Enchanted Revenge (22 page)

Trying to remember everything Alec had ever taught me, I jumped up from my hiding spot, and thrust my leg underneath his, tripping him. His face hit the ground with a crunch. I hoped it broke his nose.

I quickly ran around and kicked him, smashing my shoe against his face as hard as I could. I did it once. Twice. He grabbed my foot on the third time and threw me down.

I knew I couldn’t stay on the ground. I was the smallest, the weakest. I had to get up. So I scampered away.

Before I could get far, he caught my leg and pulled me back towards him. He climbed atop me, straddling my hips, and pinned my hands above my head.

His weight was more than uncomfortable, it was frightening, terrifying. It meant I was underneath him, that he had all the advantage.

It meant I had lost.

“It
is
you.” He sounded so astonished, as if he had been looking for me or something. He leaned down, putting his nose less than an inch from my neck, and inhaled, smelling me. “Ahh. I knew that there was someone else in that house. I told them we should’ve waited around longer to see who would come.

“They were all just happy that we finished another job, and this one would be our biggest bounty yet, blah blah, but I told them that you would come. I could sense you, even though you weren’t there.”

The words that came out of his mouth didn’t really make much sense, considering I was only half listening. The other half of my brain was busy trying to figure out how I would get him off me and get away.

Then he hit me, punched me right in my face. It was the worst physical pain I had ever felt. My head pounded from the pain. I saw only red.

Ignoring my obvious pain, he bent down and licked my cheek. I tried to pull away, but he was so much stronger than me. “Yesssss,” he hissed. “I think it’s time you come with me.”

He put his hand flat against my forehead, his palm was sticky and sweaty, and felt gross against me. I tried to buck him off me, lifting my hips of the ground. But it didn’t faze him.

I tried to scratch at him, his face, his arms, his hands and could even feel his skin peel off and burrow it’s way under my nails.

I tried to do anything.

I kicked. I pushed. I screamed.

But I couldn’t break free. With his hand on me, he started mumbling some words I didn’t understand. And I felt this rush of cold. Not like Lynn’s refreshing cold, but like being thrown in an ice bath. It hurt. I felt like I was being held under a patch of ice, after being submerged in a freezing lake.

I felt like I was being suffocated.

And then all I saw was black.

When I woke up, I couldn’t move I was so weak. My whole body radiated pain from the tip of my head, down to the bottoms of my feet. I ached everywhere.

Then I heard people talking and I stopped worrying about the pain and focused.

“She doesn’t even have any magic,” a man said. His voice was deep and totally reminded me of Morgan Freeman, which sucked because I liked Morgan Freeman and
so
didn’t want his voice on a bad guy.

“Yeah, but I can sense it on her, it’s gotta be close.” This man sounded like the guy that had knocked me out back in the street.

“Why do you think that? Who do you think she is, Davis?”

“It’s gotta be her. I tried to tell you before, but it has to be their kid.” My kidnapper sounded very sure of this, his voice impassioned. And I all of a sudden hated the name Davis.

“They didn’t have children, we all know that.” This was a different man, not the guy who hit me, or the Morgan Freeman guy. He sounded exasperated with the conversation, as if he would rather be somewhere else and couldn’t care any less about me or any of this. He sounded pretty annoyed, actually.
Well, me too, buddy.

“It was rumored that after King Coenraad rescued the queen, that they conceived a child. That he left The Empyrean because of that child.” It was a woman who spoke this time, her voice calm and sure. “King Mastikh has mentioned it only twice before, as he wants to keep it unknown. If people knew there was a child born, they could rally behind her and seize the throne.”

Murmurs of agreement echoed back to me.

“So, what do you think? Should we get word to Mastikh and tell him about the girl, demand a big bounty, and then kill her? Should we go ahead and kill her and demand a bounty afterwards? I don’t really like the idea of keeping her alive, and if we want to wait for word back from the king, we’d have to wait a while,” the woman asked.

