Page 99 of Curse of Thorns
Rev
Reahgan’s smoky formrises from the blackened dirt outside the cottage, shattered glass, and splintered wood scattered at his feet.
“You see! You can’t think straight about her!” His booming voice rumbles the ground beneath me as I walk around to face him. “You’d attack me, your own brother, over the whore who killed me?”
My chest heaves. Around a hundred feet behind Reahgan is a swamp of bubbling black fluid. What lies inside the blackened water? More bones eager to devour me or something else? Something worse.
“I can free you of that burden,” he purrs as his body again floats to the air.
My chest heaves. “I don’t want to harm you,” I say, ignoring his comment.
“No? You just blasted me through the stupid cottage in rage. Defending the honor of your whore of a mate.”
“Stop!” I yell. “Stop calling her that.”
Reahgan laughs again, and the rocky terrain around us rumbles. “You are farther under her spell than I thought. A sick puppy in love with the shadow bitch!”
Reahgan laughs maniacally as I charge him, fists swinging. I fly straight through his body and skid to a stop on the other side.
“You cannot harm me with your fists, brother,” he shouts, sick amusement in his voice. “And if you use your magic, you’ll draw the wraiths to you”
“Ahhh, look—the wraiths are already on their way.”Smoke like acid stings in my ear as he dissolves around me.
Behind Reahgan, a shadow soars straight at me. So fast, so close. I wince, but instead of me, it slams right into my brother. The collision sizzles like water on coals.
The shadow shifts into a blond fae with her hand around Reahgan’s throat, black flames licking over her skin. She slams him against the wall of the cottage.
Reahgan groans quietly, his smoke flickering.
“Don’t you dare touch him,” Caelynn spits.
“He attacked me,” Reahgan says with a weak voice.
“The wards,” I say. Caelynn partially turns toward me. I don’t dare question how she found us here. That’s the least of my concerns right now. “The house has wards to keep the wraiths away, and it hurts him.”
Caelynn presses his harder against the door. “Good to know.”
Reahgan lets out a withering cry, but it morphs into a laugh. With a crash like a bull, I’m thrust onto the ground. “Kill!” a voice hisses at me. A new wraith, charcoal grey, wiggles over me, eager to have claimed a prize.
Caelynn drops my brother and turns to face our new threat. She throws her black flame at the wraith over me, but he’s quickly replaced by two more.
Three wraiths have approached from the mountainside, eager to spill my blood. Reahgan was right—my magic did draw them.
Master has called.
