotions contain an ounce of empathy for the creature as it goes up in flames.

They and their kind have killed thousands of Fae and creatures in our lands over the past weeks. I wish for them all to perish and they will, one by one. I don’t care if I have to spend the rest of my life killing them as the king summons them back the moment they die.

I will leave a path of destruction until the day it leads me to him.

Then the true torture can begin.

Chapter2

Delilah

Knox hands me my dragon pommel sword, the very one the hounds were surprisingly wise enough to rip from my sheath and leave in the abandoned library. “Thanks,” I say, genuine sincerity in my voice. Knox presses his lips to my forehead, even though I’m covered in blood and dirt, but his eyes, his thoughts, remain far away, fixed on the fire and the hounds.

Cocking my hip against his, I ask, “What are you thinking?”

“I’m curious how he communicates with them.”

Sheathing the dragon sword, I let my body lean against his, not at all surprised when he holds me steady. “We’ve been over this before, it’s compulsion. How else would he command an entire legion of demons?”

“Something in my gut tells me it’s not that simple.” He runs a frustrated hand through his hair, tousling the black strands. “He wouldn’t be able to stay sane compelling that many through mind control.”

“We already know he’s not sane. He’s trying to conquer Aloriah.”

A muscle ticks in Knox’s jaw. “Key word: trying.”

Knox’s gaze stays frozen on the fire, coming up empty on our questions. Then in a voice so small I wonder if I imagined it, he whispers, “I don’t know how long I can keep doing this.”

The words evoke a reaction in my body, one I haven’t felt in weeks—a pang of emotion, in my heart to be exact. Yet it’s there and gone, disappearing before I can latch my hands onto it.

My emotions have been playing hide and seek with me over the passing months—a game which I have been failing miserably. The closest thing I feel is physical pain as I watch the fight slowly leave Knox day in and day out as we continue the same torturous cycle of searching for the king.

Scratch that, he isn’t a king anymore. Nobody with a heart as evil as his should be. He isn’t even a dark lord—that would be giving him far too much power, one that is undeserving.

His name is Peter, and nothing else.

When I first embarked into the Fae lands—into Azalea—and learned of Knox’s story, of how he and his court searched endlessly for a cure to their retreating magic for nearly one hundred and fifty years, I couldn’t help but wonder how he kept going, how he had the will to wake up every day and fight the same battle with no end in sight.

I no longer have to wonder. Not after being shoved into a situation far too similar for my liking.

Turning my back on the blazing creatures at our feet, I wrap my arms around Knox’s neck, forcing his gaze to lock on mine. The door between our minds, to the bridge that connects our souls, flies open, allowing Knox’s emotions to crash along our shores. Mine haven’t graced it in weeks.

I feareverything that has transpired has been too much for my heart.

The sheer pain caused by Hazel’s betrayal, and Ace’s loss, and the knowledge that I was the one who brought her into Ace’s path… When the knowledge of it all rises to the surface, threatening to come out of the box I shoved it into, it’s not a fear but a promise that it will bring me to my knees.

And so I continue to shove it down, down, down, into a place so dark within my mind I hope I’ll forget it completely. But what I don’t mind feeling, what I cling to with a death grip, is pure, unadulterated fury.

It’s the only thing that continues to expand my lungs, that makes it so I can keep placing one foot in front of the other. It is the only thing holding me upright.

Knox, on the other hand—the sweetheart that he is—can never shut it off. It’s there when he wakes up, it’s there when he fights, and it’s there when he sleeps. He cannot escape it.

I haven’t dared breech what goes through his mind because, in all honesty, I don’t want to feel it out of fear that once I hear him talk about it, my emotions will take it as an invitation to pour out of me.

So I stand there, taking the brunt of his, all the while he gazes into my ice-blue eyes burning with hatred and wrath. With theneedto destroy those who have taken so much from us.