“No, Reagan, I can have a Phoenix get to him and back in about a day or so,” this was another woman. Her voice was so deep it almost sounded like a man’s.

“Are you thinking exactly a day, or longer? That would have the Phoenix back here by ten tomorrow morning.” And then there was a moment of silence. “Well, should we move her? She was with others, I sense a Realm Guard on her.” That was my kidnapper again.

“Yeah, smells like a Sylph,” said Deep Voice Woman. “I freakin hate Sylphs.”

Ok, this is what I knew. I was knocked out with something so strong its lingering effects were causing me continuous pain. My hands were bound behind my back. And I had no magic. I had at least five fairies holding me hostage, three men and two females. And to top it all off, I was pretty sure those fairies were The Mortem.

I just had to determine what I could do, what were my options. Unfortunately these idiots didn’t believe in cell phones, so I couldn’t call Alec to come help me. It was around ten in the morning, according to the sprite, so I had only fourteen hours until my birthday.

Maybe, I could make it that long. If I could just survive until then, hopefully I would get some magic, and then I could kill these bastards and I wouldn’t even need Alec’s help.

Ok. Goal number one- survive until my birthday. Goal number two- get some magic. Goal number three- kill them all.

I tried to stay awake, to listen to what they were saying, but the lingering effects from his magic was still searing me from the inside out and was making it difficult to keep my eyes open.

My stomach grumbled. I realized I hadn’t eaten dinner last night due to my lovely fainting episode, and had skipped lunch because I wanted to train through it. Then I ran for three hours, on an empty stomach. Basically, I totally set myself up for success. Yay…too bad no one could hear the sarcasm in my head, because it would probably entertain a few peeps.

Maybe I was delusional. My thought process was kinda all over the place.

I had to focus.
Ok. Stay Awake. Don’t think about food. Stay awake. Stay awakeeee. Stay aw...

Black.

All of a sudden I was jolted awake by a heaviness on my stomach and my arms being pulled out of their sockets.

I realized I was lying on my bound hands behind my back, while a man was on top of me. It looked like a Nymph. Tan skin, black hair, green eyes, and a green etching on his cheek. Damn. Alec said you had to be super powerful to have an etching like that.

“Hey there, pretty one,” he cooed, as his fingers trailed the wound on my eye where the Sprite had hit me earlier. I tried to jerk away, but it only hurt my shoulders more. “Wakey, wakey.” At least I could put the Morgan Freeman voice to a face.

In that moment, I decided I had nothing going for me, and I needed to do something. Not all of them believed I was anyone special, so I had to play on that. I tried to look terrified, which really wasn’t that hard.

“What do you want with me?” I asked as innocently as possible. “Who are you?”

He laughed, though it was humorless and dry. “As if you don’t know.”

I tried to look confused. “I don’t understand.”

“Who were you with? What all do you know?” Deep Voice Woman asked me. When I looked over at her, she looked completely different than any other Fae I had seen before. Her skin was a tanned, like creamed coffee. But her hair was the deepest orange I had ever seen. It had streaks of bright red, and yellow, and every color in between. And her eyes, they were even more orange than mine.

I was taken aback, because I had never seen anyone with orange eyes like mine before. And I didn’t like the fact that I shared any common characteristics with these deadly lunatics.

She was tall. Not as tall as the Nymph, but significantly taller than me. So at least we weren’t too much alike.

“Wow. Your eyes are orange,” I murmured without even thinking about it.

“No shit, Sherlock.”

And then I was even more surprised, because that is totally something someone back home would say. In fact, I was pretty sure Joyce said that at least once a week. I felt a quick pang of longing for back home, and the way things were, but I pushed it away, I needed to focus.

“Listen, I don’t know what you want. I’m not even from around here. Someone just brought me here, and I’m so confused and I don’t even know what is going on.” And then I did something I never thought I would do. I begged, “Please. Just take me home. Please.”

“You’re even more of an idiot than I thought if you think that act will work,” said the other woman who was also a Nymph and had green etchings on her face.

