Page 29 of Risen (Love and Revenge #6)

My damaged throat worked as I swallowed the desire to tell her to go fuck herself.

Now I knew why everyone in the court always spoke so gleefully of murdering her.

Her presence grated on me, her fake, sickly sweet act irritating to my empathic abilities.

She looked small and harmless, but the energies I picked up from her said she was more dangerous and insane than anyone realized.

“What’s the matter?” she pouted, “cat got your tongue?” Then she laughed at her own bad joke, the tinkling sound echoing strangely in the muted, magic-filled space.

I responded by lifting the handgun I held at my side and firing at her.

The crazy little queen was vampire-fast. She dodged out of the way with a laugh, but I smirked at her, even as I felt a heavy sickness forming in my gut.

The magic of her ritual snapped off suddenly, the backlash smacking into all of us, sending everyone to the floor before we all scrambled to right ourselves.

The sorcerer didn’t get back up, still sprawling in a puddle of blood and.

.. tissue , thanks to the bullet that had never been meant for Acacia.

I had been training with Martina and the others.

I wasn’t the best in a fight, because it was hard for me to overcome my empathic abilities and hurt my opponent.

But pulling a trigger in the heat of the moment was easier.

At least as far as results went. I would probably never sleep again after this.

The couple of cultists I had managed to get a shot at upstairs had been wounded, but the others finished them off, and they had been actively attacking us in the heat of the fight. I had never killed someone in cold blood before.

Acacia screamed in fury when she realized that I had just ruined her ritual.

Josh darted behind her, grabbed the false orb, and smashed it on the stone floor, just for good measure.

There was no chance of her stealing Robin’s power and enslaving the dragon now.

But it left us facing off with a furious vampire.

One strong enough to rule the syndicate’s nest of monsters.

I started to back away from the death I could see in Acacia’s glare.

She darted toward me with her claws raised, barely more than a blur of motion.

I got off one shot before she was within touching distance.

The gunshot wound didn’t do much to stop her, but it did make her jerk with the impact, slowing her for a fraction of a second.

That was all the time Josh needed to get between us, shielding me with his less breakable vampire body.

Acacia backhanded him so hard his head snapped to the side and blood sprayed from his lip, but he didn’t move otherwise, his back pressed to my front, squishing me against the wall behind us to shield me.

Acacia’s voice softened, once more childlike and sweet despite the seething rage she was putting off. “Oh, pet. You really shouldn’t have done that.” She stepped back, and I craned my neck enough to see around Josh and catch sight of her, happy grin. “Now I’ll have to punish you.”

Josh’s body jerked as she did something with their weakened bond that caused his breath to stutter.

“I know you’ve been playing around with the curse breaker,” she purred, dragging a finger tipped in a long, glossy red nail down the center of his chest. “But you know you can’t ever truly be rid of my gift.

You’ll always be mine, pet. You’re too weak to exist on your own. ”

Josh growled. But acacia only laughed, and her vampire aura swelled, adding a bit of rot to the darkness and terror in the air. “Kill the faun,” she said easily. “Drain him. Then we’ll go upstairs and make me empress.”

Josh’s body jerked again, and he gave a little moan as the maker bond tightened around his will. He spun to face me, his jaw clenched. His hands—the beautiful, careful hands of a beta who only wanted to care for others, curved into claws.

Then he lunged.

I tried to dive to the side, but I was only a faun, and far slower than a vampire.

His claws sank into my arm and pain seared through me as he yanked me close.

His other hand fisted in my hair, yanking my head to the side so hard it was a wonder he didn’t break my neck.

His fangs flashed, scraped along my skin as I struggled in vain against his vise-like grip.

I was pinned to the wall once more, but this time, Josh wasn’t interested in protecting me.

No. Not again. My body started to tremble as I remembered the last time Josh had tried to kill me.

And this time, Ruya wasn’t here to save me.

“Josh,” I said aloud, my strangled, barely understandable voice ripping from my damaged throat with a pain almost equal to the one in me arm. “Please--”

His fangs sliced into my neck, and my knees nearly buckled at the blinding flash of pain.

I knew what came next. He wasn’t here to feed, not really.

All he needed to do was jerk his head back and rip my jugular vein open and I was a goner.

And yet… he pulled from me, swallowing convulsively.

I felt his hands spasm where they held me.

And the pain disappeared. Last time he had attacked me, I felt only pain and terror. Helplessness. But now his bite felt… almost pleasant.

He was fighting Acacia’s command. He must be. Otherwise, I’d already be dead.

“Stop playing with your food, pet,” Acacia drawled in a bored tone. “We haven’t got all day.”

I was right. Josh was delaying. A surge of hope lit through me as I lifted my hands to press my palms against his chest, over his heart.

I pushed my fae magic to its limits, my mind speak stumbling over the hold Acacia had on his mind as I shouted into his head.

You don’t belong to her. This isn’t you! Remember who you are!

I never expected it to work.

With my magic roaring though me, connecting us with such raw desperation, I felt the struggle inside him, saw into every desperate, wounded corner of Josh’s mind.

His self-loathing. His doubts. The voice inside him that whispered he had always been too weak.

Too soft. Not enough for the powerful paranorms around him.

The part of him that had been warped by Acacia’s whispered poison, that had been tricked into forgetting his own worth.

You can do this. I insisted, refusing to accept my death at his hands. You are better than this. Stronger than this. Stronger than her !

I felt his resistance, the silent battle he fought inside himself. And I sensed the moment he shook off Acacia’s lies.

Josh shuddered. Retracted his fangs from my throat without tearing me open. And I felt something inside his brain snap. I was violently ejected from his mind as Josh’s will took over, repelling every presence that didn’t belong—including his master—with an iron-clad mental barrier.

