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Chapter twenty-five

A violent gust of wind crossed the path where we stood. The trees shuddered, and so did I.

“Always a pleasure,” their leader answered casually.

“I’ve been wondering where you’ve been.” His pale-blue eyes lingered on me as he tilted his head, eerily curious.

“But it seems you’ve kept yourself busy.

” He chewed something and then gathered his saliva with a nasty swirl before spitting a glob of wet, tar-black gunk onto the ground.

He grinned at my scowl and took a few steps toward us.

“She is… delicious .” Another Insidion sidled up next to Cherno. His face was tan and tattooed with skulls, his eyes unnaturally dark spheres. He licked his lips. “You’ll give us a taste before you kill her, won’t you?”

I stiffened in Gavin’s grasp, but he gave me a reassuring squeeze. Trust him. I needed to trust him, but—

Gavin chuckled darkly. “You know I don’t like to share my toys.”

I sucked in a breath. The evil on his tongue was too convincing.

Cherno opened a switchblade and twirled it between his fingers. The other Insidions laughed, all of them inching closer .

“And I haven’t had her yet,” Gavin snarled, and dragged me a step back from them. “She’s for me… or no one at all.” His blade flexed against my neck but didn’t break skin. “Try anything, and I’ll slit her throat. She’ll be no fun to either of us cold.”

Cherno’s eerie orbs of ice scanned the length of my body. “She looks fresh. She’d feel good at any temperature.”

My gut screeched in warning. My eyes burned with tears—silent, but not fake. One fell off my cheek onto Gavin’s hand beneath my jaw. And in response, I felt his rage ripple through his chest into my back.

“Mine,” Gavin snarled. His rage turned possessive. “She is mine.”

And that , I knew was true.

Cherno rolled his eyes. “Always a game with you, Smyth. So… irritable. But come to think of it, I’ve never actually seen you fuck a woman, despite your unsavory claims.”

“A man can’t cherish his privacy? I like to be the last and only thing they see while I choke the life out of them.”

I whimpered unintentionally. Gavin subtly stroked my rib cage with his thumb in an attempt to console me.

“Prove it.” Cherno sneered, head cocked. “How about you bend her over right here and let us all watch you make her bleed?”

Gavin gave a low, wicked laugh against my ear. And then, as if he wanted to steal the breath from my lungs, he pulled my earlobe between his teeth in the most unnervingly sensual way and purred, “Let’s enjoy the hunt first, shall we?”

He thrust me with convincing force into the cold, hard dirt on his left. With a throaty grunt, I propelled myself up from the frigid earth and forward.

The sickening sounds of metal on metal and tearing flesh erupted behind me. I counted but made it only to twenty before I looked back, only for a moment, and saw that no one was following me. For he’d already killed three and not one made it past him .

There was a head on the ground amongst the bodies. Cherno’s head.

I halted mid-sprint, knowing well he would scold me for it later. Still, I stopped, curiosity and terror winning me over. To my right stood an ancient oak tree. I lunged behind it, remaining fully concealed by its wide trunk.

And I watched as he tore through the rest of them.

They were nothing to him. Nothing.

He killed fluidly. Different than he’d been with that ebony, scaled beast. The beast had been just that: a beast, a massive creature three times his size, and he had played with it. These were just men, and no man was a match for him.

He did not laugh while he slaughtered them. No sinister grin contorted his face. By the time he pulled his scimitar from the throat of one Insidion, his sharp cleaver was lodged into the skull of another. He knew where they were—every one of them—and he butchered them all.

I remembered Ezra’s command at the temple. Advice that this time, I did not heed.

“Don’t watch… Trust me.”

A valid warning, because he was pure death and rage and darkness, covered entirely in their blood. He wore it like armor. Like it restored him.

When the final body dropped, I stepped out from behind the tree. His eyes tracked my movement and snapped to me immediately. At the sight of me, he thrust both blades into the ground and swore.

“I told you to run. ” He wiped blood from his face with the back of his hand—it barely helped, there was so much of it—and strode toward me.

My body quivered with visible terror, but I refused to move.

“You were not—” His pace slowed, brow furrowed with concern while searching my face. Assessing my fear. “You were not supposed to see that.”

“I wasn’t going to leave you. ”

“Leave me!” he gritted out. “Damn it, Ella, you do leave me, you leave me with a thousand blades at my throat to save yourself, and you do not hesitate!”