My stomach grumbled again. My shoulders were screaming. My back was stretching in pain. My head throbbed, and my heart pounded hard against my chest. Sweat rolled down my neck. I was pretty sure all the circulation was cut off in my hands and if I didn’t do something fast I might lose them forever.

“Fine. Get off me and I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

That got smiles out of almost all of them. The Nymph in the back wasn’t even paying attention.

The guy on top of me rolled off and walked over to where the other three fae stood. I seriously considered asking them to loosen my bindings, but decided against it, because they probably wouldn’t do it anyways.

“Who were you with?” the tall redhead asked.

“I was with some Sprites.”

“And…?” she dragged out the word, encouraging me to elaborate.

“And what? I’m hungry, and sore, and I don’t wanna be here. So if you really want me to cooperate, then you have to help me out too. I would like some food and I have to pee something fierce.”

The Nymph closest to me slapped me across the face.

“So, obviously you can beat the shit out of her, or you can just let her pee, so she doesn’t pee on herself, and give her something to eat, and then she’ll help you out. Why do you always do things the hard way?” It was Mr. Annoyed and Uninterested.  “Or really, who cares anyways. The Phoenix will be back in a few hours, and then we can kill her and all of your questions will be meaningless anyways.”

“A few hours?” I asked, before I could think better of it. “So, its tomorrow? I mean, I’ve been with you a day already?”

“Yuppers.”

It didn’t make sense. I didn’t feel different. I didn’t look different. I didn’t have wings. I didn’t have anything.

What if it didn’t work? My mom was apparently a Pixie and my dad was a Sylph…Alec has been saying I’m a Sylph, but what if I’m not. What if I’m
spoiled
?

What if I never got any magic at all?

What the hell would I do then?

I guess they cared about what he said as much as he cared about the whole situation, because they didn’t listen to him.

I couldn’t even count the number of blows my face had taken. How many times they had pulled my arms back. I was pretty positive my right shoulder was dislocated. They had cut me, and burned me, and every single part of my body was screaming in agony.

After the first few hours, I think my brain just kinda shut off. My insides were too rotted, too destroyed to care. I was broken deep inside, and my heart and sanity were decomposing. The acts of torment forced on me festered deep inside, corroding my sanity.

I felt like I was watching it happen to someone else. It was a bad movie that you didn’t want to watch, but were being forced to see.

I was just detached from the entire event.

My breath came out in sharp, shallow rasps. My eyes watered with the sheer pain of it all. Sweat dripped down the side of my face and covered my forehead. Blood pooled around me, coming from various parts of my torn open skin.

Anguish.

They wanted to know things, but I didn’t have the answers they were seeking. They told me my parents were the long lost king and queen. I already knew that. Lived that surprise once already.

They said I had to know things because of that. But I didn’t. They didn’t believe my parents hadn’t told me their plans and all the things they had done.  They laughed at my ignorance, and then tortured me for information they knew I didn’t have.

They never asked about the rebels, or I would’ve known things, and I probably would’ve told them everything too, if they would’ve stopped the onslaught of agony.

Then they asked me about Alec. They asked me his name, where he was from, who he was. But I wouldn’t tell them. Not about him. Anything else. But not him.

It didn’t matter how many times they
kicked
me, or how many times he
sliced
my arm with his green blade, or how many times she
burned
me with only the touch of her hand, or how many times he
poured
water on my face just to watch my Skin. Peel. Off.

Excruciating.

And it didn’t matter how many times I screamed. It didn’t matter my voice wasn’t even working anymore because of how long I screamed. It didn’t matter that I felt like I would never recover from this, even if my body healed, my insides never would. It didn’t matter that I was dead inside. That all the goodness inside me was gone. That I was empty and broken in a way that I could never again be whole. It didn’t matter… it didn’t matter at all.

I still couldn’t believe it didn’t happen. I couldn’t believe it was my birthday and that I was getting tortured on my birthday, and I was gonna die on my birthday, and I never even got my magic.