Acacia screamed again, that same enraged, animal sound she had made when I killed her sorcerer and ruined her ritual.

She grabbed Josh’s shoulder and spun him away from me so she could kill me myself.

But Josh was no longer her puppet. He had broken the final thread of their forced maker bond and he wasn’t going to idly sit by and watch her kill me.

Acacia was older, undoubtedly more powerful. But Josh was driven by pure, unbridled fury. I tried to dampen my magical awareness as the overwhelming pain and pent-up fury poured out of the other beta.

Acacia had kept him and Sadavir as slaves for years, she had attacked Josh, savaged him, and turned him into a vampire against his will, then used him to manipulate and attack the people he loved. She had violated his body and mind.

I pressed my hands to my temples and sank down against the wall, crouching in the corner as the two vampires tore at each other in a flurry of violence, moving so fast my eyes couldn’t follow.

My head pounded in time with my heart, icepick stabs of pain searing through the synapses of my fried empathic powers.

I wanted to help, but I could barely draw breath through the pain and backlash of overexerting my magic.

Upstairs, the screams of the dying cultists faded, and I dimly registered that Dusek’s terrifying aura started to withdraw from the stairwell.

Acacia’s laugh came out bright and careless as blood splattered the wall—hers or Josh’s, I couldn’t tell. “You can’t win, boy,” she taunted. “I am a queen . And you’ll never be anything more than a human worm I gifted with a little bit of bloodlust.”

Josh didn’t respond to her taunting. He continued snapping at her, darting in and away with a constant low growl, like a feral animal, wounded and with nothing to lose. I pressed my hands harder to my temples. He was lost to his trauma. But was that a weakness or was it giving him an edge?

Sucking in a deep breath, I pushed my sluggish magic outward again, reaching for his mind, trying to get a trickle of mind speak through his new mental shield. Nothing she says is true, I whispered. Only lies leave her lips. Nothing about you is weak. You are glorious, Josh.

I listed to the side, black spots dancing across my vision from the overuse of my magic.

Acacia made a sound I had heard many times in the fae court, when I was under O’Dell’s thumb. It was the sound people made when they realized the knife they brought for backstabbing was suddenly sticking out of their own chest.

Everything slowed, their frantic motion coming to an abrupt halt as Josh drove his hand through Acacia’s chest with a wet crunch.

Not pausing, he yanked his hand out of her chest in a spray of blood, fisted one hand in her hair and gripped her shoulder with the other. Then he ripped her head from her body.

I gagged, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away as I watched her body fall to the floor.

Josh stood there for a beat, panting and staring into space.

Then, he came back to himself, starting and jerking backward when he realized he was still holding her head.

He threw it down the stairs with a choked sound, just as several sets of feet came pounding down the stairs toward us.

Josh looked at me with an expression I couldn’t name, his mouth opening and closing without producing sound.

I winced. I wanted to wrap him in comfort, shield my fellow beta with my magic so he could come down from that whole.

.. thing with some sort of gentleness. But I just didn’t have anything left to give.

My magic wasn’t all that strong to begin with, and I had flung everything I had at him earlier.

I lifted my hand and wiped the trickle of blood from beneath my nose. I needed---

“Cicely!” Ruya had frozen for a moment when she reached the landing—probably to use her magic to scan for wounds. She unerringly rushed to my side, crouching down and reaching for me, her warm golden magic already rushing through my body.

I sighed in relief. She couldn’t fully fix my magic depletion, but she could mend me well enough to get back on my feet.

That done, she immediately stood and turned toward Josh, as Sadavir pulled me to my feet and into a one-armed embrace against his side.

The naga’s alpha aura wrapped around me, seething with misplaced worry.

But his eyes were glued to his other beta as Ruya fussed over him.

Meanwhile Dusek hovered on the stairs, half his attention clearly focused on what was going on up above. “We need to go,” the bubak said, his deep voice conflicted. “They’ve breeched the ballroom.”

I shrugged out from under Sadavir’s arm and headed toward the stairs.

But the naga ignored Dusek’s urging and immediately moved to Josh, reaching for his face, but not touching him, hands hovering a breath above skin until Josh leaned into his palm.

Sadavir pressed his mouth to Josh’s forehead—the gesture silent, but full of so much devotion—then turned his head to kiss his hair, his temple, a swift brush against his lips.

He pulled back to sign one word. “Free.”

“Yes,” Josh said, and I had to blink rapidly to prevent tears from falling from my eyes at the wealth of emotion that burst from them both at that one word.

“We need to move,” Dusek said again, practically vibrating in place with his need to move.

“Acacia’s death is good news. But Robin needs us.

” His dark gaze fixed on Ruya and I knew what he was thinking.

Ruya was in danger by being here. But Robin might need her omega mate at a crucial moment.

I knew just how critical the right presence could be at a key moment—hadn’t I just seen that play out with Josha and Acacia.

Ruya’s attention snapped to the ceiling above us as if the stones had whispered directly into her ear. Her aura—calm, determined, and full of some sort of sad resignation—suddenly filled the stairwell. She touched Josh’s arm one last time before she turned toward the stairs. “I need to go.”

He nodded, awkward with the attention, and immediately jerked into action, trailing after her.

Sadavir and I hurried to follow, and a skitter of unease ran down my spine.

I knew Josh wasn’t as well as he seemed.

There would be backlash later. Heavy emotions that would try to cripple him.

But now wasn’t the time to try to help him.

This was it. The rebel court was facing off with the emperor, and there was no guarantee any of us were going to walk out of this alive.