Page 96 of Sidhe (The Incubus Saga #3)

The sex demon camp was overrun with unwilling traitors, pulled to Solrin’s power, and there was no telling how long Jim and the others could hold things together.

The seals would be overrun next if this didn’t end soon.

But the heart of the matter was several yards from the center of the light fae camp where Nathan, Walter, and Sasha hurried to reach Solrin.

Solrin was frighteningly powerful, and not only because of how aptly he could command the dark fae nearest him, but how the gesture of his hand, his touch, his stare, was all it took to bring those before him to their knees.

Light fae dropped like wilted grass at his feet, and Solrin merely stepped on over them as if they were nothing but a nuisance.

It sickened Nathan. Solrin’s careless cruelty was awful to behold, especially seen through the goggles.

Nathan wondered if he had looked like that when Malak possessed him; wondered if Malak possessed Solrin now or merely pulled his strings; but through the goggles Nathan saw a great shadow of a demon overlaid with Solrin’s normal form, too reminiscent of the shade he had seen in Malak himself the day Nathan first met Dave.

It spurred Nathan on faster, desperate to reach the white-haired young man and see if Sasha’s plan would actually do the trick.

Free from Sasha’s attacks, Gwen moved from the center of her people’s camp to launch an assault on Solrin as well.

She reached him first, but even the great Titania was not enough to slow Solrin down when he sent all of the nearby dark fae under his command to swarm her in a mad horde of moving bodies.

They had to act now, while Solrin was focused on Gwen, even if Nathan’s instincts were to rush to her aid.

With Walter and Sasha backing him, Nathan dove at Solrin, tackling him to the ground and rolling rapidly from the momentum until the two of them stopped short with Nathan on top. Solrin practically growled beneath him.

Those red on black eyes were enough to send chills tumbling down Nathan’s spine, worse with Solrin surrounded by darkness through the goggles, but Nathan didn’t falter or leave an opening. He pulled away just as Sasha swooped down to take his place.

Sasha’s clawed hands began to glow the moment he pressed them to Solrin’s scarred, bare chest, as he simply whispered, “Peace, Sol. Peace.”

“Ahhh!” Solrin screamed, back arching from the ground and eyes flickering. Something like flame-licked smoke began to pour from his mouth, just as they’d hoped.

Once the smoke had vanished, something black and very visible beneath the surface of Solrin’s skin, like actual black blood in his veins, started coiling its way toward Sasha’s firmly pressed hands where it fizzled away into nothing.

Solrin gasped, trembled. When he finally began to still, his eyes sprang wide like waking from a nightmare.

They weren’t red on black—nor were they one jade while the other was a sickly grey.

They were both green, both the same. Malak’s influence in Solrin was gone.

Whether that meant he was no longer a changeling, Nathan had no idea.

Coughing and shivering, Solrin tried to roll over. He looked past Sasha to where Nathan and Walter stood nearby, and there was no mistaking the relief in the way he gasped, “ Nathan …”

There was something like an explosion off to their left where Gwen broke out of her swarm of dark fae, all of them seemingly disoriented after losing the unwavering direction of their leader. Gwen and a few others started picking those dark fae off with far more ease than before.

Nathan grinned as he patted Sasha’s chest, helping him stand. Then he reached for Solrin. The white-haired seal accepted Nathan’s hand gladly.

“You okay?” Nathan asked as he hoisted him to his feet.

“Nathan,” Solrin said, still saying the name with an undeserved reverence, but Nathan figured they could work on that.

“Please, I…I did not know what to believe before, but I know now. I was clouded, a fool. I thought…” He closed his eyes, opening them again to show that they were damp.

“I tried to refuse him before the battle began but he…he took me. I had already given myself to him, he said. I could not resist. But the light I know is still in you has always been more real than Malak. I want to fight for you, Nathan. Forgive me, please .”

“Hey,” Nathan said, feeling a little overwhelmed by this devotion. Whatever removing that blackness from Solrin had done, it was clearly a good thing.

“I can never make up for what I’ve done here, Nathan, or before…but I will try.”

“Nathan!” came a sudden call.

Looking beyond Solrin, beyond Walter and Sasha, even beyond the fighting as the dark fae frantically continued to attack, Nathan could see Jim and Oberon running across the fields to reach them, having left the now freed and right-minded sex demons to themselves.

