Ruins of Chaos Page 2

  “What happened here?” I asked. Kreyton’s mouth opened and closed before his head shook from side to side, his eyes widening with horror.

  “They came in and killed everyone,” Kreyton whispered. “Lord Andres removed the wards, allowing the dark witches to breach our defenses.” My blood chilled at his words. “Darkness filled his eyes as the witches tried to kill everyone while he watched, showing his true devotion to the High Queen of Witches. He betrayed us.”

  “How did you survive?” I demanded, hating the uneasiness that settled into my mind. Aria was within Lord Andres’s grasp at the camp where I’d left her.

  “I was in my room when they came,” Kreyton stated thickly, his teeth chattering. “I hid but couldn’t escape the mist that filled the castle. I can’t get out of the wards, and you’re the first to come that didn’t leave upon seeing the bodies.”

  “The council was coming here,” I growled. “Did they arrive?”

  “They came but stopped outside the keep at the sight of the dead. The King of Wolves and the Queen of Nymphs were here. They entered the edge of the woods but didn’t pass the wards to come any closer. I didn’t see any other council members, but I’ve been unwell since the mist touched me.”

  “Tell me what you saw,” I said, watching haunted eyes fill with the memories.

  “Lord Andres came with a handful of witches in chains. He asked one of his men to remove the wards so he could take the prisoners to the keep. We lowered the wards, and all hell broke loose. I watched it all from my bedchamber but couldn’t move to warn my parents because the mist unleashed by the witches paralyzed me. When it touched me, it froze me in sheer terror as it did to the others. They all succumbed to death or turned into something else, allowing the darkness inside them. I should have died or turned into a monster as Lord Andres had become, but I didn’t.”

  I watched the black lines move up his face, lifting my gaze to Brander’s as the poison moved through Kreyton. He hadn’t survived; he just hadn’t succumbed to death yet. Something within him had prevented the poison from killing him instantly, as it had the others. It explained why there were no wounds or injuries found among the dead, other than the keep’s lord and lady.

  “You did well, Kreyton,” I assured. He nodded sluggishly, eyes bloodshot and filling with black magic.

  Stepping back, Brander lifted his blade as Kreyton’s face twisted with malice, the magic changing him into Ilsa’s minion. Brander swung his sword, removing the lad’s head adeptly so he wouldn’t suffer. Blood painted my face as I stared down at the headless boy. He’d had something dark within him meant to turn him into a tool, unlike the others who had succumbed to the poison.

  “Lord Andres wouldn’t have done what Kreyton described,” Brander stated, and I frowned before sliding my eyes back to the carnage.

  “Not unless someone poisoned him with dark magic, controlling him as they did Kreyton. Aria is within Andres’s grasp. If what the kid said is true, Andres could be there to take or murder Aria for Ilsa. She has to know that Aria is the one who set siege to the stronghold Asil held. I don’t like Aria being out of my sight. Not with the witches growing bolder and the King of Unwanted Beasts joining his forces to that evil bitch’s army.”

  I glanced at the hawks, owls, and other birds of prey, watching the scavengers feasting upon the dead. My creature peered out and frowned, staring down at the barrier that prevented those wishing to do harm from entering the keep. Unlike the scavengers below, the birds sensed the poison within the dead. My eyes slid to the rodents, finding hundreds of beady eyes trained on our every move. Ilsa was using the familiars of lesser witches to watch us.

  “Send for Aria. If Lord Andres is under the control of the high queen, she’s in danger. We can meet them on the passes. Have Killian leave immediately with the army to follow. Instruct him to prevent Lord Andres from joining them.”

  “You’re bringing Aria to a fucking slaughter,” Brander snorted. “They’ll travel through the annexed villages to reach the passes, and Aria’s too soft to see the carnage those bastards left behind.”

  “Killian would take the quickest route through King’s Crossing or King’s Road to reach us. Knowing Killian, he’ll go around the villages to avoid detection. Aria won’t see the dead in those villages. She needs to see what her precious witches have done to innocent people. But I don’t want her to see people split open and ripped apart. She hasn’t seen the evilness of the witches yet, and she needs to. What happened here wasn’t the same as what transpired within those other villages. That was the work of monsters; this was something else entirely.”

