Page 71 of A Fate of Blood and Magic (Fated #2)

Pietro didn’t see it, couldn’t see it, not with his heart and mind turned into this vengeful, prejudiced, hard stone.

My heart drummed hard and fast, waging a silent war against my ribs. I didn’t know how this would end, only that it had to. Only that Pietro had to die, and his death must come at my hands.

He’d hurt Elias and had gone after the babies nestled in my womb. He couldn’t survive this. I wouldn’t have it.

Then, we’d find the other traitors.

The dagger at my ankle called to me, so I grabbed it while I called to my mage magic, my mind swimming through the texts I’d read with Alastor and the lessons he’d given me. There were answers there. I simply needed to find them.

In the span of a blink, Elias was on top of Pietro. Their movements were too fast to track, but I saw Elias stumble as he held an arm across his stomach. Pietro used the opportunity to punch Elias. At the final blow to Elias’s head, Elias staggered back, his hold on the dagger slackening.

Pietro took the dagger, making it, along with the sword he carried, disappear into his inner pocket of magic. When Elias fell to his knees, his head drooping forward, Pietro grabbed his hair and pulled his head upright.

“Only once you’ve watched me kill your mate will I give you the mercy of death,” Pietro said.

A low rumble reverberated from Elias’s chest. After several failed attempts, he finally rose to his feet.

“You will not harm my mate,” he ground out, spitting blood again.

Before he could lunge at Pietro again, fire erupted around me. With a shocked gasp, I took a retreating step, only for the fire to cage me in. The edges of the fiery flames taunted me as it drew closer and closer, sometimes lessening in size but always moving closer.

I tried to reach for Alastor but couldn’t find the threads of his magic.

Something inside me stirred. While I wasn’t certain what I was doing, I trusted that stirring and let it guide me.

I picked at the small wound I’d made on my hand until I drew blood and was about to hold my palm over the enclosing fire when Elias leaped through the fire to stand beside me.

His shoulders heaved with every forceful breath he took, but then I was in his arms with him carrying me as he jumped through the flames again.

On the other side of the circle of fire, he dropped to his knees with a loud wheeze.

I knelt beside him, pushing the sweaty strands of his hair away from his face.

Pietro rounded the fire, walking slowly to us with a sword in his hand.

The magic born of my blood called to me, and I knew, in my soul, I had to answer her.

“Bite me,” I said, offering Elias my uncut hand.

With a shake of his head, he lowered my hand.

“Trust me, mo elma, ” I urged. “Bite me.”

The pale violet of his eyes dulled further, but he did as I asked and struck a vein on my wrist. As he pulled from my blood, I stretched out my other hand.

Fire licked at my hand, but I kept it there, trying to ignore the pain as I fisted my hand so drops of blood would spill as I chanted the words that echoed in my head.

My words came out loud, and the earth beneath us trembled.

I chanted louder, as loud as the wind that howled around us, throwing my fear and hope into every word.

When I felt a third drop of blood drip from my hand, I pulled it away from the fire.

Although the skin was charred, I turned to run my fingers through Elias’s hair.

It was as much for him as it was to center me.

Withdrawing my hand from his lips, he grasped my hand and stood on shaky legs.

I used my magic to summon the fire that submitted to my command. I cut off its source, forcing it to dwindle. Once it was nothing more than a tiny flame, I saw that Pietro watched us with a bewildered look in his eyes.

Rather than letting the flame die out, I sent it to surround the traitorous messenger. He shouted when my flames licked his flesh, but the embers seemed to delight in his pain. Or maybe I was the one who found joy in it.

Although I wanted the fire to consume him, I thickened the flames as they danced around him to form a cage. While I wanted his death, yearned for it, he couldn’t die just yet. Not until we had the names of the fae who’d also betrayed us .

Pietro shouted again, but I couldn’t hear what he said.

I turned my face to peer up at Elias. The sickly sallow of his face worried me. His hand trembled when he reached my face to cup my cheek, and I leaned into his touch.

“I love you.” His words were soft, his eyes searching. “I love you,” he repeated, the words slower and more tender.

His eyes rolled back, and I tried to catch him to keep him from further hurting himself, but he was too heavy and landed on my crumpling body instead.

“Shit!” Every part of me burned in agony, but I held him, his large frame against my chest, his lolled head braced on my shoulder.

This wasn’t how he died. It couldn’t be.

“Alastor!” I screamed, the veins on my neck stretching at the force.

A sob tore through me as I held Elias’s limp body closer to me. I reached for the bleeding wound on his stomach and pressed my palm hard against it. Elias didn’t stir or groan, and it filled me with a hopelessness that strangled me.

The familiar threads of Alastor’s magic brushed against my mind. I let out another sob, this one filled with hope.

“Scream again,” he said.

“Alastor!” While his name rang loud, it came out broken and desperate.

“We’re close, Teddy.” His words came out gentle and coaxing. “Keep shouting. We’re coming for you.”

