Page 42 of The Magic of Eternity
The man stopped thrashing at the sound of my voice, his wild black eyes locked on me. I couldn’t believe the way he looked. His features had become gaunt, his cheekbones sunken in, giving him an even fiercer complexion than usual. He looked every bit the monster that he was not.
Warm liquid dripped from my face. I hadn’t even realized that I’d started crying. It felt as though time stopped in that moment as we stared at each other. Two broken men, separated from our family, from our woman, and from each other.
Faris’s chest heaved and his eyes trailed down my body, noting my bound hands. He took in the blankets before shifting his eyes and recognizing Khol. An unreadable expression crossed his face, and I had no idea what to expect from him. He’d always been a loose cannon but this was not the same man as before.
Suddenly, his laughter pierced the air. It was deep and genuine. He clutched his stomach as he laughed and laughed. Nudging the guard he’d just threatened to savagely murder, he smiled at him.
“I told you. I fuckingtold youfifty was the lucky number! Look here, it’s Bram. He’s kind of like my boyfriend, only more than that. Does that make sense? Never mind.” He shook his head, bringing his focus back to me.
I couldn’t breathe.Is he seriously laughing at a time like this?
He was led over to the platform and pushed down by one of the guards. “Take a fucking seat. We’ll be getting started soon anyway.” He was all smiles as he sat down in between myself and Khol. The guards went to work securing him to the wooden planks beneath us. I suppose they were more concerned with him doing something irrational.
I was starting to think maybe they should have been concerned about all of us. It was looking as though we’d been underestimated, and that was their fuck up. Once the guards had properly secured Faris and seemed assured that he wasn’t going anywhere, they moved off to stand alongside the wall.
Faris looked at me, swung his head the other direction and looked at Khol, then looked back at me. “What a fucking mindfuck, am I right? Where the hell have you guys been? Did they make you kill people too? How many did you get?”
All I could do was stare. I couldn’t even speak.
“Faris, do you understand what’s happening here?” Khol asked gently.
“We’re here to be executed as soon as the sun comes up,” Faris replied, without skipping a beat, looking at Khol like he was asking dumb questions.
“I need you to focus,” Khol told him, his tone conveying the importance of the situation.
Faris scoffed. “I don’t believe that they have a man or a woman within these walls who could kill me. I have spent my days wisely. You see, I can kill a man in seven seconds. That was my best time anyway.” He cleared his throat. “I understand why you guys did what you did, okay? I let you down and I had to be punished and fight my way out. Yeah, I was a little upset at first, but now I understand. Is this like my final test? I break us out of here and then I get to be a part of the family? Where’s everyone else?” He stared at me with his huge brown eyes piercing me, splintering my heart.
“Fuck, Faris. We didn’t do anything to you. Don’t you remember anything that happened?” He shook his head slowly, and I groaned. “We walked into a trap. When we got here, Asrael and his guards took us down. They’ve separated all of us for close to a month. I don’t know where the others are, or what they’ve been through. Asrael offered me an opportunity. If I publicly renounced my claim to the throne and showed my support for him, he would let us walk away, but not Saige. He wants to keep her. I told him to go fuck himself, after I smashed his nose.”
Faris sat there, frozen. He didn’t even blink. I wished I could reach out, give him a hug, something, some kind of contact.
“Talk to me, Faris. By the moon, are you okay?”
“So you mean to tell me that this wasn’t a test?” he asked, his voice wavering slightly.
“Gods, no,” I replied, holding eye contact with him. “We would never do that to you. You’re a part of us, Faris. We love you.”
“Holy shit.” He shook his head. His brown curls bounced with the movement. “Why did they make me kill all those people?”
“Who knows why Asrael does anything?” Khol muttered.
“If I had to guess, I would say he was studying you. You probably stirred up his curiosity. He had to have been surprised when Fischer walked into the throne room, let alone an identical version of a man who was supposed to be dead.”
“This whole time, I thought I was being punished, that I needed to show that I was worthy. Now you’re telling me that I wasted a whole month in that sandpit filled with blood, when I could have been escaping? Firefly was in danger, and I didn’t know? I can’t even process this right now.” Faris hung his head, staring blankly at the ground.
“Hey, look at me.” He made no effort to follow my command. “Look at me,” I demanded more sternly. Slowly, he obeyed. “This entire situation was out of our control. Not one of us is to blame for anything that’s happened while we’ve been here. We each did what needed to be done—that’s all that matters. We survived. We’re here now, and we’re not fucking leaving without our woman. Are you with me, Baby Fang?”
Faris held my eye contact. I watched his tongue snake out of his mouth as he ran the tip of it over one of his fangs, the glint of the barbell in his tongue catching on the faint light from the torches surrounding us.
“Of course I’m with you. It’s the only place I want to be,” he declared.
I nodded. “Good. That’s good.”
“Listen,” Kohl murmured to both of us. “You need to stay alert. I don’t have any more information than that. Be ready for anything. I believe in the stars and their path for each one of us, but I refuse to believe that our journey ends here today.”
Hope bloomed within me as I sat there with my father-in-law and my… boyfriend? Faris had called me his boyfriend earlier; I didn’t think I misheard that. Is that what I was to him? It didn’t feel like the right word, but that was only because it wasn’t strong enough. Label or not, the two men beside me renewed my strength, and I found myself excited for the first time in weeks. I couldn’t wait to see how this all played out.
My eyes narrowed slightly as I stared at the men. No, not men—demons. The demons across the table from me and my guys. I couldn’t believe that the Exiled were actually here. They were notorious in the human realm. Last year, we’d been sent on an assignment to spy on them, just to see what they were up to. They weren’t wearing masks back then, so I wondered if they were simply trying to hide their identities or if this was a new gang thing for them.
