A Crown of Cursed Hearts (Kingdom of Blighted Thorns #3)

72. Tempest

72

TEMPEST

I traveled to Ivenrail’s tent and fused with my body still sitting in the throne, held in place by vines that slithered and spit as they coiled across my skin.

“You’re missing something, my boy,” Ivenrail snarled from my right.

He stood in front of Vexxion who stared forward, pinned by his treacherous father’s magic.

With a cackle, Ivenrail lifted a vine collar and unhooked it, dangling the heinous thing in front of Vexxion’s face. “Fortunately, I brought you a new one. Allow me to correct the situation.” His grin spread wide. “Your first task? I want to watch while you kill your fated mate.”

Vexxion, I cried out in my mind.

I struggled with the vines binding me to the chair, but they only bit deeper. With rage roaring through my veins, I drew up power and blasted through them. They withered and twisted, their whimpers slithering around me like the mew of newborn challs.

“Go,” I commanded, and they slunk back into the ground at my feet.

Ivenrail leaned toward Vexxion, the thorny collar winding between his hands, a living, vicious thing eager to bite through his skin and establish control.

I love you, Vexxion whispered, his soft words stroking through my mind. He nudged his head to where his family blade lay on the floor. If I knew him, he’d magicked it from the sheath at my side, determined to die as long as he took his father with him.

Didn’t he know?

This task had always been mine.

With a grumble, Ivenrail stretched the collar around Vexxion’s throat.

I made the world . . . slow.

Whipping out my arm, I called to the blade, and it snapped off the floor, the hilt landing squarely in my hand.

There was no Blade of Alessa, not in the true sense. Nothing physical or indestructible. Nothing someone could command to do their evil will. The only blade I needed existed in my heart and that of the man I would love until my dying day and beyond.

I infused his family dagger with my power, combining it with his and his mother’s, my mother and father’s. I added the blood and tears of everyone who’d suffered in this land and the ether under the hand of a monster determined to wrest control from those without power.

A quick slice on my arm made blood well, and I bathed the blade, infusing it with all that made me who I was and who I might one day be.

“When nature bends and true love speaks with all its might,” I said, my voice churning through the air. “Only then will justice end this bitter blight.”

I leaped onto the king’s back and lifted the blade. “For Vexxion!”

With a grunt, I plunged the dagger down, thrusting it through this feral carcass’s hide.

“For Mayline and Ellyn!”

I drove the blade into him until it pierced through his wretched, wicked heart.

The collar he held burst into flames and across this world and beyond, I felt every single Nullen collar burn along with it, leaving people bewildered but finally free from the brutal grasp of the wicked fae.

“For me and my friends,” I snarled, pushing harder.

Ivenrail toppled to the side, and I went with him, riding him as he landed hard on the floor. I tightened my grip on the blade and twisted it back and forth, churning his heart to a pulp. Eviscerating it until it stopped beating, stopped sending lifeblood through his veins.

Only then did I wrench myself up and off him.

I gathered power from my well and sent it at him, burning what was left. I kept the flames spiraling until only a pile of ashes remained, all that was left of the terror that had held faerie in his vicious grasp for too long.

Striding forward, I kicked the pile. Wind gusted through the tent, carrying with it the scent of black roses tipped with silver.

Mama? Her soft fingers stroked my brow, and her whisper of a kiss met my cheek for the very last time.

Her wind lifted the ashes and carried them out to scatter them across the plain.

The cacophony of battle died in an instant.

I strode to the tent opening, watching as the enormous, slashing beasts disappeared and the surviving wicked fae flitted to places they hoped to hide.

A cheer went up among the victors. A cheer for us and each other. For a future I hoped the fates would help all of us deliver.

It was finally over, but at what cost? My soul felt torn yet born anew. Tattered and healing.

A sound behind me sent me spinning.

Free from the vines that had been eager to bind him once more, Vexxion stood before me, as gorgeous as when I first met him. His thick black hair was still a touch too long, and just like back then, I itched to run my fingers through the strands and tangle them up.

The same network of scars twisted from beneath his black tunic collar, snaking around the right side of his neck to his nape.

As I stared at him, his full lips twitched upward in a smile just for me.

This man had exposed my every secret, my every desire, and all the best I had to offer. He’d laid me bare for the entire world to see, and the thought of that no longer scared me.

All he saw was me.

And that was enough.

Precious love, he rasped in my mind. Come be mine forever.

When he held open his arms, I leaped into them.