Page 70

“Yes,” she said as she started to walk towards me. I tried to fight harder against the power she held me with, but it was no use. So, I did the only thing I could do…pleaded with her.

“Ella, fight it! Try, baby, I am begging you!”

“Ella is lost to my queen, your pleas are useless and nothing but entertaining,” Garmr said laughing. But I ignored him and focused instead on Ella.

“You are being controlled, you have to fight it. Everything he told you is a lie!” I tried. Finally, she reached me and with a tender hand placed on my cheek, I thought I had finally broken through. Tears filled my eyes as she gave me a curious look.

But then, she thrust her arm back and suddenly I was in agony as she stabbed me with a piece of broken wood straight into my gut. I roared in pain, and all at once I fell to the floor as her powers released me. My hands went to the stake in my stomach, my blood soaking the stone as my strength left me, making me collapse. My eyes focused on the blood as it traveled through the cracks between the slabs.

But then, there was a glistening of something else, as I saw it rolling towards me. A ring…Ella’s ring.

The one I gave her.

So, with the last of my strength, I reached out and grabbed it, clutching it to me as if it was the last part of her I could hold on to. Because I had failed to save her. And in the end…

Love had killed us both.

Which is why with my last breath, I spoke the words that I could only hope somewhere deep inside her, she could hear…

“I love you, Red, Ella, My love…my wild one.”

After that I finally let go, feeling myself falling into the abyss of death as my world…

Ended.

25

BETRAYAL

The moment I became aware that I was still breathing, I woke with a start, only one name slipping past my lips like many times before.

“Ella!”I called out in the type of desperation only true love could speak of. I bolted upright, the pain in doing so only proving to me that I wasn’t dead yet, and this wasn’t my own brand of Hell. Although without seeing her here now, it felt like I had been sent there.

“Easy, brother.” Orth’s voice was the only anchor I could cling onto as Ella’s voice became a haunting memory.

“What… what happened?” I asked, feeling my head spin, as if I had lost too much blood and most of it now went rushing to my head.

“We saved your ass, or should I say, the Vampire did.”

I frowned at that, knowing of only one vampire he could mean.

“Lucius?”

“In the flesh,” the man in question replied, making me focus on where it had come from, seeing him standing by a door and not one I recognized. Just like the room I was now in. One where the walls looked as if they were made from giant shards of Obsidian. As for the bed, this too looked to have been carved out of the stone, with very little else in the room.

“Where is Ella?” I asked, despite my mind already screaming this at me…she was gone.I looked first to the one who wouldn’t answer me and then to my brother, who looked like he did want to.

“She… she…”

“She what?” I snapped, as even in my weakened state, I could feel my anger building.

“She tried to kill you, Cerberus,” Lucius answered, clearly knowing that my brother didn’t have the heart to say it.

“No… no, she…” This denial quickly trailed off as memories started to assault me. First with waking her up, to then having her fight me. And then, her tender touch, just before… before…the pain.

“She is lost to you,” Lucius told me, making me shout,

“No! It wasn’t her! It wasn’t my Ella. She was being controlled, manipulated. Her power, it’s controlling her, and Garmr, he is controlling it.”