to kill.”
“I severed her connection with the earth,” I said, hating to utter those very words.
Rowe stumbled to his feet, moving back away from me. “That’s impossible. That’s just fucking impossible.” I noticed that his eyes were no longer on my face, but on the whip still coiled in my hand.
Rising slowly to my feet, I extended my hand to him, offering him the whip. Keeping it coiled, he examined the end and found pieces of iron embedded within the leather straps. But it was more than just the iron that caused their link to the earth to be broken. The whip was imbued with powerful and ancient magic.
As soon as Rowe wrapped his hand around the handle, the whip jerked from his grasp and slithered across the ground. It wrapped around my left leg, the handle coming to rest against my hip. “I’m the only one who can use it.”
“Convenient,” he replied, twisting the word with a sneer. “You’ve created an efficient weapon of death that can be used by only you.”
“I had no choice.”
“No choice? O Great Protector of the people, how could you create a weapon that only kills our people?”
“Because Aurora asked me to.”
Rowe’s brow furrowed with surprise as he looked at me. I avoided his piercing gaze to coil the whip once again and hang it at my side. I didn’t like to think about it. I was the protector of our people. At least I had been. But even before Aurora proclaimed that I was a traitor to the crown, I had become an efficient killer of my people.
“Why?” he asked softly.
I drew in a slow breath but couldn’t raise my eyes to meet his gaze. Rowe had this image of our people and what he had been fighting for when he struggled to open the door once again. I hated to be the one who destroyed that image. And yet, hadn’t Aurora already tarnished the image when she turned her back on him?
“During the final couple centuries of Aurora’s rule,” I said, “while we were trapped, the cohesion of our people started to break apart. Factions built among the various clans, questioning her rule. People were dying; our children were struggling to survive birth when we were lucky enough to bear children. Aurora’s authority was being threatened.”
“She asked that you hunt down anyone who was questioning her rule,” Rowe said, finally drawing my gaze up to his face.
“They were accused of treason and immediately dispatched. The old spell weavers helped me develop the whip. I needed something unique and that would immediately strike fear in the guilty. Unfortunately, it was too effective with some of the races.”
“What do you mean? It doesn’t kill everyone?”
I shook my head. “It doesn’t affect everyone equally. It breaks a naturi’s tie to the earth. For the earth clan, death is nearly immediate and extremely painful. For the water clan, they can no longer return to the water, which leads to a slower death. The animal clan can no longer shift or call to the animals around them.”
“The wind clan?”
“We lose the ability of flight. Our wings are permanently severed.”
“But we can control the weather still?”
“Yes, as well as weave other spells if the naturi is strong and old enough.”
“You used it on a weaver!” Rowe gasped. The ancient spell weavers of our people were only second closest to the earth next to the ruler of our people. They were held in the highest regard, thought to be untouchable.
“The one who created the whip. Aurora feared his ability to create such a weapon against his own people.”
“What about the light clan? What does it do to the light clan?” he demanded.
I shook my head, frowning. “I don’t know. Aurora never accused her own clan of treason.” I dreaded the day that I would have to discover that bit of information.
“I’m sorry,” Rowe murmured, shocking me.
“For what?”
“That you were forced to hunt our people. It would have turned them even more against you.”
I forced myself to shrug despite the lump that had grown in my throat. Other than Cynnia, Rowe was the only one to understand what I had been forced to do. I was born to be the protector of our people and had turned into their executioner. And I was good at it.
Pushing such thoughts aside, I focused once again on the mission that lay ahead of me. I hunched forward, balanced on the balls of my feet, allowing my wings to once again spring forth. I stretched them wide, enjoying the feel of the muscles pulling while the wind brushed against my feathers. Turning around, I saw Rowe struggling to do the same. The iron collar was doing its job by inhibiting his ability to use magic, but it allowed him to call forth the black leathery wings that were a part of him.
“We need to get moving,” I said. “You’re not the only one I need to convince to side with Cynnia.”
Four
“Damn it, Mira!” Danaus taunted in a low whisper, a smirk pulling at one corner of his mouth. “Are you going to need a tissue or can you pull it together?”
I threw the hunter a dark look, but otherwise kept my comments to myself. The ceremony in the small clearing in the woods would start soon, and Barrett had generously allowed us to attend since we were the only people James saw as both friends and, in a twisted way, as family. I wasn’t going to be the one that started trouble.
Yet, I could understand Danaus’s teasing all too well. As we stood there in the quiet forest, a ring of werewolves around us, I tried to focus on the bare-chested James next to Barrett and the rest of the Rainer family. Unfortunately, my mind drifted too often to my recently lost Lily and Tristan. Two people I had taken into my family, into my heart, who were stolen from me through violence and treachery just a few months ago. Watching James being inducted into the Savannah pack, I tried to reassure myself that he would be safe and that no one would strike at him in an effort to get to me. He was now a part of Savannah, but there was a safe distance between me and him.
A hollow ache echoed through my chest. Months had passed and still I found myself conjuring up ways that things could have gone differently, resulting in Lily or Tristan or both of them being alive today. It was a futile act that only extended my pain, making me more vulnerable to the world around me, but I had Danaus at my side.
The hunter had returned from Venice with me, and moved into my town house in the historic district of Savannah. I had opened my house outside of the city to him, but he proclaimed that living together was a bit fast for him. But even that was said with a smile, as he tended to spend most of his evenings wrapped in my arms at my home. He had left Themis behind, and a part of me was relieved to have him out of Ryan’s grasp. The warlock leader of the so-called research society was more trouble than either of us was prepared to deal with. I had no doubt that Ryan still had more schemes that included us, but for now he seemed content to let us live in peace in Savannah.
Determined to earn his keep, Danaus took a job as a bartender and occasional bouncer down at the Dark Room. The exclusive club that catered only to nightwalkers and lycanthropes suffered a bit of a shake-up at his presence, but things had settled back into their normal routine. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that as part owner of the Dark Room, I was the one paying his salary each week. Danaus needed to feel independent and yet still connected to the dark other world that pulsed just beyond the notice of humans.
To my surprise, his fingers brushed against my hand, hanging down at my side, before he finally entwined his fingers around mine.
Some of the tension finally flowed out of my shoulders and I squeezed his hand as I resisted the urge to lay my head against his hard shoulder. Danaus had become my rock, my one shining lighthouse in the storm, my last
