Rage (Scarlet Dawson Book 3) Read online

  Zeke turns away and moves back into camp, leaving me thinking about what he’s just said. Something in his last words stayed with me and made me doubt the path we were taking to bring down Vex.

  For now, I ignore the conversation and make my way to the main tent to prepare for the next leg of our trek.

  I rejoin the team just as Bastian is reminding the twins, Jared, and Aylesbury of their protection detail.

  I scowl at him and say, “I’m quite capable of looking after myself. I believe I’ve proved this point repeatedly by taking you down.”

  The twin’s eyes widen. “You’ve managed to take him down,” Trenton asks in disbelief.

  “But you’re so tiny,” says Jackson, circling me, showing his predatory side.

  “It’s more like Red fights dirty,” Aylesbury tells them.

  “So why are we protecting her?” Jackson asks.

  “Because her shadow is called trouble and it follows her around constantly,” Bastian grumbles then grabs my arm and moves away from the others. “I know you don’t like it, but just go with it. I don’t trust that Vex won’t show up to take you again.”

  Don’t react, Scarlet. I roll my eyes at him but don’t say anything in case my voice gives me away.

  “Trent and Jax are with you, Aylesbury and Jared are with Silence,” he tells me before pulling me back to the group.

  As the other teams gather, I notice the male Fae from yesterday is studying Adam, but just as he’s about to come over Zeke signals the start by letting us know the location of the next camp. The Seelie team set off instantly and with a quick look at the map, we follow behind them, leaving the Unseelie team studying their maps.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  As we move through the maze of crumbling ruins Silas falls into step at my side and says, “Why will no one tell me what happened last night after I was knocked out and why do you look like that suddenly?”

  I miss a step at her question and nearly trip over my own feet. She looks at me dubiously. “Loose rock,” I explain, then tell her everything about the fight, the aftermath, and my new magic, but I don’t tell her that Adam may or may not have started the mating bond with her by giving her his blood.

  “Adam has wings?” she exclaims when I finish telling her.

  “Really? Out of everything I just said that’s what you’re going with.”

  “Well, it is a bit weird,” she says then lowers her voice. “Not really surprised you have access to your Nymph powers though it was always kind of weird you didn’t before. Vex would love this.”

  Speaking of Vex I had to somehow find a way to kill Bryn, I hate him, but I wasn’t sure I could just kill him in cold blood.

  “Are you even listening to me?” Silas says.

  I shake off the thought and say, “What?”

  “I was asking you about the stone. Can you use it now?” she says, huffing out a breath at having to repeat herself.

  I pull the stone out from under my shirt and say, “I can’t use it yet, but I can now hold it without passing out from the creepy cold power inside.” Which worried me. When I touched the stone, I no longer felt the coldness of death, I felt nothing. Did that mean I was becoming used to it or was it changing me?

  Over the next few hours, our path intersects with both the Seelie and Unseelie teams. As we walk along a cliff’s edge we find ourselves falling into step with the Seelie team again. Neither team speaks but the twins fall into step closer to me as we walk along.

  I walk closer to the edge of the cliff as the pathway becomes narrow just as Bryn falls into step at my side.

  “Did you miss me?” he says as he pushes me when the path thins further.

  I begin to flail my arms as Trenton reaches out to grab me. I start to fall backwards and manage to grab Bryn’s shirt. I right myself, without falling over the edge, but as Bryn tries to jerk himself away, he stumbles and starts falling towards the edge. I don’t know what possesses me, but I start to reach out to help when a massive vine snakes past me to wrap around his waist and pull him back.

  The twins take a hold of me and drag me away from the scene. I don’t even get a chance to see which one of them has that magic.

  “Trouble really does follow you,” Jackson says with a smile as we catch up with the others.

  Bastian’s eyes find mine and he asks, “What happened?”

  “I tripped,” I say, walking past him and ahead of the others.

  I know he doesn’t believe me, and he can smell the lie, but I no longer care. I feel trapped in yet another situation that Vex has created. I let the anger inside me simmer as I walk along. I feel like a spectator in my own life, no longer in control.

  The Seelie soon disappear choosing a different path as the one we take splits and goes either upwards or down towards the base of the cliffs. As the path winds down, the cliff walls rise around us, the trees above hang over the small crevice making it dark and eerie. I glance back at the others as it grows darker; they’re walking single file behind me.