I swallowed and shook my head.

He cursed and ran his hands over his face. I almost sprinted the rest of the way to him, almost threw my arms around his neck and held on, but the disassociated chill I’d heard when he spoke to those Insidions still encased my veins.

“How did you know them?” I waved in the direction of the dead bodies strewn across the ground, though I tried not to look closer. I had seen enough.

He stepped toward me. I took a step back.

With a pleading gaze, he admitted, “I’ve been known to play multiple sides.”

“And which side are you playing now?” My body broke into a fit of terrified shakes. But I already knew, I thought. If I doubted him, I would’ve run. I would be past the river and then some.

“Ella.” He closed the distance between us. I stumbled over a root of the oak tree, but he caught me with both arms.

“Molochai’s or Simeon’s?” I demanded. “Because the things you said to them—”

“Wars are not solely won by men with clear and honorable intentions, Aryella. They are won by those of us willing to live in the dark.” He took my left hand and placed it on his chest. “I am not on Molochai’s side.

I am not on Simeon’s side. I am on your side.

Only yours.” With his other hand, he took the hand wielding my knife, lifted it, and positioned the tip of my blade over his heart.

“If ever I am not, I want you to take this blade and drive it through my heart.”

I lowered my knifed hand from his chest. “What they said about unsavory claims… about women and threats…” A horrified soun d slipped out of my throat. My heart knew, but I had to ask. “Please tell me you haven’t—”

“The last woman I touched that way was…” His broad chest strained beneath the weight of his truth as pain rippled through his gaze.

“Your wife?” I whispered, saying it so he didn’t have to. Even though saying it hurt me too.

“Yes,” he answered softly.

But that gentleness vanished—he snarled when an arrow pierced his shoulder. Almost as quickly as it punctured his bicep, his fist was clenched around it.

“Mother… fucker !” He sucked in a breath, held it, and removed the arrow, his flesh squelching, blood sputtering out of the deep hole it left before he shoved me behind him.

One more Insidion than I had originally counted stood a short distance away.

I glanced at the hole in Gavin’s arm and had never been so grateful for someone’s terrible aim.

The remaining Insidion was larger than the others had been, this one rivaling Gavin in size.

He tossed his bow to the ground and unsheathed a long, curved machete, but Gavin hurled a powerful fist into the Insidion’s face.

Then another, and another. The Insidion stumbled back from the force of each blow until he mustered the strength and power for one swing of his blade.

I screamed when the machete connected with Gavin’s shoulder. Cut straight through his jacket and drew a river of blood. Instead of recoiling like a sane person, Gavin pressed his hand into the underside of the blade, resisting the pressure, and smiled .

I tried to summon my power. I reached for my wheel inside the temple, but the shock of the last few minutes was debilitating, and it… wasn’t there. So I watched in helpless horror as Gavin leaned into the blade .

Panic seeped into his adversary’s eyes, stance, and every breath. The more Gavin curved his own shoulder forward into that blade, the wider his sinister smile grew.

Until Gavin thrust the man’s own arrow through his neck and tossed him to the side like a useless slab of spoiled meat.

He looked at me, and his soured indifference morphed into debilitating fear—fear I didn’t know could exist in those beautiful brown eyes, now panicked and wide as he roared, “Behind you!”

He lunged for me, but for once, he wasn’t quick enough.

It happened so fast, I had no time to decide.

My attacker’s neck at my eye level was all I saw before I turned into a knife hidden beneath his cloak and screamed. The sudden and acute twist of hot metal in my side became an excruciating catalyst.

I had to choose. My life or his.

Fueled by rage and pain and desperation, I screamed and plunged my own knife into my attacker’s throat. Blood gushed over my hand, down my wrist, hot and wet. The scent of copper filled my nostrils.

Only then, after piercing his flesh, did I have a chance to see what he looked like.

The Insidion, simply a man in his final moments, looked down at me, pleading.

His dark, forest-green eyes were what I would remember in my nightmares.

Not the skull tattoos covering his face or the gruesome scar across his mouth.

But his eyes. The fear in them. And how, as he took his final breath, that fear—along with all joy or hate or peace or laughter he’d ever felt—disappeared.

The man fell to the ground.

He was dead.

A tattered wail left my throat, and I stumbled backwards. The knife in my hand… my hand , covered in his blood. I’d watched life leave those green eyes.

“Ella.” Gavin caught me from behind, one arm across my chest .