Escaping Destiny (25 page)

“Great.” That was just what we needed. We’d
been on this journey for just a little over two weeks, and we had
yet to make it to the location we needed to be at.

“Zahruk, send the scouts out to set a
perimeter,” Ryder ordered.

I watched from the safety of his arms as a
circle closed around us, and those who Zahruk shouted at spread
wide led by Lachlan. The Shifters were just catching up with the
group, as they had been around us but not with the caravan of
people.

“No scent of the Mages for the last two days.
We either lost them, or they gave up trying to figure out the
terrain. The lone Fae male is still out there, though. That’s all
we know for sure.”

Ryder tilted his head behind me, in
acknowledgement of the Shifter’s words, but he said nothing. I was
beginning to think there was more to this story than Ryder had
mentioned to me, like these two had some sort of twisted history
from the stiffening of spines of the men. They went on high alert
every time Silas got too close to Ryder.

“Clear,” Ristan said, as a series of whistles
pierced the wind.

We dismounted, and the men from the wagons
began to set up camp once more. I walked beside Ryder and Ristan
and the rest of the men as we headed toward the small spring to
water the horses. That was where everything changed.

The men continued to talk to each other,
seemingly unaware of what was happening. Silas was close behind us
with his own horse, and the men had fallen in behind as they always
did. Our backs were never left exposed, or unguarded.

“The horse, it needs water,” Ryder said, and
his eyes flashed sideways to me.

“That’s why we’re walking them to the water,”
I replied. Maybe being on the horses so long had rattled his
brain.

“Water, yes,” he replied.

I glanced at the others, who were carrying on
varying conversations with each other. None of them made a lick of
sense. It wasn’t until Ristan said something that made me go on
alert.

“This isn’t right,” he muttered as his skin
turned from ivory, to crimson red. I caught a glimpse of fangs,
peeking from under his upper lip. “Something is off,” he continued,
his eyes flashing as he took in each male.

I smiled at Ryder, who was smiling gently at
me. Everything seemed to move in slow motion.

Sevrin was smiling at Savlian, and when I
looked over my shoulder, I blinked in confusion. Something was very
off here, and my stomach was sinking with apprehension with every
step I took.

I turned to look at Ryder, who was walking
beside me, and caught his eyes flashing with a yellow tint that
Ryder didn’t normally have. His eyes were gold, amber, or black.
Never yellow. Ristan met my eyes and shook his head.

“Flower,” he whispered, barely audible.

“Demon,” I replied back.

“Duck!” he shouted as he pulled his swords,
and swiftly took the head from Ryder’s shoulders. I felt my knees
buckle, as everything inside of me went numb with disbelief. Ristan
had just decapitated Ryder.

I ducked as Ristan swung his sword in the
direction of the next man standing closest to me. The moment his
blade pierced Vlad’s heart, I screamed. I cried out as I tried to
pull magic around me to take out the Demon. He’d stabbed Vlad! He’d
killed my fucking Fairy! Why was it my magic had to leave me now?
Screw the trial and not using magic, I was going to kill him. The
Demon had fucking lost it!

I felt bile rise in my throat as everything
inside of me shook with rage. I was unarmed and my brands either
failed to notice I was in danger, or were inactive within the
strange barrier. Tears burned in my eyes as I tried to summon the
strength to stop the Demon before he could kill anyone else.

I couldn’t move, even though I wanted to take
him out. I needed to get away from him, and yet I couldn’t make
myself stop screaming. I needed to protect my unborn children from
the Demon from hell. Yet, I couldn’t stop crying and screaming with
rage so deep and foreign that I’d thought I would sink to the
depths of despair from it.

I screamed until I thought my own ears would
bleed, and it wasn’t until I caught sight of Ryder over Ristan’s
shoulder about a hundred yards away that I stopped. Ryder stood
with the rest, separated from us by what looked like an invisible
barrier. His hands were pressed against it, with a look of horror
on his beautiful face—his beautiful alive face.

I turned and looked at Ristan, who was
preparing to go after the others on our side of the barrier with
those wicked looking blades he was wielding. They were over three
and a half feet long and double bladed. I had never even dreamed of
such a thing. He’d know it wasn’t Ryder; not the real one, anyway.
My heart still raced as my mind focused on those golden eyes.