  Brander whistled down at one runner and watched as he tripped over the dead in his haste to get to us. I could have told them we had to move into the keep to secure ink and parchment, but I had no intention of going inside again.

  I’d known the lord and lady of the keep, having blessed their union many years ago myself. They were good people and fed the poor who suffered at the hands of the witches. Lady Kathrine was gentle and a friend. Her marriage wasn’t a love match, but she’d been a good wife to Demetrius. They’d deserved better than to die in pain or from poison at the hand of the witches.

  I handed Brander my wax and seal and leaned over the battlement, staring at the rodents who continued to watch us. I sent a wave of power from me, spreading through the bodies of the dead and the creatures who fed upon their corpses.

  Turning, I looked up at the setting sun before moving toward the tower, as the sky turned vibrant with shades of red, an ominous color considering the number of dead littering the ground.

  I exited the battlement, moving through the courtyard and toward the rodents. I sent my drawn power into them, smiling as they exploded without warning, cutting off Ilsa’s sight into the keep. The ravens cawed, ruffling their wings as they took to the air, circling us.

  “Fly to Norvalla and ensure no one is marching upon it. Once you’ve confirmed their safety, spread out and find the unwanted beasts that are wreaking havoc on the annexed villages, and return with their location,” I ordered. The ravens swooped low before twirling and sailing south toward my home.

  A smile flittered over my mouth as I thought of Aria beside me, her tiny frame curled into mine as the nights grew colder the closer we traveled to my homeland.

  I’d missed her, her warmth, her snarky comments, and the look in her eye that tinged her cheeks pink from wanting what we both craved. Still, she denied me her body. I hadn’t pushed her, sensing the need to heal from her time in the Kingdom of Unwanted Beasts. Soon, she’d be unable to fight the need to mate, even if she didn’t understand what was happening to her.

  I hated that this world would make Aria colder, but there was no escaping the horror of what the Nine Realms had become. Once we reached my home, I’d have to present Aria to the council and figure out whom among them had asked to spare her life. Someone had wanted my Little Monster alive, and I needed to know who it was, soon.

  First, I owed it to the warriors who had died to find and eliminate whoever had done this to them. I owed the Lord and Lady and Steely Keep peace in their deaths. I paused beside a group of warriors and frowned as they discussed how to handle the mass burials.

  “There’s too many to bury,” I muttered.

  “The Lord and the Lady?” Brander asked, coming to stand beside me with the parchment and pen.

  “They will remain with the men who died protecting their land,” I announced.

  “They’re the lord and lady,” a warrior argued.

  “And they’re with their people in death. We are not above those who serve us. I am not a king who holds titles above honor and bravery. They served with those who held peace until something evil and sinister took them all together. They no longer house their bodies and are free of their shells.”

  The witches believed Hecate blessed them to move onto the realm where she dwelled. We believed death offered peace among the otherworld, where new life began. Not unless you went into the
Void of Nothingness. There, eternal darkness and emptiness consumed everything within you, reducing your soul to shredded particles while forbidding rebirth, like Liliana.

  Chapter Two

  I stared out over the mountain pass that wound down into the valley where Killian’s route would bring Aria to me. It had taken us days to reach the pass where I had instructed them to meet us. They should have beaten us to the spot, but they had yet to arrive.

  Smiling, I imagined Aria curled up beside me, throwing one of her fits. Once sleep overtook her, she would curl her body against mine for warmth, and hell if I didn’t enjoy the feel of her against me. Aria was the first woman to sleep in my bed, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t feel right.

  I’d missed Aria since leaving her in camp. I hated I missed her and that my mind always wandered to what she was doing or if she missed me. Fucking pussy shit. I didn’t miss women, nor crave them curled up beside me.

