Page 54 of Courting the Fae Captain (Romancing the Realms #4)

‘In spite of all the death, I never lost hope. I might be gone tomorrow, but someday someone will take up arms and end the killing. Someone will find a way to break the chains and set us free.’

Journal excerpt, author unknown

M y eyes immediately welled up when I saw her.

This close, I could see her features clearly, and she was as beautiful as the day she’d left.

Even covered in dirt and whatever other manner of filth, my mother’s face was a beacon of light.

Her blonde hair was braided much like mine, and her blue eyes—my eyes—gleamed.

The state of her body, however … I gulped down the lump in my throat as I took in the obvious malnourishment and abuse she’d been through.

Her body was thin and pale, her cheeks gaunt, and her eyes sunken in.

Yes, the beauty was still there, even if trauma was visible in every line, or bruise, or scar.

And I knew there were many of those lining her back alone.

“My daughter,” she said, running to me where I still lay inside the Pentad’s underground chamber. “I’m so sorry, Aeris. I’m so very sorry.” She burst into tears as she beheld the state of me, all the blood now pooling over the dirt.

All I wanted was to hug her, but with the weapons jutting out of me and the blood trail, I was fading. Instead, I held out a weak hand for her to slide her own into, then tried for a smile. “It’s okay, Mum. I’m okay.”

“You’ve been stabbed in two places and you’re bleeding out,” she said with that familiar stern tone I remembered well. “You’re anything but okay. Just as well, your mate brought some friends.”

I turned to the door as Margaery hurried in, her face paling upon seeing the dead bodies and the Pentad males still alive.

But she held her chin high and calmly set her satchel down with an anxious smile for my sake.

She got to work on my wounds immediately and pointedly avoided her employer as he sagged atop the table across the room.

She removed the first dagger from my lower back and began immediately cleaning and dressing the wound.

I couldn’t help the shriek that escaped me as I felt it slide out.

She repeated it with the other dagger, to which my scream was much more piercing.

I almost passed out as my lids fluttered with exhaustion.

But then another face appeared, and then another female was hunched over me, using her blood magic to stunt the bleeding and heal my wounds.

“Portia?” I rasped as her face came into view.

“I still don’t like you,” she huffed as she worked. “Just to be clear. But I guess I … I don’t blame you anymore for what your father did. Or for doing what you needed to survive the Rite. And I suppose forming a rebellion was pretty badass.”

I grinned, the motion turning to a sigh as relief flooded my bones and eased the tightness from my muscles. The searing pain that had turned to a dull throb slowly ceased, and I sat up a little straighter.

“I’m sure I can still win you over,” I said.

“Don’t hold your breath,” she grumbled, but there was the slightest hint of a smile on her face when she said it.

I looked past the females to my mate, who walked towards us with a beautiful female in tow. “Is this…?”

“My mother, Lorelia,” he said proudly as he placed his hands gently on her shoulders and ushered her forward.

She smiled nervously, but the gesture was warm and inviting. Her blue eyes—the mirror image of Raithe’s—sparkled as she beheld me. To my surprise, she crouched and took my hands in her own. Her grip was firm, even with the angry red lines around her wrists left from shackles.

“Aeris,” she said softly. “There are no words to repay what you and my son have done today. There will never be enough lifetimes to do that.”

I squeezed her hands. “There is nothing to repay. We did what was right. What I wish someone could have done sooner.”

“I tried,” she admitted softly.

“We both did,” my mother said as she patted Lorelia’s arm. “But we’re here now. We are here to see this done.”

“And you will,” I said as Margaery and Portia finished their work and nodded their okay for me to stand. My mother and Portia assisted me to my feet. I looked at Portia in the eye and jerked my chin at my father. “Consider this a gesture of goodwill.”

She wiped her hands on her pants before she strode toward the table for a better look. She bared her fangs as she looked upon my father’s face. “Dariel Lockhart. I have been waiting for this moment for a long time.”

He didn’t even bother to respond. I took my mother's and Lorelia’s hands and gently walked them towards the table.

Raithe removed his daggers from my father’s hands, eliciting a shriek, then grabbed him under the armpits before turning him and dumping him to his knees.

After, he grabbed the lion, followed by his father, the eagle, and lined them up beside the sea serpent.

“Please,” the lion mewed. “Please set me free. I’ll give you anything. I’ll?—”

“You will cease speaking or I will rip out your wretched tongue,” Raithe commanded.

