Sewn & Scarred (The Fated Creations Trilogy #3)

Chapter SixteenMaddox

Chapter Sixteen

Maddox

“ I checked when I ran to get the blood, your mother and father were in the dining room, trying to eat.” Cora cast her eyes up at me.

When we opened the door, the smell of roasted beef, of potatoes, rushed toward me.

Wyott wanted to stand in front to block me, so that it really could be a surprise, and my heart ached at the move because it was exactly what I had done when I’d brought Evaline to meet my father in his study for the first time.

“How is Maddox?” My mother said as Cora walked in. “I mean, the Vasi?” she corrected herself, and I could hear the frustration in her voice. I wondered how many times she’d tripped up on that, and my memory flashed back to when she’d come to see me, when she’d come and promised to fight for me, to fight with Evaline.

“Maybe you should ask him,” Wyott said as we strode in the room, and when he stepped out from in front of me, I saw my parents sitting on one end of the dining table, my father at the head and my mother sitting right beside him. Their forks were still poised in the air, food falling off of them, when they saw me.

Their eyes widened but I couldn’t wait, I moved in a blur to meet them.

My father stood and met me halfway across the table. He grabbed my jaw and angled my face to the light of the tabletop candles that lit the room.

“M-Maddox?” he croaked.

I nodded, the lump in my throat prohibiting me from speaking, as my mother moved.

She came around his side and peered at me, too, and when I looked down at her, I swallowed hard.

“Hi Mama,” I whispered, and watched as her chin quivered, her brows furrowed, and her face crumpled.

“Oh, Gods,” she cried as she reached for me.

My parents wrapped their arms around me and the three of us fell in on each other. I saw my mother’s hand strike out away from us, saw her beckon Wyott and Cora, until they came and wrapped themselves around us, too.

“My boy,” my father cried.

“My baby,” my mother sobbed.

All the despair I’d felt locked away in that cage hit me then. All the guilt, and agony I’d endured, enraged at myself for the hurt I’d forced upon my family.

I couldn’t imagine how hard this must have been, for all of them. To see me there, to know I was alive, but irretrievable.

Not anymore.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry I wasn’t strong enough to stave off the turn.”

My father’s hands balled in the back of my shirt.

“It doesn’t matter now,” he gasped. “It only matters that you were strong enough to come home.”

I tried to speak again, to find some words to apologize in a different way, but our reunion was cut off when the emergency bells started to chime overhead.

All of our eyes turned to the dining room door that was left open. Windows in the front of the home were almost always open, and the sound of the chimes rang through them.

All of us froze and listened. We listened for the sound of war fireworks, and for a moment I wondered if this was it. If this was the moment Vasier had chosen to battle.

Throughout history, all of our wars had been fought in Widow Maker Plains because it was in the middle of both of our kingdoms. But perhaps Vasier had brought the fight to us.

For a moment, a singular selfish moment, my heart raced, and I reached for the bond. Hoped Evaline was near, and on the other end, and that Vasier had brought her with him. He’d never attended the wars of before, but perhaps he would now that he planned to use Evaline’s magic.

And that was when I remembered that he likely wanted to use her magic against us, as a weapon. And then I felt guilty for hoping she was here. Because if she was, and this was war, then hundreds would die at her hands alone.

I knew she’d never do it, not willingly, but Gods knew in what ways Vasier could try to manipulate her.

The blood drained from my face at once, as I realized that he most definitely could manipulate her magic.

He could compel her.

We dropped our arms and stood, heading for the doors.

“Did you already alert the kingdom of Maddox’s recovery? Are they misusing the emergency bells for the celebratory bells?”

My heart raced as I turned to Wyott, hoping for it to be true.

“No, we haven’t told anyone. The only two who know are Dean, because he was here when Maddox came back, and Otto, because he had to remove the Rominium from the chair.”

We all shared a look before we ran outside, and saw Kova flitting around in a panic. They ran in all different directions, but the one thing they all had in common, was that they all headed for the beaches.

My stomach dropped as the five of us ran around the manor, and down the hill to the shore that stood just past the training center and loft, and gasped when we saw it.

Saw them .

My fears were right, and they were wrong.

Several yards into the water, or rather where the water should’ve been, stood Vasi. One every few paces. Standing completely still, and staring directly at us.

The water rose behind them, a wave like Evaline would conjure, and my eyes snapped around the faces, looking for her. I tried the bond again, but it was still dim.

She wasn’t here.

Instead, there were dozens of Water Casters behind the Vasi, easy to identify by the way they faced the wave, held their hands up toward it.

“They’re outside the wards,” Cora said softly, but of course, the Vasi likely heard. They were far, but not outside of earshot.

The Sorcerers created a wave to hold the water back, freeing the shallows of the sea that usually covered it so that the Vasi could stand upon the sand. Depending on the time of day, and the tides, the wards were either on the edge of the sand or several feet out into the shallows.

It only took a moment for all the Kova to understand what we were looking at—an attack, of some sort. It was not a large enough force to wage a war, but enough to fight a single battle.

And the beaches were littered with Kova already, we were faster than the humans and Sorcerers who lived here, and if they were coming, they were far behind.

As if ruled by a singular instinct that struck us all at once, every Kova that stood on the coast, hundreds at this point, ran for the Vasi. There were a lot of them, but not more than the Kova in this odd perimeter they were creating.

I took a step and Wyott turned to plant both hands on my chest.

“Not you,” he snapped low, and he didn’t need to give me his worried glance for me to understand why I couldn’t fight with them.

If the Vasi saw me up close, saw who I was, and saw the color of my eyes, and survived this battle, they could go tell Vasier. Any chance we had at my return being a surprise for him, to use my newfound knowledge of how to come back against him and the Vasi, would be shattered.

I ground my teeth and planted my feet into the sand and watched as my family, and my friends, ran straight for the Vasi.

Worry wound in my gut as I stared at them, saw the way the Vasi stood their ground, and crossed their arms over their chests, completely unbothered by the bombardment of Kova headed for them.

My stomach twisted when I looked over the throng of Vasi and Sorcerers. Some Sorcerers stood there, maintaining the water. Some stood by, and I assumed they were other Water Casters there to relieve each other when it became too tiring to hold the waves back, but there were other people standing around, too. Not looking at the waves, as all the other Sorcerers were, but looking at the ground. Looking above them, and out.

My heart beat out of my chest as I understood their purpose, why a few of them had blood smeared on the front of their shirts and pants.

Not their blood.

Kova blood.

At the same moment I opened my mouth to warn them, all the Kova slammed into the invisible barrier a pace or so away from the Vasi and their amused smirks.

As if they were dominos, the lines of Kova heading for the Vasi hit the ward and fell back on one another, until all of them had fallen. I shook my head violently, ran my hands through my hair, because I knew what this meant. I knew before the Vasi standing in front of my father and his rigid shoulders opened her mouth.

“A message from Vasier, for you, Kovarrin,” she said, snarling his name. “He knows how much you love to hide away in your cage here, and wanted to make sure you felt quite at home.” Her smile widened, and she tilted her head. “You can keep us out, but we can keep you in.”

She half turned to face the Water Casters behind her, but then paused and turned back to Kovarrin.

“One more thing, he wanted to be very clear. We have your Sorceress.”

Her words were accented by the movement of the large waves that reached up over the Vasi, and while sparing them and their Sorcerers, crashed over the invisible wards and the hundreds of Kova in front of them, washing them all back to shore.

As the waves slammed down in front of me, as I watched the Kova pick themselves up from the receding tide, my hope that we were wrong about Sage, that we were wrong about Evaline being taken to Mortithev, slipped away along with it.