I screamed again, my shouts scraping across my throat. I screamed and screamed, my voice growing hoarse. With my face buried in Elias’s hair, I cried, my body shaking with every forceful sob.

I thought of the tattoo on my back, thought of Eiran and the astral realm. I pictured myself leaving my body to get to him and beg him for Elias’s life.

It stayed silent, and I wondered if this was it. Had I begged for too many lives?

“Take me with him,” I thought, projecting those words to Eiran.

“Someday,” Eiran said. “Not today.”

The air shifted. Not with wind or footsteps, but with power. It flooded over us like black fog slipping through cracks. I recognized Alastor’s magic and the rage he barely contained made my skin prickle.

Alastor’s magic arrived before he did but only just. He stepped from behind the trees, and he wasn’t the composed enigmatic mage I’d come to know. He was something feral, something barely restrained.

He didn’t speak but looked at me, blood-streaked and shaking while I cradled Elias’s limp body, and then he turned his gaze on Pietro, who was still contained behind a wall of his own fire.

Alastor’s shadows surged forward, slamming into the fire, not to weaken it, but maybe to show him what little power he had left.

Pietro screamed as the shadows writhed around him, tearing and burning but still holding back enough to let him feel the promise of what would come.

Alastor took a single step forward, his voice cold. “You touched what’s hers.”

Then he moved. He didn’t walk but his magic descended upon Pietro like a storm summoned from the deepest pits of hell. Shadows cracked against the fire, and the ground itself trembled with Alastor’s fury.

But before the darkness could close in completely, I called to him quietly, barely more than a whisper.

“I want to be the one who kills him.” My voice was raw and shaky, but it stopped Alastor.

The shadows stilled and he turned his head, his eyes meeting mine. He didn’t question me but gave me the smallest nod. Then the shadows receded, returning back to its master.

Silence fell and my breath trembled but I didn’t loosen my grip on Elias.

Familiar, strong arms encircled me from behind.

“Brenton.” I knew it was him by scent alone, but I still fought him, twisting in his hold as Alastor moved to carry Elias.

“You did good, Teddy,” he said, kissing the top of my head.

I turned my head, not wanting to take my eyes off my mate.

His eyes were half opened, and his head fell back, making all that inky black hair I loved digging my fingers through fall limply.

The color of his skin was an unnatural deep gray, while his lips had turned blue. Blood fell from his open mouth.

Not today, I repeated Eiran’s words. Neither Elias nor I were dying today.

When I shivered, Finley stepped beside me and took off her long-sleeved shirt to drape it over me.

While I wanted to burrow against Brenton’s chest, I shifted, and Brenton let me go to stand on my own.

I slipped Finley’s shirt on, grateful for the warmth it provided, but it couldn’t reach the frigidity that seeped into my bones.

I trailed quaking fingers across Elias’s cheeks to his lips.

“You’re not dying today,” I told him, mirroring what I’d once told him back in Colina after a lirio and nyxx attack just outside the food bank.

Nalari had once said those words had saved his life, our bond forcing him to breathe and live because I asked it of him. Would the same be true with our bond gone?

“I forbid it, Elias.”

Hayden hurried to me when I beckoned him, the sword he carried in his one hand vanished when he put it in his inner pocket of magic.

“Who else can bend space?” I asked the several fae crowding around us.

A female I didn’t recognize lifted her hand.

Nodding, I turned back to Hayden. “Take our king to Leah to heal him. Stay with him and guard him and Leah. We have unknown traitors in our home. You will not permit them to harm your king. I’ll go to him once we know who else is involved. Do you understand?”

He held a fist to his chest and bowed. “Yes, Your Highness.”

Still holding Elias, Alastor gripped Hayden’s shoulder, and they disappeared together.

I turned to the female who could bend space.

“I need you to take the traitor to the prison cell,” I told her. “Finley and Brenton will go with you. Once he is secure, you may return for me and the rest of our group.”

The three fae who would stay back with me nodded.

“I can stay back so that you may go,” Finley offered. “If others are hiding in the woods, my magic can stop them.”

But her magic wasn’t as reliable as my mage magic.

I called to the fire that surrounded Pietro and made the flames rise. “As can mine.”

“Ted,” Brenton said low. “Your hand’s burned. You should see a healer. ”

I studied my left palm, where I’d held my hand over the fire as I offered it my blood. It was burned, although not nearly as bad as Elias’s several burns.

The fury inside me molded into something else, something dark. It was a primal, almost possessive need to protect my husband and mate, the male who held my heart. An instinct to kill the ones who meant to kill him.

It made me understand and appreciate Elias’s command to kill Javier’s father. Given the opportunity, I would’ve done the same for him had I walked into the same scenario he had. Hell, I would do the same once we’d tortured Pietro and bled him of every confession he held in his blackened heart.

Deep inside me, my soul luxuriated at the thought.

“You or George can question him, but his death will come at my hands.”