Page 83 of Forgotten Fate

“Elias,” I muttered. “Just tell me.”

He looked up and his eyes met mine. “I’m…a lycan.” He stared into me, but I only looked back in confusion. I had no idea what a lycan was.

Volund recognized my puzzled expression. “A lycan,” he repeated, like hearing it a second time would help it make sense to me. It didn’t. “An immortal shapeshifter. A wolf.” He looked impatient now.

Awolf. I began compiling the pieces of the puzzle, and fitting them together in my mind. The wolf I thought I had been seeing wasn’t a hallucination after all?

No. No, that was impossible. There was no such thing as giant wolves. No such thing as shapeshifters and witches and magic. They didn’t exist.Couldn’texist.

“You’re fucking insane,” I sneered at Volund.

A frown crossed the king’s face, yet he still looked malevolent as ever. “Am I telling the truth, Elias?” he said without breaking eye contact with me.

I turned to Elias, a pleading look on his face. “Yes,” he muttered. I narrowed my eyes at him. Why was he feeding into this? Was he fucking insane too?

“And how long have you been the personal assassin to the past kings of Sprath?” Volund asked.

Elias sighed. “Don’t you think this is enough?”

“Answerthe damn question,” Volund nearly shouted.

Elias glanced between me and the Sprathian king. Elias was surely much younger than Volund, so how could he have worked for his ancestors?

“Over three hundred years,” Elias answered.

I stood in utter disbelief. What was his game here, really? Was there a good reason he was feeding into Volund’s insanity?

Volund sighed and took his hand off my shoulder to rub at his brows, clearly exasperated. “I can see you don’t believe what you’re hearing.” He pulled the knife away from my neck, causing blood to drip a little more heavily. He sheathed it at his belt, then pulled a new knife from his sash. “I guess I’ll have to prove it to you.”

Volund walked over to Elias with determination.

“What are you doing?” I shrieked.

One step closer. Two. He raised his knife.

“Stop!” I begged.

He was only a few feet from Elias, who sat on his knees, unmoving.

“Stop it!” I yelled again, squirming in my captor’s arms and feelinghis grip tighten, bruising my wrists. Volund closed the gap between himself and Elias, raised his knife, then brought it down with force, stabbing Elias directly in his chest.

The blood-curdling scream that came out of me could have woken the dead. I watched in horror as Volund pulled his knife out and Elias fell forward onto his hands, blood dripping from his chest. I couldn’t hear his grunts of pain over my own desperate screams.

Volund stepped back, a wicked smile on his face, and a bloody knife in hand. “Let her go,” he told the warrior who had been in charge of constraining me. The man obeyed, and I immediately sprinted to Elias, dropping to the ground in front of him.

“Oh gods, Elias! We have to put pressure on it!” I demanded as he leaned back onto his knees. In that moment, there was only me and him, and I was focused solely on keeping him from dying. It didn’t matter that he was hired to kill me. It didn’t matter if our relationship meant nothing. I couldn’t –wouldn’t– let him die.

“Aura,” he said gently.

I ripped the top of his tunic down until I found where he had been stabbed. Then I tore off a piece of my own sleeve in one fluid movement, and pressed it against the wound. Elias fidgeted. “Stop moving!” I shrieked. “We have to stop the bleeding!”

“Aura,” Elias said a little more sternly, putting a hand to my cheek.

“You’re not dying today, do you hear me?!”

“Aura,” he said again, the demand in his tone making me finally look up at him. “I’m fine,” he assured me, with no evidence that he was still in pain shown anywhere on his face. “Look.”

With tears streaming down my cheeks, I pulled my hands away and looked at the wound, and…it wasn’t bleeding anymore.