  Her banter gave me life. Her snarky comments and quick wit promised to engage my mind. I didn’t just miss sex with Aria; I missed her mind. I fucking hated it. I hated that I craved her intelligence that matched mine and her smirk that promised she imagined disemboweling me. I missed her fire that burned brighter than any sun or moon in the Nine Realms, even the desert lands that sweltered like a forge.

  I fucking missed the companionship her presence offered me. When had it changed from sex to more with her? She was quirky and a little spitfire of energy. She fought me toe-to-toe on what she believed, and I fucking respected her for it. She challenged me, and people didn’t fucking do that, but Aria did. She stood her ground and stood for those who couldn’t stand up for themselves.

  Shit. I’d gone to stop the separation of the mothers and children coming into the camp, and Aria had gone full battle queen on Bekkah. I’d no sooner told the lord to stop his men from assaulting the witches and their offspring to hearing the men shouting that the witches were fighting. It enraged me that I’d fucking caved to stop what had upset Aria, only to find her assaulting the fucking witches I ordered to remain unharmed.

  I’d never noticed the damage inflicted upon her by the guard. The anger that filled me when she’d attacked Bekkah blinded me and forced me to punish her for assaulting someone under my order of protection. The penalty for that crime was death or fifty lashes. I would have had to stand in judgment for Aria’s slight and either whip her smooth, supple flesh or sentence her to death. My word was law. My word as King was my bond to my people. Aria had broken it, and as a result, I had broken my vow to my people to protect her soft skin from the cattail whip. In no world could I whip Aria and be okay with it. That terrified me because she continued to fight me.

  It hadn’t gone unnoticed by my men either. They’d seen the favoritism after Bekkah had made damn sure that everyone knew Aria Hecate had broken the law of protection. Luckily, having the men stand as a witness to Aria’s treatment by the guard and me, and relaying those details to Bekkah, provided her with the information to brag how badly Aria was beaten, sparing me from losing face amongst my people.

  “You think something happened?” Brander asked, settling beside me as I leaned against the boulder, watching the sun setting over the furthest mountain range.

  “I think they should have fucking been here by now,” I growled, unwilling to allow the uneasiness to settle within me.

  “Killian is never late.” Brander ran his hand through his hair in worry. “I hope Lord Andres isn’t the reason for their delay.”

  I considered his words, acknowledging that Killian had only been late once in the entire time I had known him. He was a warrior, a brother in arms that had been through hell with us. He was dependable and honest to a fault. My stomach flipped while I considered what could have forced the indomitable warrior to be late.

  “Aria wouldn’t give Killian trouble. Not with Greer and Lore present,” Brander stated, troubleshooting and eliminating obstacles they may have faced.

  My eyes followed the path to the bottom of the pass, and the crease in my brow deepened. “Killian wouldn’t have waited for the army to prepare before leaving. That would slow down their arrival, and I instructed him to leave immediately. He’d have taken King’s Crossing and moved deeper into the forest, but that wouldn’t slow him down. That would have shortened their journey. Even if they’d taken another route to be safe, or because of some unseen issue arising, they’d have still beaten us here.”

  “And yet they didn’t,” Brander exhaled slowly, turning to look at me.

  I shook my head, throwing the stone I’d been tossing up into the air over the edge. Turning on my heel, I headed for my warhorse. I wasn’t waiting any longer as a foreboding feeling had entered my mind. Pausing at my horse, I whispered a command that sent a raven from my skin into the air. Telepathically, I gave the ravens an order to find Killian.

  Mounting the horse, I waited for Brander and the men with us to catch up before starting down the long, winding trail through the pass that took us back to a branch of my army. It should have been entire army. It wasn’t.

  A thousand scenarios went through my head. Had Aria escaped? It would make sense why Killian hadn’t shown up on time. I had ordered him to use all resources to capture her if she ran. Had the silver-haired men set a trap and lured them in, capturing Aria to take her to wherever the fuck they lived? Had Kreyton told the truth, and Lord Andres slaughtered his army to prove his loyalty to a witch?

