Mendax
Like everything else to do with Callie, I never saw it coming.
The iron blade dug deep into the flesh just below my wing. The exact spot I had shown my love where to end me forever.
I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was.
Her soft body pressed against mine like a hug.
Her face was stoic, trained even as I took in the wetness in her own bloodshot eyes. My breath hitched with the feel of the deepening blade.
She had delivered my killing blow.
Still, she didn’t move, her body tense as she continued to hold onto the blade. I fell to my knees, unable to stand any longer. Callie dropped with me, unable to pull herself away as if some force kept her against me.
“You were right about everything, Malum,” she cried, holding onto me tighter.
The sting of using my true name as she buried a blade in my body was its own unique torture.
I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came out. Her eyes held mine as tears fell from her face and landed on the dirt of the gridiron’s floor.
“I was sent to kill you, but not by the humans.” She twisted the knife, literally and figuratively.
Callie moved back and shifted to stand above me, leaving the knife lodged in my back. Her wheat-colored hair blew in the wind as she stared at me, still crying. Her face looked torn between wanting to help me up and wanting to run from me as fast as she could.
“I knew you had a spark inside you, Callie. I just hadn’t thought it’d end up being a whole fucking inferno,” I stated.
My body was growing weaker with every second, and talking was hard for a lot of reasons. Every part of me wanted to pull her to me, still needing her beside me. My soul ached for my last breath to echo off her cheek as she held me tightly.
Two tears fell from her face and onto my chest as I struggled to stay kneeling below her. Her hard exterior cracked further with every breath of life that left me.
“You understood me like no one else.” Tears streamed down her red face as she took a few steps backward. Pure regret filled her eyes as she wiped them with the back of her hand. “It seems my fate is to have an incomplete heart no matter what I do.” She took a few more steps toward the opened door.
Blood rushed in my ears. I had to stop her—she was going to leave. She was going to be gone.
“Callie, I need you. Please. Please don’t go. Wait! Wait to go until I’m dead so that I never have to feel the pain of you leaving.”
“You’re still the villain, Malum. You will always be the villain. Queen Saracen was right,” she said, her voice shaky now as she took another step away from me toward the door.
My blood stalled in my veins, more from the sight of her leaving than the blade in my back.
“You’re looking pretty evil yourself right now, darling,” I rasped, wiping the black blood from my lips as I fell to my side. My cheek hit the ground with a crunch. My eyes still clung to her, refusing to squander my last few moments of watching her.
“No one expects an angel to set the world on fire,” she said as a flicker of desperation passed through her eyes. “I’m sorry. I had no choice—it was the only way—”
She shook herself and wiped her tears on the back of her hand again as she straightened her posture. She took one last long, yearning look at me before she turned with clenched fists and walked out of the arena door.
“Nooo!” A scream ripped from me, overfilled with agony and every last bit of rage I held as I watched her walk away from me.
I wouldn’t let her get away. I would never let her get away from me. I couldn’t go on without her. I refuse to be without her ever again!
I honed in on my mind, reaching into my powers and pulling up the ability to impel her. She would not leave me, I would make sure of it, and when I got her back, I would show my goddess exactly what it felt like to be my queen. I would let her take everything from me she ever wanted.
Electric heat coursed through me with the strain of my power. One call to her and she would return where she belonged at my side. Forever. She would be lucky if I ever took the chains off her pretty throat again; I would tie it to my own.
“Callie Peterson, return to me,” I commanded, infusing my power into the words.
She paused, her head turned to look me in the eye. Yes.
“Callie, return to me now, please.” My voice cracked with the surge of power I sent through to her name.
The vixen holding the threads that tied me together smiled sadly. She turned from me and walked away. Completely unaffected.
No! No . . . No!
Callie wasn’t her true name. The goddess had given me a false name the entire time.
My head collapsed against the ground with shock.
She was good. She was so fucking good. Better than I had given her credit for. I clutched at her tooth hanging from my neck. My palm closed tightly around it as I settled further into the quiet, and it made me feel that she wasn’t all the way gone from me.
She would never be free from me. Never.
By now, the dark army had broken through the shields as my powers and I weakened. They descended upon the gridiron floor like ants.
“My lord! Men, kill her now!” the captain of my shadow guard shouted before my smoke reached out just enough to wrap around his ankle and pull him to the ground with a sharp tug.
I winced at the pain the effort had caused.
“No one touches my future queen but me unless they want their head cut off,” I whispered to the fallen man.
He looked shocked, his face full of puzzlement. “But my lord . . . she just . . . we need to get you to the healer now. That was a killing blow,” he said with a pained crease of his brows as two others helped him up and began to fuss over my body.
“It would be if I was a normal Fae, but I am a Smoke Slayer.” I lay back and closed my eyes with a smile.
I was no fool; I had seen through her innocent act the second I had laid my eyes on her. She was a goddess filled with the power to maim. She overflowed with a pool of darkness that matched my own. She was absolutely perfection in every way.
Of course I wouldn’t have shown her my real points of weakness.
No, I would heal, and when I did, I would hunt her down. She would lead me to whoever had made her do this, and I would kill them long and slow for whatever pain they had caused her. Then I would stop at absolutely nothing—nothing—until she was mine forever, my queen. There wasn’t a person I wouldn’t kill or a world I wouldn’t destroy to get to her. If anything, this only made me want her more. I wanted to give her darkness a home—a place to crawl inside of and corrupt. She belonged with me.
A hard smile creased my lips and crinkled my eyes as my vision faded to black.
