Yew Queen Trilogy, стр. 17
Lucus stood, drew his sword, then stretched a protective arm around Aurelio, who shivered and stared wide-eyed at the dead fae and the amethyst light flashing from the passageway into the kingdom.
“It’s the Mage Duke.” Lucus’s voice echoed through my heart like he’d hit a drum that had been hidden there all my life. The oddest sense of euphoria and longing rushed through me. I couldn’t tear my gaze from Lucus’s burning eyes as he spoke to his elders. “And he is here for revenge.”
Amethyst lightning blasted through the oaks. The Mage Duke and his men ran into the fae kingdom, swords flashing. The Duke spread his fingers at Lucus, who pushed his brothers behind him as magic shot from the Duke’s hand. Lucus ran straight at him, calling up vines to create a shield that shattered the spells on impact and threw emerald fire into the air.
A fae fell at my feet, dead before hitting the ground, a sword thrust through her neck and her wing ripped from her body. A man with a long beard and a suit of armor slashed through two more fae, cutting them down before their vines could reach his legs. Another mage—a younger version of the Duke and possibly his son—poured blinding light from his hands and brought one of the elders to his knees. I had to shut my eyes against the brightness, and when I opened them, the elder was still as stone, dead in the chaos of the slaughter.
I caught glimpses of Lucus in the fighting, his horns above a storm cloud filled with jagged lines of purple light. His face, teeth bared and eyes flashing, between vines that were under his control as he drove toward the Mage Duke only to be pushed back again.
My stomach rolled as I took in the growing number of dead fae. Some of the Duke’s men had fallen as well, but not nearly as many. It seemed the fae weren’t as experienced at fighting as the Mage and his soldiers.
Fae blood covered the earth.
Three more of the Duke’s warriors dropped, strangled by fae magic.
And as quickly as it had started, the attack ended, the Mage Duke calling for a retreat before disappearing through the enchanted entrance to a kingdom that had been more peaceful than any dream.
Chapter 13
The real world spilled over the memory, and I was standing beside Lucus, who appeared my age now, his face still showing that long-ago pain. Emotion after emotion tumbled through me as I stared at him with new eyes.
The vine slid away from me, down the spindle leg of my chair, then returned to weave into his wings, leaves shuffling around the movement.
“What happened after that?” My voice sounded too loud after the tragedy we’d just shared. The smell of fae blood lingered, so strong that I glanced at my feet just to make sure I wasn’t somehow still standing beside one of Lucus’s fallen brethren.
Lucus’s gaze went distant. “Are you certain you want to know?”
His voice thundered in my chest like it had in the memory, like his voice was altogether different from anyone else’s. It wasn’t just the power that he held. It was something else, but hell if I knew what it was. All I knew was that I felt his words inside me like a second pulse. Part of me wanted to claw my chest open to get rid of the feeling. The other part of me embraced the newness of the sensation and the tie it gave me to this otherworldly, fascinating creature.
“If you are willing to tell me, I’ll listen,” I said quietly.
“Many of our warriors traveled beyond our kingdom to chase down the Mage Duke. Despite heavy losses on his side, he killed a dozen more fae that first night,” he said quickly, like he wanted to get the words out before his courage failed him. “The scent of our blood tainted everything in the wood. I ruined our home. Ruined it quite thoroughly.”
He shook his head like he had to clear his thoughts before continuing, and my heart snapped like a bullet had hit its icy center.
“Then the Mage Duke hired vampire mercenaries to finish the job.” His lip curled, and his teeth appeared sharper than I’d thought they were, his incisors like fangs. “When my grandmother, the former alpha, sent my brothers and me to assassinate the Mage Duke and his men, there were only five other fae living in the world.”
He touched the red silk hanging from his belt, and his throat moved in a slow swallow. “Fae once thrived in the British Isles and all around Europe. But we were the last, the only ones not destroyed by the loss of magic in the modern world. The mages didn’t realize that if we fae died off, no other mages would see their magic come alive. Our existence, fed by the magic in the earth, woke their powers, but the mages never hesitated long enough to learn that fact. There are only a few ancient mages alive now, the Mage Duke being one of them. And because of me, our kind is no more.”
I didn’t want to feel empathy. Lucus was a monster that fed off humans and sometimes killed them. He was keeping me prisoner.
But my heart ached for him despite the truth.
I’d felt the raw pain he had experienced when he’d accidentally killed Lucilla and when he’d started a war between the fae, the mages, and the vampires, endangering his kind in the worst way. My arms longed to hold and comfort him, to tell that young boy inside him that it had been an accident and I knew the truth of that. I’d seen the way he’d stood by his brothers, the lancing