I was supposed to be some kind of fairy princess, but I had nothing. I could do nothing.

I
was
nothing.

I didn’t know how many hours had passed, even though it felt like I had been sitting in that chair, tied down and being hurt for weeks, because the phoenix still hadn’t come back.

Then something changed.

It was like I was floating away. I could still feel my butt against the wooden cushion. My arms were still tied down to the arms of the chair, the rough rope tearing at my skin and allowing blood to drip down the chairs legs. But I felt like I was floating away. Maybe it was my spirit going to the Outer Realm, and I was finally dying. Maybe I would finally be able to get away and not have to feel it anymore.

Maybe I would get to see my parents again. My parents…

It was like there was a hot air balloon inside me, trying to lift me up. Except it felt like it was coming out my back. My back was trying to explode. Like I was about to combust. My ribs wanted to punch out of my back, to break free. I couldn’t blame them, I wanted to also.

If I closed my eyes, I could almost pretend I wasn’t there anymore.  I could hear them still talking in the distance, but it sounded like they were miles away. Their voices, muffled. If I closed my eyes, and squeezed them shut, I could almost pretend I was flying again. Soaring above Ardennes with Alec’s arms wrapped around me. Like I was safe and warm.

Safe.

I was losing my mind.

I could almost feel the suns warmth beating down on my face as it had before, warming me from the inside out, protecting me, saving me.

Saving me. Warming me.

Then I felt too warm. Hot. Too hot.

Fire.

It wasn’t the same hot as when the stupid Pixie burned me with her fire, but like I was hot on the inside. Deep inside me. Like a fire was raging and trying to escape through my very pores. I wondered if they had injected me with water…maybe the acid was scorching me deep inside where I couldn’t reach it. It was so hot.

I was too hot, too close to the sun.

I knew they were still talking, but I didn’t know what they were saying. Maybe they had damaged my ears, or maybe my own screams had done that. Who knew? I couldn’t hear them though, and more importantly I couldn’t feel them hurting me anymore.

I realized I couldn’t feel any pain anymore. Only warmth. Heat. Fire.

I was pretty sure I was on my way out of there, on to the Outer Realm. I had to be dying.

My back was still itching to burst open. Things were changing, my body was changing, my bones were breaking.

I wasn’t going to explode, but implode. Maybe they had used too much magic on me. Maybe I had reached my maximum level, my breaking point; I had reached that limit that couldn’t be passed.

I opened my eyes and they were arguing amongst themselves, not even paying any attention to me anymore.

I still felt like something was happening. I was at the top of a rollercoaster about to go down. Something was changing. Something.

Change.

The door behind them flew off its hinges and busted against the wall shattering into a million pieces. Alec ran in, sword in hand, with the meanest looking face I had ever seen him wear. Sprites dashed in behind him, filling the room.

Behind me another door was smashed, and more footsteps pounded the floor. We were surrounded.

There was an uproar as the excited commotion grew. Swords clanged. Blood was spilt. Pandemonium.

Chaos!

And I didn’t care. I didn’t even care Alec was there, that he had come to save me. Alec…the gorgeous creature who brought me here. The arrogant man who winked with a shimmer in his eyes. The one person in all the realms I still cared about. I didn’t care he was there. I didn’t care rebels were there, or that we severely outnumbered them. I didn’t even care that the Mortem would surely die soon.

I was a star going supernova. I was insanity. I was a bomb erupting. There was mayhem inside of me, pulling me in. Pulling me under.

And then, right as I could feel everything about to happen. As I was exploding. As I was detonating. As I was shattering into a million tiny pieces of nothingness, it happened. It changed.

I was able to take my first real breath.

It was gone. All of the pain was gone. I was thrust from the chair. Everyone was shoved to the ground around me, as if the force that had driven me from the chair had also thrown them to the ground.

The itching in my back was gone, but there was still a heaviness, as if I was carrying the world on my shoulders.

