Page 44 of Kingdom of Briars and Roses (Cursed Fae Courts #1)

Chapter Forty-Four

Rydian

A urelia’s hand in mine went cold.

I swept my gaze over our surroundings in a quick assessment. Daegel and Slade had other orders, and the Withered were busy with Callan and whatever guests they’d managed to pin down. No one else was coming.

I turned to face Duron without fully taking my gaze off Koraz.

My father was as I’d always known him—cold, cruel, with eyes like frozen amber and a voice like a blade cutting through the air.

“I’m afraid your little tryst ends now,” he said. “What a waste of fucking power too.”

On my other side, Koraz grinned, shifting his grip on the wickedly curved blade in his hands. I would have preferred to kill him much more slowly than time would allow tonight. But his death would satisfy me nonetheless.

His red eyes gleamed with amusement as he looked at me. “I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time.”

He took a step toward me.

“Rydian,” Aurelia breathed .

She stood at my side, her chest rising and falling with quick breaths that gave away her fear, but I felt the power crackling beneath her skin. Furyfire licked at her fingertips—black, twisted flames that pulsed with unnatural heat. Power she barely understood. Power she might never be able to control unless she stopped fighting it and truly accepted what she was.

“If you touch her, I will peel your skin from your bones,” I said.

Duron merely laughed, the sound cutting right through the sharpest edges of my threat. I tightened my grip on my sword, my heartbeat steady even as unease coiled in my gut.

I couldn’t touch Duron.

Even if I wanted to, the blood vow wouldn’t allow it.

Koraz saw it in my face before I could mask it. His grin sharpened. “Ah. There it is. That pathetic obedience. Like a dog trained to heel.”

I ignored him and watched Duron instead. He hadn’t moved toward us, nor had he interrupted Koraz’s taunts, which told me he was going to let his advisor fight this one for him. Good. I’d been waiting for this chance. Now I just had to get Aurelia to leave me to it.

“Listen to me,” I said in a low voice, uncaring that they could hear us. “I want you to run to the edge of the garden when I tell you. Don’t stop, no matter what you hear?—”

“No,” she hissed, pulling her hand from mine. “I’m not leaving you.”

“Furious.”

“I’m done running,” she said. “I choose to fight.”

Hope wove through the violence in my veins, but I shoved it back. She was fighting for herself, and that was all I could ask of her now. All I needed.

Koraz tilted his head, watching me like a predator sizing up weak prey. “Tell me, does she know?” His voice dipped into something cruel. “Does she know you can’t so much as lift a blade against your master?”

Aurelia stiffened beside me, her flames flickering with uncertainty.

I didn’t look at her. Instead, I raised my sword, nodding toward Koraz. “Are we going to fight, or do you need to run your mouth a little longer?”

Koraz lunged first.

I met him mid-strike, the force of his attack rattling through my bones. He’d poured magic into the blow. And the next one, and the next.

The gardens blurred around us as we moved—strike, parry, counter—his vicious stabs meeting my speed. He fought like a battering ram, every thrust of his blade or his magic meant to break me in half. I dodged, spinning low to avoid the crushing weight of his blade, but my focus split the moment I heard Aurelia’s sharp inhale behind me.

I turned, just for a second?—

Pain tore through my side.

Koraz’s blade bit deep, hot blood spilling down my ribs. I gritted my teeth, forcing myself to stay upright, to move before he could strike again. His magic infiltrated my flesh like a poison.

“Rydian!”

Aurelia’s voice was raw with fear, but I had no time to reassure her. I had to finish this.

Koraz lifted his sword for the killing blow?—

My shadows coiled around him, using his blind spots to tug on his momentum. To slow him just enough. In the moment of his hesitation, I twisted, driving my blade through his chest before he could land another strike. His eyes went wide as he staggered, a choking sound spilling from his lips. I ripped my sword free, and Koraz collapsed to his knees, blood blooming dark across his tunic. It was more than satisfying to watch.

But it wasn’t over.

Duron remained, untouched, standing in the firelit garden like a ghost of every nightmare I’d ever had. I turned to him, blade slick with Koraz’s blood?—

And my body seized.

Pain. Deep, writhing, unnatural. My hands trembled as I tried to lift my sword, but the moment I so much as thought of striking him, the blood vow coiled around my bones like barbed wire, lashing deep.

I gasped, barely able to breathe.

Duron smiled. “I wondered when you’d try.”

I could do nothing. Couldn’t move, couldn’t fight. I was utterly, uselessly helpless .

And Aurelia saw it all.

Her face was unreadable—shock, betrayal, fury all twisting into something I didn’t have the words for. But there was no time to explain, no time to tell her I’d done this to protect .

Because the furyfire at her fingertips erupted into an inferno.

Duron’s smirk vanished, and he threw his hands up to block it. A windstorm blew from his palms—the last dregs of his waning magic—and for a moment, I wondered if it would be enough to stop the furyfire, but it didn’t last. The black flames overtook the wind, eating through whatever barrier it had provided. The moment those dark flames touched his flesh, Duron screamed.

But Aurelia’s flame didn’t stop.

Rather than lick at his clothing, it engulfed Duron’s entire form. He staggered, his vain glamour peeling away, his wrinkled skin cracking like scorched parchment beneath the force of her magic. He opened his mouth—to speak, to scream—but the furyfire swallowed him whole.

I felt it like a weight being lifted off my skin. A pressure between my shoulder blades that had been there so long I’d forgotten what it felt like without it. But then it was gone. The blood in my veins answered to Duron no longer.

Instead, it sang only for her.

The flames winked out, and all that remained of the Autumn king was a pile of ash.

Trembling, Aurelia stared at Duron’s ashes, her golden hair wild, her skin glowing as if she’d somehow taken power from the kill itself. Slowly, she turned to me, and I noted the power that still clung to her skin, still burned in her eyes. But it wasn’t triumph in her expression. It was something darker. Something depthless and unending and fated. Something even the Fates and Furiosities hadn’t seen coming.

I knew, in that moment, that I should be afraid.

Not of her.

For her.

For what she’d just done.

For what she’d become.

For what she’d do when she found out the truth. Not just what I’d planned for her tonight but the truth of her choices and who’d ordered me to let her make them. To do it all without telling her what had really brought me into her life. The truth of what she was capable of. What she’d just chosen. And what it would cost her in the end.

And how, no matter that I’d kept her safe?—

She might never forgive me for any of it.