Aloysha looked to be fighting particularly viciously now.

For a moment, the dark fae around Jim and Oberon swarmed as they had Gwen, but Jim didn’t even need help.

He shot out a blast of electricity that was like a wave of Force Lightning right out of Star Wars , zapping everything in its path until the way was clear.

Any other nearby dark fae retreated in fear.

Nathan barely had to look around to know that the enemy was faltering. Solrin had been able to lead most of them uniformly, a great mass with singular goals. Now they were back to personal agendas, and failing because of it.

He waved at Jim to say it was okay, urging his brother onward to join them. Then he turned to Solrin. “Glad to have you with us, Sol,” he said, reaching out to smack Solrin’s arm.

But his hand froze just as it was lifting. Solrin’s face had gone from a pleasant, grateful smile to wide eyes and a blank, almost pained expression. Nathan didn’t understand until he heard Walter cry out.

Solrin lurched forward, and then, like some awful scene from a horror movie, there was a hand, an arm punching its way out of his chest, bloody and covered in gore.

Bile rose in Nathan’s throat, aghast as Solrin crumbled straight down, eyes already glassy, already gone. What remained behind him when Solrin finally fell limp was Malak —male, his black suit marred by the blood soaking his arm.

“Fool. There are no rewards for traitors ,” Malak hissed, his breathing strangely labored, face damp with sweat, and blond hair mussed for the first time in all the many situations Nathan had seen him.

“I should know,” Malak added with a twitch that wasn’t quite a shrug, something mad, wild in his red on black eyes as he reached for Nathan with the bloody hand that had just killed Solrin, and pulled him in close, “not unless you take the rewards for yourself.”

Something indefinable began to fill Nathan’s chest, not pain, just pressure, pressure so great that he screamed anyway, while hearing a chorus of cries from the others to match his own, until finally, in a great rush, they were no longer on the battlefield.

Coughing haggardly into the ground—into the floor beneath him—Nathan tried to get his bearings. He was inside the Gatehouse which was once again dark and shadowed.

“Well, aren’t you just a huge disappointment,” Malak’s voice spoke snidely from above him, the bitter voice accompanied by a swift kick to Nathan’s ribs that doubled him over further.

“Your crew deserves most of the credit though, don’t they?

Because from my point of view it doesn’t look like you’ve done much of anything.

” Another kick, too hard, a crack —damn it, there went a rib—and Nathan tried desperately to crawl away, wishing the Gatehouse wards were still intact to spare him the beating.

To his surprise and relief, Malak allowed him to scramble to his feet.

Sasha’s peaceful touch on Solrin had damaged the dark sidhe king.

He looked wild and oddly disheveled. But the shade of darkness around him was larger than ever, made only too clear for Nathan with the goggles that had somehow remained over his eyes.

“Really, Nathan, what did they even need you for?” Malak continued to taunt him. “Your horsemen have done far more than you. You haven’t accomplished anything .”

As dire as the situation seemed, Nathan took some comfort in that Malak was desperate, angry, weakened. They were in the bar of the Gatehouse, but it was empty after going dark, all those who had been inside now outside the doors joining the fight.

“Nothing to defend yourself with?” Malak sneered in Nathan’s face.

Nathan dropped the hand that had been clutching his ribs, standing taller despite the sting of pain.

“Part of being a good leader…is knowing how much your soldiers can accomplish without you. What about you? Lost your one ace in the hole, so you kill him? Real show of power there,” he mocked, though it pained him to speak of Solrin’s death so flippantly.

A fresh grin twisted onto Malak’s face as he twitched the bloody fingers of his right hand.

“So easy to pass on the blame, isn’t it, Nathan?

But I wasn’t the cause of Solrin’s death.

You were. You’re the reason he’s dead. The reason Iain and so many others are dead.

All I asked of you, all you needed to do was remain with me.

You tricked me out of that deal, fine, I admit defeat.

But if you had chosen to stay with me none of this would have happened. ”

“At the cost of what?” Nathan spat back. “Don’t try to pretend like the battle wouldn’t have happened. Oberon, Gwen, Aloysha, they all would have fought against us anyway.”