I moved closer to Ristan, but made sure to
stay out of swinging distance. He swung his blade at the fake
Savlian and continued killing until only Sevrin was left. He pulled
his blade back high in the air, and sent it sailing like a missile
toward his target—but it disappeared in mid-air. He pulled his hand
back and looked to where he had aimed the sword, and his bare hand.
The blades were both gone now, as were the bodies that had littered
the ground.

I moved quickly to stand beside him, feeling
the air grow thick with the electrical fuzz that came with power. I
watched in disbelief as Sevrin changed from a huge brunette male,
into a petite raven haired beauty with piercing ice blue eyes. The
woman was dressed in a white silk top that showed off her midriff,
and matching pants that hung low on her small hips.

The look on Ristan’s face was warring between
lust, anger, and reverence all at once. He had his eyes locked on
the woman before us. His skin faded from crimson to its normal
color once again.

“Do you see her, Syn?” Ristan asked
softly.

“Yes,” I replied, not sure what I should do.
Ristan was looking like he was about to go beast mode and jump
her—hungrily. I was pretty sure we’d left Kansas on a tornado, and
this was one of the Witches we should be trying to avoid. He, on
the other hand was not necessarily thinking as I was.

“Do not look so surprised, Ristan,” the woman
said in a low seductive voice.

“Danu,” he whispered.

“I told you that I would come when needed, oh
ye of little faith,” she smiled, and I found myself wanting to
touch her.

“I have faith, Danu, but I’m not sure it’s
always well placed.”

Oh hell no. I shook my head to dispel the
urge.

“Where have you brought us?” he asked.

“To the maze of warriors,” she replied
easily. “Or, as the Dark Fae of old called it, the labyrinth.”

“We came for the relic,” Ristan pointed
out.

“You think I wouldn’t know that? I’m the one
who brought you here. Ryder has proven himself with his deeds. He
has proven, over and over again, how far he will go to heal Faery.
He passed his last test when he gave her away to another Fae, just
because he thought she was the Light Heir and that he was
fulfilling the prophecy. You, my Demon, have yet to show me how far
you will go, but that’s not why I brought you here. She chose you
as her bodyguard; I brought
you
because you know me. You
will see her through this and ensure that she wins,” she said as
she sifted close to Ristan, and ran a thin hand over his cheek.

“Let Synthia go back to the others. She’s
pregnant. She has nothing to do with this,” Ristan said, finally
finding his inner Demon again.

“She has everything to do with this. The
lives of her children depend on it,” she said simply.

“This isn’t her damn fight!”

“Then all is lost. She is only part of the
cure for Faery. The other players have yet to be put into the game.
Sorcha needs to find her place, and make her heart belong to Faery.
She has yet to accept what she is, and still fights me. She feels
the power I have bestowed upon her, and she refuses to open up and
allow it to come out. She is a born leader, and a warrior queen.
I’m in the fiber of her being, as surely as I am a part of Faery. I
set the events in motion that made her who she is, and now it is up
to her to accept me so she can find what she needs to be.”

“Will my children live?” I asked, not messing
around with words.

“I can’t tell you that yet. If I did, you’d
stop fighting. I need you to fight, Sorcha. I need you to play your
part in saving my world. I can do a lot of things, but I can’t
directly interfere with saving this world. That has to be a choice
that my creations fight for. I chose you before you were even born.
I make destinies, but you are right about one thing, Sorcha; you
choose what you can handle and what you can’t. You choose which
path you take to get to the end. But in the end, you are where
destiny wanted you to be,” she said and winked. “And you got all
that without having to eat funky brownies or wear a badass
headdress. Although, personally I think I’d look pretty wicked in
one.”

“I need to know if they live,” I stated,
tired of word games.

“I know you do,” she said and stepped back
away from us. She materialized Ristan’s swords and tossed them at
his feet. “You have five hours to find the exit of the maze. For
every wrong turn, a challenge will be issued. You will receive one
grace, and then for each challenge you fail, someone from your
group awaiting you outside the labyrinth, will die. Should you
fail, you die,” she blew a kiss to Ristan, and with that, she
sifted out.

“Wait! When will we get to the actual relic?”
I screamed, but only the sound of my voice echoing off the trees in
the forest was heard.

“She is always so fucking beautiful,” Ristan
said absently. “Those blonde curls,” he whispered.

