Page 40 of Risen
Then, Cicely looked Robin with a nod, lifting his hands to sign.“Show him what it feels like to be unable to speak while death threatens you from every side.”
Robin bowed her head to him and reached for O’Dell.The fae flinched away, nearly falling over as he lunged to his feet.But Robin was faster.Her fingers wrapped around his throat, lifting him up to his tiptoes.Then she lifted the other hand and slowly, thoroughly destroyed his throat, careful not to sever anything that would kill him, maiming him the same way he had maimed the faun.
Cicely’s sparkling green eyes filled with unshed tears as he watched O’Dell struggle, but he didn’t look away.Ruya silently descended the steps and came to stand on his other side, taking his hand in hers, but she didn’t object to O’Dell’s treatment.
At a nod from Cicely, Robin released the fae, dropping him to his knees again, where he wheezed wetly from his destroyed throat.
“Call me an animal now,” the faun said, forcing speech through his destroyed throat in a way that I knew caused him excruciating pain.
O’Dell’s eyes flared with rage, and his lips moved, but no sound emerged past a wheezing gurgle.
Cicely turned away and went back to his place on the stairs, Ruya at his side.
Robin wiped her hand off on her pants and stared down at O’Dell dispassionately.“You’ve got one more debt to pay, darling.”
She stepped aside as Yukio approached.The pixie-yuki-onna cross flicked his wrist and a blade of ice formed in his hand.He moved with the silent grace of a dancer and the deadly assurance of an assassin.“Remember all the times you coerced me into killing for you?”he said, his rich, melodic voice full of darkness.He bent to catch the back of O’Dell’s neck and draw him close.“Remember how you told me the blood was pretty flowing over the ice?”
Then he sank his ice blade into O’Dell’s heart.When he yanked it back out, he held the blade up, studying it for a second.“Hmm… it is quiet pretty, don’t you think?”
The fae king dropped to the ground, dead.
As Yukio resumed his position on the stairs, Robin turned to the crowd once more, gesturing to the salamanders to release the prisoners one at a time into the spell circle.“Begin.”
Even after O’Dell’s execution, one of the kneeling vampires spat blood and refused Robin’s offer.A thin line of shadow whipped out from Dusek’s hand, parting the vamp’s head from his body before he could finish cursing Robin’s lineage.As the vampire’s corpse fell to the ground, Robin raised one eyebrow at the prisoners.The message was crystal clear.O’Dell wasn’t just a special case.We weren’t playing around here.I moved closer to the bottom of the steps.Another shifter snarled and lunged for Robin.I cut him down myself before he even got close.
But despite those little outbursts, more than half of the prisoners bent their heads and asked for forgiveness, broken, shamed, desperate—but alive.They stepped into the spell circle and swore to cast off the syndicate’s ways and protect the weak.One after another, their voices rose, some bitter, some relieved, all binding themselves with the combined magic of the curse and the fae bargain.The light flared each time, searing the truth into their bones.
By the end, the number of bodies left cooling on the cobblestones was far smaller than I had expected.The bloodshed was enough to appease the gathered crowd of wounded unaligned, and the angry mood from before shifted.The justice delt tonight had been brutal.But it was balanced with mercy.I think they were all ready, now, to accept what Ruya had said about starting over.
I sheathed my blade and glanced at Robin.She put up a good show, but I could see the way her shoulders sagged, just ever so slightly.Ruya touched her hand, and Sadavir gave the dragon princess a barely perceptible nod before lightly touching his fingers to the small of Robin’s back in a fleeting gesture that once would have cost him his hand.The dual mate bonds hummed around them, visible even to me in the way their breathing aligned, the way their auras wove together.I watched them in shock as I realized that… maybe Robin had gained more tonight than a single true mate bond with our omega.
For the first time, I dared to believe that our court might actually survive the fallout of all this, without being blown apart from the inside by our conflicting feelings and connections.
We staggered back into The Fox at last, stepping over rubble, taking in the mess of our broken home.Wood was splintered, marble and brick cracked and crumbling, every gilded surface coated in dust from the explosions, the air sour with the lingering remnants of a broken curse.
But it was ours.
The court picked our way through the rubble to the stage area that held Robin’s display of priceless art.I was surprised this part of her hoard hadn’t been looted once the cult cleared out.But then again, this was just proof of how well respected our princess and our court was.We had sheltered, and fed, and protected the unaligned and homeless in the area for years.The Fox was apparently off limits when it came to opportunistic looting.
We collapsed where we could—on cracked seats, against pillars, on the stage that was still somehow intact, if a bit dusty.My body screamed with sudden exhaustion, now that I let my guard down, my arms heavy and my body sticky with sweat and grime.I leaned back against a broken column at the edge of the stage and closed my eyes, letting the sound of my family around me fill the silence.
Tomorrow we would rebuild.But for tonight, it was enough just to be together and alive.
Ruya snuggled up at my side, bringing Robin and Sadavir with her like a couple of well-trained puppies.I grinned, my eyes still closed, as the entire court slowly gathered around her, the heart of the court.Someone threw a stack of cushions at us, ripped from various pieces of broken furniture.Someone else took down one of the massive velvet curtains from the stage and threw it over the heap of us.A growing warmth told me Sanaka had created a magical heat source nearby.
I snorted at the fact that there was probably an intact bedroom around hersomewhere—at a hotel, if not in the theater—but we were all clearly so tired and so stubbornly attached our home that we were content to pass out here on the dirty floor instead.
Sleep dragged me under before I could comment.
Chapter 18 - Epilogue
Ruya
One Year Later
Lastyearatthistime, The Fox was in ruins.Ruined walls, a hole blasted in the foundation, cracked floorboards, singed curtains, water damage from burst pipes.And so much of the beautiful, intricate interior paintings and embellishments ruined.Now, somehow, the place old theater and rebel lair was nearly back to its former glory.A suitable place for an alpha dragon shifter to keep her hoard.
Using my connection to Vlad, and Queen Cat, I brought up my shaman sight for a moment, drinking in the way our nest sparkled.Someone—probably Cicely—had hung silk garlands across the walls of the open theater space, bright with charms that shimmered and shifted colors, from bold red, to orange, gold, and silver.Floating lanterns bobbed far overhead in the domed open space, each one glowing with a warm, golden light.