  Any of those scenarios were possible. I’d gone back to the cavern beneath the waterfall after leaving Aria to search for any signs of Eva and Aden and found nothing. The entire cavern had collapsed as if Eva held it together with her presence while she slumbered. It was likely a sanctuary spell used by witches, keeping ancient places intact with magic to ensure an undisturbed, eternal rest. Eva hadn’t been in eternal slumber, though. I’d felt the spell outside the barrier that had placed her in stasis.

  Whoever Eva and Aden was, they’d vanished with the rest of their men into a layer of the Nine Realms I couldn’t trace, which was worrisome since we knew nothing about the pricks. It had floored us to learn there were more women like Aria out there, but Eva hadn’t excited me. She lacked pretty much everything that drew me to Aria.

  Fucking Aria.

  She was my perfect ideal vision of what I’d craved as a mate. She was bare-bones, beauty, brains, and very brave, which floored me. She didn’t even realize how stunning she really was. Her innocence was a flaw, but one I enjoyed. Her loyalty was unshakable. I respected her for the way she stuck to her principles and dug her heels into the ground when she believed in something.

  Aria Hecate was born to be a queen of the Nine Realms, but the fact that she was born to be Queen of Vãkya made me ill. How was it possible that five hundred years to the day after losing my mate, a woman who was my perfect ideology of what I wanted in one, walked in and shook the shit out of me, rattling my world? Add that she was a Hecate witch and very powerful, making me crave her like opium after a bender in a den, and it made me question everything. Aria was too perfect. Her timing was too fucking convenient. If I had planned to turn the head of the rebellion with a pretty pair of turquoise eyes and rare silver hair, I’d send Aria in too.

  She made me want to change shit that I’d never questioned before. Aria made me crave things I’d stopped wanting and thought gone forever. Shit, I got hard at the thought of her swollen with my babe in her belly, and then I hated her even more for betraying my wife with the idea of it. Aria was right. I lashed out hard and fast to protect myself.

  Aria had made the image of Liliana fade to nothing. She lessened the pain of Sven’s death with her sweet smiles and shy glances. I needed that pain to fight the war I’d started. The Nine Realms depended on me to keep my shit together to fight for them. As much as I wanted Aria, I wanted to protect the innocent lives lost every fucking minute in this place, besieged by evil and witches that claimed they were the superior race.

  My people crowned me King when Aria’s
grandmother murdered my parents. Hecate had forced me into this role. She took everyone I loved from me and made me become King before I was ready, and now the one woman I wanted to keep was her granddaughter? No, that was a design in play, a well thought out plan to throw me off.

  Brander and I paused as downed trees came into view. I noted the exposed roots pulled from the ground as if the wind or something else had knocked the trees over. Exhaling, I slid my attention around the forest before nodding to the other trail.

  “That’s strange,” Brander stated, pointing to the trees behind the fallen ones that were still standing and undamaged.

  “Be vigilant. Spread out into fighting formation and be silent.” I looked back at the trail, frowning as it occurred to me that we might have been called away so Aria could escape.

  Anger rushed to the forefront of my mind at the thought her family would be so evil as to murder thousands of people to free her. If anyone could have accomplished that spell to bring down an army of warriors, it would have been Hecate witches, an entire coven of them to be exact. Aurora had ulterior motives. That much I’d discovered in Haven Falls. She’d planned on bringing the girls back into the Nine Realms, but why?

  She’d spoken about it openly to the alphas. Aurora had asked them to return with her, yet she hadn’t mentioned it to Freya’s daughters, who she’d raised as her own. What were her motives? It was unheard of for Hecate witches to sacrifice for their sisters or offspring. I didn’t trust them, not one fucking bit. Aurora fed Aria’s mind with knowledge, while Aria fed her mind folklore, legends, and fantasy books.

  Aurora had hidden Aria’s scent, knowing she wasn’t meant to be among those in the mortal realm. Aria had been a ticking time bomb set to go off, but Aurora had allowed Aria to remain where she could have slaughtered an entire race of innocent people. That didn’t speak sweet mother figure to me, and I didn’t assume she wasn’t aware of Aria’s father’s identity.