Page 33 of Fire Kissed
I can’t do a lot with my powers here, but I’ll always do whatever I can to help the ones I love. Even if that means wearing down her abuser and shifting her anger away from my mother … and onto me.
“It must be tiring,” I tell her, her head tilting just slightly as I speak. “It must be downright exhausting to be so jealous of my mother all the time.
Laughter breaks out of her petite frame, and her attention shoots toward her Elfie King to find him smirking as well.
“Why else would you keep her here as an eternal punishment simply because your King fell in love with her?”
My mother’s eyes are frantic when she looks up at me.
“Tell me, do you really believe he doesn’t still take care of her the way a lover would?” I ask, my thoughts roaming to how Torben took patient care of me each night we were alone.
Her smile falters then, and a sharp look of disgust pinches her red lips.
“Your mother is a love whore. Not even worthy of the gods. She’s lucky—lucky—we took her in.” Hela stands then, her height making her seem even more infamous than ever.
“I want to go home. And I want to take my mother with me,” I cut in, steadying my voice with pure confidence I actually feel pulsing within me. I’ve never felt this before. I’ve never felt so sure of anything in my entire life. It’s a hint of my magic that’s bound so tightly within me, it has nowhere left to go but to strengthen my words as well as my shoulders as I speak with poised conviction to this heinous woman.
Cackling laughter rings out from her red lips, and she looks back behind her chair to someone I hadn’t previously noticed until now. Sitting on the rocky floor with his dusty, dirty black hair leaning against Hela’s chair is Serpan. He smiles a blood-kissed smirk at her like a beaten pet looking for a bone.
I shudder as I remember him in his natural form, but I don’t let that uncomfortable feeling shadow my face. I keep my chin tilted high and try to think of how to get the five of us away from this woman.
Hela sways closer and closer, and each step she takes sets off the men behind me. She comes closer, and they press closer against my back as if they’ll do something for me that they’ve never once done for themselves.
That’s what love does. It puts us in unimaginable positions in life. Like leaping into the bowels of Hell just for a mother I never even met.
I still don’t know her. But Hela’s not about to separate us again.
The Queen of Hell is so close now, she could rip out my own beating heart if she wanted to.
I’m half tempted to do it to her just to see if this cruel woman even has one.
Except neither of us moves. She simply... smiles.
“You’ve been fun, Rhys.” Her eyes light up as something clearly plots within her dark mind. “But much like your mother, you’re getting too comfortable here. Making demands of me as if you’re something more than an unwanted daughter of a whore.”
I want her anger focused on me. But I also don’t want to make it worse for my mother. I swallow hard and try not to speak or lash out.
Because it sounds like... she’s letting me leave here.
But what’s the catch?
“I think I will let you go. Take the traitorous men with you, while you’re at it.” She turns, her dress sweeping wildly behind her. “While you’re out, change your attitudes. I’ll be watching. And when we see each other again, be ready to apologize for how you spoke tonight.”
I’ll be watching...
Everything is a game to her.
This is just one more.
“What—” The word catches in my throat before I can fully get it out.
And then we’re falling.
Hands reach out to steady me as we literally whirlwind through a blank space. It’s as if every void to get from one realm to the next is different. And this one is like sliding down a tunnel with no walls. We’re thrown this way and that, but the path is unseen.
All we know is each other. It’s all we have.
Perhaps that’s why when we land with boots hitting hard into fluffy moss and flowers, my feet never touch the ground at all. One of my arms is wrapped with sharp nails digging into Torben’s thick shoulders.