Standing up, no longer bound to the chair, I looked down at my body. The gashes in my arms were gone. The burns had disappeared. The wounds on my wrists were healed. My skin glowed, the whitest and brightest it had ever been.  And my hair was too, shining whiter than ever before as it was blowing wildly around my face.

Alec stood up and stared at me as if he was seeing me for the first time. His mouth hung open, his eyes open even wider.

Everybody else was still down on the ground, apparently unconscious, but not him. He walked up to me, looking me up and down. And then he captured my eyes with his.

I watched him watch me. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t talk. I still didn’t know what was going on. I was so confused.

“Are you okay?” he asked, focusing only on me, completely oblivious to the bodies scattered around him. 

I wanted to tell him yes, but I didn’t know if my voice would work again. So I nodded my head, bobbing it up and down, until I couldn’t anymore. Until I realized I couldn’t tell him I was okay when I really was the furthest from okay ever.

So then I shook my head and probably looked like a weirdo going up and down, and then shaking it side to side.

“No. I’m not okay,” I told him honestly. “I’m not. And I don’t understand what’s going on.”

“It’s okay. It’s over.” He looked so deeply into my eyes I was afraid he would be able to see it all. See the pain. See the hurt. See the fear. See the festering rottenness that was inside me. See the terror. The sadness. The loneliness. The ache. The ugliness. All of it.

“It’s over?” It sounded too good to be true.

He nodded, and lifted his hands, like he was going to hug me, or hold me, or touch me…but then he didn’t.

“I feel so…” I was breathing so heavy, trying to catch my breath. Trying to focus on something other than his hands reaching for me. Trying to calm my heart that felt like it was trying to beat out of my chest, to break free, like me. I felt tingly all over, like there was electricity running through my veins instead of blood.

I felt like I was on fire.

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered, as he finally reached forward and brushed the hair out of my eyes, wrapping it behind my ear.

The physical contact brought me back to the ground. Brought me back to reality. Alec was standing in front of me. I wasn’t in pain anymore. Actually I felt the opposite of hurt. I felt high and his touch was the hit I was craving.

“Do it again,” I pleaded, my voice ragged but soft.

“What?”

“Touch me.” I was almost begging him.

And he did, he placed his hand on my cheek, searching my face as if trying to make sure I was really okay. I couldn’t stand it anymore. I took a step forward and pulled him to me, needing him. He wrapped his strong arms around me, encasing me in his warmth, his smell, his protection. The sensations pulsing through my entire body were intoxicating.

I buried my face in his neck. He brushed my hair down my back. I was pressed against him so fully I could feel every inch of his body. I could feel his stomach against mine, his hard chest against my soft one. I wrapped my arms around his neck, wanting to feel even more.

I could feel the heat from his breath on my neck, and it sent shivers down my spine, and butterflies to my stomach, and made my heart soar above the clouds. And I wanted more.

And then he placed his lips in the tiny spot of my neck that his breath was tickling. The sensations exploded behind my eyelids as my eyes rolled back into my head.

Heaven on earth. Paradise. I couldn’t help the whimper that escaped my lips.

I kissed him, no longer able to hold back. No longer wanting to.

He kissed me back with all the passion I could have hoped for. I breathed him into me, wanting to remember these sensations forever. He pulled me closer to him, our bodies intertwined. His hand was on my back, holding me firmly against him. His other hand held my face softly, as if I was something he treasured.

This moment…this moment was
everything
. Everything I wanted. Everything I needed. It was the sun in the sky, warming everything, giving life. It was the moon, shining down and providing light in an otherwise dark world. It was the beat of my heart, pounding life and love through every inch of me.

I moaned into his lips, and he made the hottest sound I’d ever heard a man make. It was animalistic. Craving. Yearning.

I wanted this. Him. All of him. I wanted to do everything with him. Be with him the way only lovers could. I wanted it all.

I was so wrapped in him, wanting more, no longer caring where I was or who else was around, until I realized Alec and I weren’t the only ones moaning in the room.

Someone was waking up.