Whimpers were the lion’s only answer, and he did not dare move. Did not dare to try his luck at escaping. As for Raithe’s father … My mate didn’t say a word to him. The eagle simply held his chin high and stared with his brown eyes defiantly.

“For the Pentad,” he said. “I have no regrets.”

My heart sank for Raithe. Not that I’d expected any less, but I had hoped for some remorse from a father to his son. Wishful thinking, on my part.

When the three of them were on their knees before us, my mother, Lorelia, Portia, and Raithe beside me, I spoke.

“Since the moment you married them, these males have done nothing but abuse, control, and coerce. They took your lives from you, so I think it’s only fitting that you be given the chance to do the same. ”

“You want us to kill them?” Lorelia asked as she eyed her husband. It was a simple question without hesitation or fear. And the pain in her eyes … the rage swirling like storms … I knew she would do it, too.

“Kill them or let them rot for the rest of their long and miserable lives as they would have done to you.” I shrugged as I looked at the three pitiful beings before me, feeling nothing. “We will honour your wishes either way.”

Lorelia, Portia, and my mother stood before the three males in perfect opposition. Oh, how the tides had turned.

“Give me a weapon,” my mother said. Her voice was cold and hard, and her frame no longer shook.

Instead, she squared her shoulders as she took the dagger I handed her.

Portia joined her side, her dagger already palmed.

Lorelia moved before her husband, which left the lion cowering on his own in a puddle of his own making.

“What do you want to do with him?” Raithe asked with a raised brow.

I looked at the lion in disgust, wondering how something so pitiful had once held the power to harm so many.

“We both know what he did to those females over the years. What he could have easily done to me if you hadn’t been there.

What he likely did to someone else that night. Make it hurt. Make him suffer.”

Raithe’s lips cut a cold slice across his face. “With pleasure.” He stood before the lion, sword in hand, and grabbed a fistful of brown hair from his scalp. “I told you I was going to kill you. And I’m very much going to enjoy it.”

“Wait!” my father called out. “Have mercy on your father.” He looked at my mother, pleading. “On your husband. Did I not take care of you? Keep you safe?”

“Safe?” she said, the voice ripping from her lungs with a vengeance.

“You beat me, caged me, manipulated and gaslit me until I didn’t know my own worth and questioned my own sanity.

” Tears filled her eyes, but she took a confident step forward.

“You condemned me to that prison when I finally tried to break free and speak up. You took my daughter from me. Mercy?” She laughed, cold and mirthless.

“You don’t know the meaning of the word.

The pain you’re about to feel is but a fraction of the horrors you put me and countless others through.

You deserve so much worse for what you’ve done. This death? This is mercy.”

She stepped forward and sank the blade into my father’s chest with a fierce cry.

Lorelia took one look at her, then at her husband, and followed suit.

Portia stood back, pure satisfaction and feminine rage glittering in her dark eyes as she watched.

And then Raithe moved with cold calculation as he sliced his blade across the lion’s stomach slowly, watching as the male’s innards uncoiled to the ground.

The males’ screams echoed off the walls, which suddenly appeared to be moving.

I blinked as countless moths spiralled out of cracks and crevices, their wings rustling like the turning pages of a book.

Gold glittered in every direction, the faces of a hundred skulls staring at me from the moths’ backs.

I held a finger out and marvelled as one landed on it, its wings flexing and its antennas twitching as it moved gently.

They were a symbol of death and mortality—a reminder of the fragile lifecycle we lived through.

But to me, in this moment, they represented balance.

They were the closing of a chapter and the promise of a new one. They were not death. We were. These females, my mate … and me. Raithe finished the lion, then walked to my side. He intertwined blood-soaked fingers in mine, standing in silent solidarity as we watched the females before us.

The males weren’t the ones screaming anymore. Just the females as they sliced again and again, their battle roars and mournful cries more cutting than any blade. The bodies had long ceased moving, but I didn’t move an inch as they did what they had to do.

Raithe and I watched as the moths swarmed. We watched until the females turned around, covered in blood and gore. They each dropped their weapons to the ground.

“It’s over,” Portia said slowly, almost like she couldn’t believe it. “It’s done.”

“What do we do now?” Lorelia said softly.

“Now comes the healing,” I replied as I squeezed Raithe’s hand. “Now we get to live.”