Never had the truth echoed so strongly within Calan. Rage consumed him for what Dar had done, to the world and to…to the baby that the female behind him carried. The injustice done to the child angered Calan more than anything ever had.
He lashed out at the redcap. The blade connected with the male’s chest. He screeched, then disappeared on a puff of smoke, transported to the prison where the fairies were forced to suffer. Where they were forced to uphold the very barrier Dar had tried to destroy—the one separating Hell from the human world.
The other two redcaps turned and ran. Calan chased them down, striking at one, then the other. The victory didn’t soothe Calan. Nothing would, not even Dar’s incarceration. The sensation of helplessness gripped him. As a demigod who would live for eternity and had powers even the gods did not possess, he felt powerless to stop the suffering of the world’s innocents.
One in particular. His gaze zeroed in on the female’s belly, heavy with child.
Why did the babe’s outcome trouble him so? He’d known other half-breeds had been created, and he knew what had become of them. He didn’t have an answer to his fixation, nor did he have time to figure it out.
He strode back to where the woman sat sideways on his horse’s back. She gazed at Calan with a mixture of sadness and acceptance darkening her eyes. Unable to bear the look of resignation or contemplate what put it there, he focused on her stomach. An undulation across her swollen belly drew his attention. He rested his hand on the spot. The baby moved. Something pushed against his palm. A hand or a foot, he didn’t know. Didn’t care. The babe was alive.
Innocent.
He yanked his hand away and glared at the spot where the angel had stood. Only a featureless shadow remained.
Calan curled his fists. “Do not disappear now. You helped me. Now tell me why.”
Silence answered his demand.
What was left of the angel faded, leaving only mist.
“Coward! Come back here and finish saving them. You know I cannot.”
“Can’t you?” The whispered question echoed in his head.
“No. I must stop Dar. It is my duty.”
“Do you not trust your siblings to stop him?”
He forced his hands to unclench. “Of course, I trust them.”
“Then you doubt their ability to overcome their challenge?”
Warning bells went off in his head. He stiffened. “I trust them.”
The angel’s shape gained dimension and drifted closer. “With the fate of the world?”
“Yes.”
A shadowy hand covered the same spot on the woman’s belly Calan had touched. “How do you know they will prevail?”
Calan resisted the urge to push the angel’s hand away and met the blurry, lavender eyes focused on him. The angel was testing him. Why, he didn’t know. He relaxed his tight muscles and repeated a third time, “I trust them.”
The angel took Calan’s hand, laid it over the women’s belly, then covered it with his. A white light surrounded them—woman, child, angel, and Hunter. Before Calan could process what it meant, the angel stepped back. The soft glow encasing them faded.
“Let them accept their fate while you do the same.” The angel pointed to some distant point on the other side of a nearby lake. “Get the female and her child to safety.”
There would be no safe place for them, not on earth anyway.
“Sadly not.” The angel responded to his unspoken thought.
More warning bells went off. Careful to keep his mind blank, so as not to accidentally promise something he couldn’t deliver, he faced the village where the battle continued to play out. He would do as the angel suggested and allow his siblings to capture Dar. The other Huntsmen were capable of it. He did trust them. They’d only planned their attack the way they had to take advantage of the element of surprise. Dar’s trap took it away.
Calan connected with Rhys’s mind and shared his plan, then moved to get on his horse’s back. A jolt of pain radiated through him, stopping him from mounting the animal. He stumbled a third time, and an image flashed across his mind—Rhys crouched over Tegan, a dagger in his back.
Pure agony whipped through Calan. Each of his siblings met the same fate as Rhys, falling under the blade meant for the fairies and proving Calan’s earlier fear correct. The curse wove through the stricken Huntsmen, freeing the Unseelie Court, and leaving the barrier to the Underworld open.
In his mind’s eye, he saw the monstrous fairies racing for the gateway. He opened his mouth to scream his denial. His siblings beat him. Their combined roars echoed through his head. He sensed their intent. He wanted to stop them. Save them. Take the burden of the curse onto himself. Separated from them, he could do none of those.
He watched helplessly as they accepted the curse Dar’s redcaps had transferred to them…willingly. The Huntsmen had to pay the price it demanded, the one Arawn had woven into the punishment he’d delivered upon the fairies—fuel the magic that made up the barrier with their suffering. It had been a fitting punishment for the species that’d grown powerful on the agony of the innocent. At the moment, all Calan felt was sheer anguish and an overwhelming sense of remorse.
His siblings’ tortured cries radiated through Calan as they fed the unquenchable living magic their pain. The barrier mended itself, and the Unseelie fairies screamed their frustration. They beat on the shimmering wall, scratching at its surface and throwing their deformed bodies against it.
The gateway held. Thanks to the Huntsmen.
All but me. The dagger fell from Calan’s limp hands. His legs gave out, and he landed next to it.
“Angel?” The word came out garbled.
No answer reached him.
He forced his muscles to respond. He stood and glanced at his horse. The angel’s ethereal shape no longer stood next to its side. Calan lurched
