Page 13 of A Rising Hope (The Freckled Fate #3)

13

INSANARIA

“ T hey always miss the best parts of my speeches,” I murmured to my shadows, kicking over the dead girl’s cooling body. Her piss tainted the precious mixed magic blood that puddled on my floor, but that was a minor inconvenience. No, what was truly important was that for the first time in years , the air no longer was bitter, the sun felt warm against my skin.

I felt alive.

My powers surged too, aware of my jubilant victory, of the triumphant future now only a breath away.

All. These. Years. And now I had the missing piece to the puzzle.

Nothing else mattered.

I gestured with my hand, and all the bodies dropped from the ceiling to the ground in one loud wave. I made my way across the room to the otherworldly throne where thorns were rapidly weaving together. A few more touches of my magic, and a thin stream of blood siphoned from Finn’s body, reached the ceremonial goblet in my hand.

I scratched my chin, a bit annoyed at the sluggishness of the process. The red drops filled the cup one by one, but I needed it faster. I rested my elbows on the armrests of the black throne.

I had waited an eternity for this. What were a few more minutes?

“Ugh, what now?” I turned to my shadows hissing at me, then at the center of the room, a flash and an ominous cloud of smoke and blood appeared out of nowhere, swirling like a hungry void. “Well, that’s new.” I snarled, holding onto the cup slowly filling with blood. The spinning, dark red cloud encompassed the entire room. It was loud and obnoxious, but much less than the figure that appeared in the middle of it.

Gideon Bellator.

His face void of its color, and the whites of his eyes were completely black. But it was that fundamental, primal rage as fire crackled through his entire body at the sight of the motionless figure of his lover on the floor soaked in blood.

He was too late, and my triumphant smile told him so.

“Oh, you missed all the fun, General,” I shouted over the thunderous loud gusts of the foreign portal he had come through. My shadows hissed louder, not liking the unknown anomaly. Healer boy, they whispered as another stranger popped out from the portal .

But he could not stop me now.

Nobody could.

Not anymore.