It spoke.
“Stand down, cursed king.”
“Shit,” she whispered, swallowing hard enough I felt it.
“Meera, they’re immune,” I said. Despite the fear that rattled my psyche, my voice was strong and sure.
“But they’re human-ish,” she said. “They speak fae. Clearly they can understand.
“Like calls to like, my Queen.”
The Nameless were revenants. Fae that had died on Evorsus and the land had chosen to bring them back to a semi-living state in this form. They were single-minded in their desire to hunt and kill, but this one did something so wholly unexpected when he spoke. I didn’t have time to think about what it meant, only what I had to do. “I need you to run and hide. The Nameless are flesh-eating parasites. They travel in groups and will devour anything they come across.”
“No,” she said, fierce as ever. “I’m not leaving you to deal with these things.”
“You need to.”
“No,” she argued. I loved that fire about her, even if it drove me fucking insane. At that moment, I didn’t have time for the pushback.
“Your persuasion doesn’t work. You don’t have an elemental power.”
“I was raised by redcaps?—”
“You’re fae. Theyeatfae.”
“You’re fae too! If it’s not safe for me, it’s not safe for you,” she insisted, pulling herself into a fighting stance.
“I’m not ...” I said, voice dropping as I struggled to speak. My fury started to rise like smoke from beneath my skin and there was nothing I could do to stop it. My instincts knew the odds were against me. The fury inside me knew we had to protect our mate. Suppression wasn’t an option.
She opened her mouth—probably to argue—but two things happened in quick succession.
The uninvited guests stepped forward. The one that spoke reached for Meera. Grime-covered fingers brushed her skin, but before it could do anything more than touch her, I lost it.
My eyes darkened until they were nothing but endless black. My fingers cracked as they elongated, turning into curved, obsidian talons. From my back, twin wings erupted with a sound of tearing fabric, huge, wraith-like and leathery. They ripped clean through the shirt I wore, shredding the material with ease.
My teeth lengthened, my fangs sharp and prominent as the fury surged forward, no longer leashed. My voice dropped, laced with something deeper. Otherworldly.
“Hide.”
The word wasn’t a request. It was law.
Meera’s body jerked as the persuasion took hold. She twisted in my arms, searching for an opening through the horde, then darted for the trees.
My mate bolted to the left toward a small gap in their ranks. Two of the Nameless advanced toward her.
I moved faster.
No hesitation. No mercy.
One swipe of my talons and the first creature dropped, its stolen face peeling away like wet parchment. The second shrieked when I decapitated it with Hex Cleaver, its voice pitched high and broken before giving way to silence.
My chest heaved. In the span of several seconds, I’d taken down two of the assailants, but over a dozen more still remained.
Keeping one eye on the direction Meera fled, I blocked them from following her and descended into bloodlust. The Nameless came at me faster in desperation, too many wearing faces that didn’t belong. An innocent child with doe-like eyes. An old man with a curved back, wrinkled and worn. A woman who, if you squinted through the madness, looked eerily similar to Meera.
I didn’t. I couldn’t.
Instead, I fought like I had been bred for it. Fury wasn’t just an emotion for me. It was a whole other being that was rage incarnate and lived beneath my skin.
