Page 2 of Her Blood Revenge

She’s so angry, and I find it immensely amusing.

‘Say the word, Pixie. And we’ll help you out,’ I offer, tempting her to say something to us.

Anything.

I haven’t heard her speak since we brought her back to the castle. Not a damned word. But she’s buried pretty deep now. If she wants my help to get out, she’ll have to give in and-

She flicks her hand, and we both get showered with dirt. We’re smothered, and she has a satisfied little smirk. Dorian shakes out his hair, sending chunks of filth back to the forest floor as I spit out another clod of mud.

Stubborn little bitch.

She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes. The ground around her cracks. The ripples reach past our feet, and she pulls herself free with a grunt.

Her legs are scratched up and bleeding. I can smell it. Dorian, too, as he lets out an involuntary groan. She simply sweeps off the mess from her long green skirt, rolls her shoulders, and continues to practice.

‘When is Archie due back?’ Dorian asks.

‘Latest midnight, I expect.’

I glance up at the sun. It’s begun to set. The air has turned, and the chill is strong. I wonder when the snow will fall and how the hell I’m going to get her down the aisle in front of the king and all his men without alerting them to the fact that she’s not quite the little mud witch I pretended her to be—now more so than ever.

The impending wedding between Pixie and I is on the very long list of problems we’re trying to navigate. The king made it clear that if I do not wed her, he will hand her back to the earth coven.

At the moment, she is as likely to marry me as she is to fall to her knees and suck my dick.

Very un-fucking-likely.

‘You expecting him to discover anything?’ Dorian asks, his voice lower so she can’t hear.

‘Not particularly,’ I shrug. ‘Whoever Pixie’s real father is may well remain a mystery foreverunless we get Neve to admit who knocked her up. Everyone else who would know is dead.’

Dorian unconsciously glances back at the castle and shifts away from it. Having the rotting corpse of Neve’s sisters in the basement is far from ideal. But their bones must be kept away from Neve at all costs.

Dorian wants to destroy them, but I can’t shake the feeling that they may be useful. Neve will want them back, which gives us leverage.

Archie has travelled north to where an old healer lives in a human town. She was held captive by Neve and forced to heal her coven when they were injured. Her service left the old hag a nervous and deluded wreck with no fingers and one missing eye.

Neve certainly had a temper when she failed to heal her blood bitches, and made sure to take something from the healer that she couldn’t fix as punishment. The king pardoned the severely disfigured and mentally damaged witch and placed her in a quiet town in exchange for fixing him up when he fell off his horse before one of the battles we rode into.

She may know something about Neve’s pregnancy, as she would have been with Neve around the time Ashe was conceived. But I suspect it will lead to nothing. The same as every other lead we have followed.

Whoever fathered Pixie must have been something like us—something old, something powerful. To be cursed as we have can not be done to any mortal or witch. No. There is something else in her blood. We all tasted it when we took our first bite of her. We all crave it still. We always will.

Our Pixie.

What are you?

‘You spoke to the soldiers this morning?’ I ask.

‘Hmmm,’ he grunts back. ‘They remain unaware of Neve’s return.’ He shuffles his feet and folds his arms around his chest. ‘I hate knowing that she and Cole are out there.’

‘At least they can’t cross into our territory,’ I reply. ‘The castle is safe.’

As more dirt crashes over our heads, we duck and quickly straighten up.

‘For now,’ he says, continuing our conversation. The barriers Leo put around our land will not hold forever, Shaw. He’s a powerful air witch with plenty of spells up his sleeves, but he can’t keep it up forever.’

It’s not an ideal fix to depend on a witch, of all things, to keep us safe. But other than running, I struggle to find an alternative for the immediate future.

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