Page 205 of Wrath of the Fae

‘Tell me you love me?’ I ask, stepping towards them. ‘Tell me.’

‘I love you, Raven Rivers,’ Reid says, his hand resting on my cheek.

‘I love you completely,’ Cyrus replies.

Truth.

‘I love you too,’ I tell them. ‘I wish we could go back to what we were. A thief. A gangster. And an agent. Liars, all of us, running around and making trouble. It was so simple compared to this.’

I pull them both in and kiss their cheeks.

‘I love you too. But I won’t watch the world burn to save myself.’

Before they can say or do a thing to stop me, I create a portal beneath my feet with markings scorched into the dirt.

I fall through and land on the metal floor by the arch. I walk towards the machine. When I rest my hand on it, I feel the life force Ivan stole from my sister. I thank the fates that I sense no pain coming from it. No cries of agony or consciousness.

But the machine itself does scream. The bits of Fae that power it all cry out. Endless agony. Just as I did when I was forced inside of it.

I close my eyes and rest my hand against it, seeing its truth. Seeing it all. Understanding the way of power, both the Fae and the monsters. Of ancient rules mixed with twisted science. Every inch Ivan touched, I understand. Every nook and crevice this thing seeps into. Every rule that holds its existence, all bound by an eternal power a man of science could never comprehend.

I think of his words when he placed me under the arch.

She doesn’t power the portal. She creates it. Her essence. Her body. Her soul. Her magic. All of it. She is the portal.

To restart the portals, it needed all of me. I bled, and I faded, and the portals returned.

My power lives here now. I feel it, trapped in this machine.

I rest my hand on the stone and take it back, shuddering as I reclaim it.

And then I think of that word.

Shield.

“The shield around this world,”Ivan said.

I’m more than a portal wielder. I’m a shield maker. I am the queen of the ancients, commanding symbols and dark creatures that were old before Fae even blinked in this world after fleeing a world lost to another race. A world covered in a shield, so their poison would never reach another realm again.

That’s what the monster king said, and his words had no lie.

I scoff, wanting to slap myself for not seeing it sooner.

He wanted to know my heart. To know that if I took power, I would do the right thing. That I would protect.

The Fae lived here once. It was humans that took it. Science and weapons, twisting nature and destroying magic. Their greed and cruelty are unmatched by any other creature.

Humans roamed for millennia, destroying one world with their toxins and war before seeking out another and starting their murderous tyranny all over again.

The Fae Queen fled this world with her people by making a portal to the realm of Monsters.

And her sister sealed this one away in the hope that the plague of humanity would never spread again.

But time passed.

Stories became legends.

And the warnings were lost.

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