Blonde curls? “You mean black?”

“She has blonde hair, with the greenest eyes
I’ve ever beheld,” he said, narrowing his eyes on me.

“Uh, black hair and blue eyes,” I said and
narrowed my eyes.

“That’s what you saw?” he asked.

“Yep.”

“She is beautiful.”

“She’s deadly, very deadly,” I said, ignoring
that she had appeared to him in a different form.

“That’s one thing we can agree on, Flower.
She was pushing a tremendous amount of power at us,” he said, and
turned to look at Ryder. I watched his face before I turned to look
at Ryder, too. He was staring at Ristan, and I realized with
clarity that they were discussing what had just gone down.

“What is he saying?” I asked, watching as
those golden eyes slid from Ristan, to me. There was a look of
helplessness in them that I wanted to wipe away.

“That if I allow anything to hurt you, I will
be singing soprano,” he sighed, and looked me in the eye, “and
then
he will kill me.”

“Oh.” I snorted and looked at Ryder with a
small smile lifting my lips. “
I’ll be okay
,” I sent to him,
hoping he could hear it through the mental link.

“
Be safe, Pet. Stick close to the
Demon,”
he sent back.
“Come back to me,
” he finished, as
I gave him a small smile, and blew him a kiss.

I’d thought I’d lost him for a minute. It had
been the worst minute of my entire life. I’d lost a lot that I’d
lived through, but it wasn’t until I thought I’d lost him, that I’d
known some of the most unimaginable pain in my life, and it had cut
deep and quick.

“I thought you killed him,” I whispered
through tears that still clung to my throat.

“I knew it wasn’t him. They were the
guardians of the labyrinth and the first test. I didn’t have time
to warn you; not with the odds being in their favor,” he said as he
pulled me close and turned me toward the cave, the start of the
labyrinth. “We need to get moving. If Danu has been playing with
the old Dark King’s maze, we could kill half the people outside
that barrier by the time we figure it out.”

“I thought you knew her?” I asked.

“She’s a sadistic bitch who loves to fuck
with me. She gets off on trying to find new and inventive ways to
screw with me,” he said tightly.

“Nice. Does she scramble the brain cells as
well?” I asked sarcastically.

“And then some,” he replied.

We continued walking toward the cave in front
of us. I turned one last time and looked at Ryder, who watched us
as we slipped out of sight, into the labyrinth.

We walked slowly into the cave, and before we
got very far into whatever hell Danu had planned for us, Ristan
stopped me with a hand on my shoulder.

“Here,” he said, handing me one of several
short swords from beneath his cloak. “Now just because I’m letting
you touch my sword and play with it, Flower, doesn’t mean we’re
dating and shit. Don’t go getting the wrong impression here. I like
my balls. Ryder would be having them for dinner if he thought there
was something going on between us. Now, I know the lure of a Demon
is strong, but this shit between us? It’s platonic. I like you, and
even though the allure of swapping spit between us is appealing,
fight it.”

“Seriously, Demon, you’re so full of it,” I
said, shaking my head as he grinned from ear to ear.

“C’mon, admit it. You like me,” he said as he
also handed me a dagger, and we started walking further into the
maze.

“Oh I like you, but I like you better from a
safe distance,” I replied with a wide grin.

“Come on, admit it, you want me.”

“Dream on, Demon,” I said. “So what’s between
you and the Goddess?”

He growled, which caused me to give him a
sideways glance. “It’s complicated.”

“You don’t say.” I smiled and looked around
the colorful, glittery cave that surrounded us. It looked like
something from a movie.

“She wants me to submit to her, and I don’t
want to. I can’t say no, either. She has too much power, and yet if
I say no, I could jeopardize everything Ryder has worked for.
Everything we have worked for. You have no idea how much power she
has, and how much shit she could cause for us. She fucks with me
just because she can. About a century, or so ago, she took over the
body of a female I was feeding on, and she has been doing it
randomly ever since. One minute, I am in control of the feeding,
and the next she is. Some people have to check their food to make
sure it is fresh; I have to make sure mine hasn’t been hijacked. I
have to have control. It is very important to me, because if I’m
not in control, my partners can die. Trust me, it is tempting to
submit. The sex is amazing. But those who submit to her that way;
well, let’s just say it never ends well for them.”