Keelynn, bless her, for all her fear, refused him.
The moment the vile bastard put his feckin’ hands on her to pull the gold band from her fingers, he signed his death warrant. His whispered threat left her face pale as a sheet.
“You have what you came for,” she breathed, voice trembling. “Let me go.”
The bastard shoved her away. “I have what I came for,” he drawled, climbing to the front of the carriage and knocking Padraig’s body to the ground, “but my men still need to claim their prize.”
I shifted my kohl and painted my eyes, knowing what I had to do.
Giving in to the darkness that prowled beneath my skin meant more magic but less control. And dire consequences if I used too much.
I couldn’t lose her.
The ring.I meant I couldn’t lose the ring.
Closing my eyes, I slipped into writhing shadows and let the cursed magic thrumming in my veins take control.
Evanescing to the top of the broken high cross felt like freedom. The curse remained on Keelynn’s lips, black as my soul. “Three against one isn’t a fair fight, lads.” Damn, it felt good to stop denying the monster I was. To let her see that the darkness living within me couldn’t be contained forever.
The tallest of the lot sneered. “We didn’t know our prize had a friend.”
“Look at its eyes,” said the short, hairy fella. “Never seen anything like it.”
It.
I may have been half faerie and half witch, but I was as male as the fat bastard who thought his tiny dagger would do anything but ignite my rage. The lanky one went straight for Keelynn, altering the order of execution.
“There’s no need to be frightened. We’re gonna treat ye like the lady ye are.” The black-haired man thought he had a right to smile at her. To close the distance. To put his feckin’ hands around her throat.
I inhaled and threw my hand toward the bastard, sending a bolt of power through his torso. His body lifted from the ground and ended up ramming headfirst into a tree.
His skull or his neck or some other bone in his worthless body cracked. He didn’t rise again.
I evanesced behind the other two, my hands flexing, magic boiling in my blood. “I had a shitty night last night,so consider yourselves lucky that I’m giving you a chance to run.”
The scarred one laughed, towering over me like one of the trees. “Ye think ye can best the two of us?”
What a stupid feckin’ question. Hadn’t he seen what I’d done to his mate?
“Ye think we ‘aven’t dealt with yer kind?” He showed me his trophy necklace. It wasn’t the fullest one I’d seen, but he had killed more than a few pooka and witches from the looks of it. “We’re gonna make ye watch us fuck yer one,” he said with a leering look toward Keelynn, “then carve her up like the pretty bird she is. Then I’ll cut out yer eyes and add ‘em to this.”
An ambitious plan to be sure. One that would undoubtedly fail the moment I sliced open his torso and ripped the heart from his chest.
Keelynn watched me, her eyes blown out as she clutched her chest.
“Turn around, Keelynn.”
She didn’t need to witness the carnage I was about to unleash on these two swine. They thought they could come here and take what didn’t belong to them? They thought they could bestme? I’d lived for three hundred years, endured pain and torture, suffered and died. Compared to me, they were nothing. Skittering cockroaches beneath my boots, made for crushing.
The hairy lad attacked. I broke his feckin’ nose, sending him howling and stumbling toward the abbey. I shifted the dagger he’d dropped and drew a bloody smile across his throat. The shock in a man’s eyes as life left him always confounded me. He honestly believed he could win.
The big lad had the good sense to try and run. But he’d had his chance. And he’d decided to stay for the fun.
I evanesced, cutting off his escape. A dagger and a slow death just wouldn’t do for someone who had killed my people and wore their parts around his neck.
I shifted one of the swords from our armory, its weight familiar in my grip. A few swings later, the bastard was two legs shorter and down two arms. I wasn’t sure exactly when he’d died, but when the bloody stump of him landed on the grass, his sightless eyes stared into the fading day.
A choked sob sounded at my back, where Keelynn dragged at her chest, gasping for air.