Page 67 of A Fury Of Shadows

Though Nikolai had never gone into detail when he’d described the event where his mother had lost her life at Oscar’s hands, Mae knew instinctively this was the place where the tragedy had unfolded. She could smell the lingering scent of death in the stale air.

Serena, Cortes, and four super soldiers crowded around something at the far end of the arena. Brimstone slowed and growled, his hackles rising.

Mae startled. “What’s wrong?”

Brimstone did not reply. Dread knotted her stomach at her familiar’s silence.

Hellreaver quivered agitatedly.It might be best you not see this, my witch. You are not in a fit state to—

Mae moved.

Her breathing quickened the closer she got to Serena and Cortes, the twigs and leaves snapping under her feet loud in her ears. She was trying to make sense of what she could see between their legs.

Serena glanced over her shoulder, her face expressionless. Cortes scowled beside her, Popo silent and drooping on his shoulder.

Mae’s steps faltered. Horror rounded her eyes when she finally caught sight of what they were standing over.

Vlad flinched beside her.

“No.” The denial left Mae’s lips on a low mumble.

It was a pile of skulls and bones.

From the size of the smallest remains, the youngest body had belonged to a child no older than ten years. The shape of the forehead told Mae she’d been a little girl. Her left temple bore a nasty depression amidst a spiderweb of fractures. Her femurs and tibia were broken in several places. The other skeletons showed similar injuries.

A silent scream locked the air in Mae’s throat.

They had died a brutal death and had been left to rot in the open, with no grave to honor them and no one to offer prayers and flowers to remember their passing.

“Do you know who they are?” Serena said quietly.

Mae tried to speak but couldn’t.

Vlad wrapped an arm around her shoulders and replied in her stead, his tone brittle. “They were the children of the Sorcerer King, Nikolai’s half siblings. They were murdered during a ritual where they were forced to fight to the death to prove their worth to their father.”

“TheTrial of Blood,” Cortes spat out in the fraught hush. He glanced at the incubus, gold burning in his pupils. “I didn’t want to believe you when you told me about it.”

Someone gasped behind them.

Violet pressed a hand to her mouth as she slowly crossed the amphitheater, a pale-faced Miles next to her.

“Are those—?” the sorcerer mumbled.

“Yes,” Vlad said curtly.

The rage Mae had been holding back overspilled her veins and lit up the air. Everyone grunted and dug their heels into the floor as a powerful pressure wave detonated around her, pushing them back.

“Mae,” Vlad whispered in a tortured voice.

She barely heard him.

My witch,Brimstone whimpered.

Hellreaver let out a forlorn hum.

A veneer of incubus energy enveloped Vlad as he closed in on her. He took her in his arms and pressed her rigid face to his shoulder. “Let it out. Or else it will eat you up.”

Mae shuddered and sagged, her hands clenching his jacket, his warmth a solace she did not deserve but was eternally grateful for. Just like the time when he’d held her in the church where they had lost Nikolai to the Dark Council, she raised her face to the sky and howled out her sorrow and wrath.

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