Page 9 of When Ashes Fall

“I’m here,” he whispered into my mind. “And the second you give me permission, I’ll bite him in the dick.”

Despite the despair threatening to overwhelm me, I almost laughed aloud but restrained myself. They’d all think I’d lost my mind if I started laughing now.

Petra’s eyes were the size of saucers while Gizzi’s cool nose nuzzled my cheek. His whiskers tickled as I stroked his soft, gray fur.

“What the fuck?” Petra murmured.

When Knox’s gaze swung back to me, his eyes narrowed. Unwilling to let him see that he’d wounded me, I smiled. It felt more like a grimace as I tried to assume an air of innocence.

I could see the questions swirling through Knox’s eyes as he looked from me to Gizzi and back again. He didn’t voice them, most likely because he wouldn’t give my mother the satisfaction of learning he didn’t know what Gizzi was.

If I stayed here after this, I was sure I’d hear about it from Knox, but at least I didn’t have to deal with his shitty attitude right now.

“We should get this started,” Malakor, the king of the strigoi, said.

The ugly man’s red eyes burned into me. He had a tapered face, thin features, and a build so frail that he looked like a small breeze could blow him over.

Like all male strigoi, he was bald with nearly translucent skin, thin lips, and sharp cheekbones. When he spoke, his fangs were clearly visible. Oddly shriveled, his ears were much smaller than they should have been, and strangely lumpy.

From what I’d heard in snippets from my mother over the years, the other kingdoms despised the strigoi, but because of their ability to drink blood and drain souls from their victims, they were powerful creatures. They also possessed blood magic; I didn’t know how it worked or what exactly happened when they used it, but the powers made others uneasy.

“Yes, let’s start,” Alwin said. “Will you sit, Knox?”

“No.”

The way his mouth pursed told me that Alwin didn’t like Knox’s refusal, but he knew better than to challenge an alpha.

“There’s nothing to start, or any reason for you to be here,” Knox said. “I took the girl from the harem; she is my prisoner as much as I was Marina’s. If she wants her daughter back, she’ll have to break the curse to get her.”

This time, I managed to keep myself from wincing as those words struck deep into my heart. If she agreed to break the curse, he would hand me back to her.

My mother’s fingers stopped drumming on the table as her smirk grew. “It’s impossible to break the curse… unless we get our collective powers back. If that happens, we’ll gladly break the curse and free the shifters.”

“Can they be freed?” Knox asked.

“Of course,” she said with a flick of her blood-red nails.

The room went deathly silent as every eye shot to the woman who was grinning like the cat who’d eaten the canary. I didn’t know if she was telling the truth or not, but I was sure the shifters wanted to believe her.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Knox

No one moved after Marina’s statement, but I’d suspected this was the tack this bitch would take the second I saw her here. After they cursed Wildwood, the rest of the kingdoms united to neuter the dark sorcerers and sorceresses by binding their ability to use their collective magic.

Marina coveted getting their full power back and was dangling the curse as a way to get it and Briar back.

Did the queen of the night casters hope I’d go for Briar when she entered the harem to bring about this meeting? I almost glanced back at Briar but refrained from doing so. Instead, though it sickened me to look Marina in the eye, I held her gaze.

Alwin cleared his throat before speaking. “Your collective powers were stripped from you by all of us—” He waved a hand at all those sitting at the table. “—because you used them so destructively against another kingdom. What guarantee would you give us not to do such a thing again?”

“We’d all have to agree to let them have their powers back,” Zarmen inserted gruffly. “Knox wants to save his kingdom, but Marina and her kind cannot be trusted against us.”

“Of course,” Alwin placated. “We are just examining this scenario. If Knox returns your daughter and we return your collective powers, what guarantee would we have that you wouldn’t use them against another kingdom?”

Unable to stop it, the beast twisted within me as it bellowed against the idea of returning Briar. While I still didn’t trust her completely, the beast craved its mate. I’d vowed to never claim her as such again, but the twisted creature Marina created ran on pure instinct, and it didn’t give a shit about my intentions.

Though I was reluctant to do so, I had to admit I didn’t want to give her back either. I loathed her kind with every fiber of my being, but Briar was different; she’d proven that during her Needing and with her care of the roses.