  As we move further down the path the cliff walls rise further above us, and the path we’re following winds down and is littered with fallen boulders. I have to scramble over a pile of boulders then drop down the other side, when I see that the others are easily making the climb, I make my way around the next bend. Now the path has widened, the twins flank me one on either side.

  As I walk around the corner, I see movement and come face to face with death. The face inches from my own has skin peeled away and an eye missing, I look to the side to see more men closing in, all injured or rotting. I scream in terror, grab the twins, and run back the way we came. Running straight into Bastian’s solid chest.

  His arms go around me, and I let him comfort me as I try to catch my breath.

  “We need to go back,” I say, pulling away and grabbing his arm.

  He looks the way I’ve just come from, then he looks at the twins. The others are looking on with concerned faces.

  “There wasn’t anything there,” Jackson says. “The path is clear.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” I say, frowning. How could he miss all the men?

  Bastian and Adam both move away from the group and towards the corner. As Adam nears it, he calls a sword to his hands. My heart beats faster as they disappear around the corner. In seconds they return, both frowning.

  “I know what I saw,” I say, as their frowns deepen.

  “What did you see?” asks Lykos.

  “Men, Fae males, walking around wounded, their faces rotting away,” I say, a tear slipping out of one eye. “I can’t go that way.” My voice rises, panicking as I start to breathe faster. “Please don’t make me.”

  I back away and into the boulders at my back. Aylesbury looks worried. As they all peer around the bend. Bastian walks over to his dad and grinds out the words, “Explain.”

  I look at him, the panic I’m feeling making my heart pound against my ribs.

  “It’s the stone, I figured yesterday back at the church she could see them, but she wasn’t wearing the stone.”

  “See who?” Jared demands, taking a step towards Lykos as Aylesbury throws his arm around my shoulders.

  “She can see the dead,” Lykos replies. “Tera held dominion over death, she could see it everywhere, and so can Scarlet.”

  “Why the fuck would you let my mate wear that thing?” Bastian roars.

  “Don’t forget this was her idea. She needs that power to face Vex or do you want to live your life constantly dogged by a powerful psycho,” Lykos replies calmly.

  Bastian turns to me. “Take it off, Scarlet.”

  I understand what Lykos is saying, this is Tera’s stone, her power and if I want to wield it, I need to embrace it.

  “No,” I say, grabbing the stone that lies underneath my shirt. “Lykos is right. Now I know what I’m seeing, I can handle it differently.” I surprise myself with the false bravado in my voice.

  I pull away from the comfort of Aylesbury’s arm, take a deep
breath, then walk around the corner. Bastian falls into step at the side of me as I take the first step into the mass of dead in front of me.

  One step in and I can feel their pain, their lives, and their voices batter at my senses. I feel everything they do, but most of all I’m terrified of them and what this power can do to me.

  Bastian roars at my side and scoops me up into his arms. His massive arms tighten around me as he presses me into his chest and sets off at a run towards the end of the crevice. I clutch at his arms as the dead claw at me.

  It’s only a matter of minutes before we reach the end, but it feels like a lifetime. Bastian stops and lowers me to the ground, his arms remaining around me.

  “I don’t like this, Scarlet,” he says to me as the others approach.

  “Neither do I,” I admit to him.

  I pull away from him and look around. We’re now at the bottom of the cliffs resting against a partial ruin that’s been built into the bottom of the rock. There’s a small stream bubbling through the ruins, partial staircases wind up to nothing, and stone lies in piles on either side of the water. Trees densely populate both sides of the stream and look like in some places they are holding up the cliffs above.

  Everyone slings their packs down as Trenton calls out, “Lunch.”

  I move over to Lykos and ask, “Why didn’t you say anything before?”

  “Would you have believed me?” he replies.

  To be honest, I wouldn’t have yesterday because I wasn’t wearing the stone, but so much has changed since then. I don’t answer but turn and sit on a log near the water. Bastian joins me, and the others take seats either on the floor or their packs as sandwiches are passed around the group.

  We eat in silence, even the twins remain quiet. I rest my head against Bastian’s arm while trying to process everything.

  I feel Bastian’s body tense before I see the Unseelie team emerge from the same opening in the cliffs.

  We all stand and begin to gather our things when the Fae male from yesterday calls, “Wait, I need to talk.”

  He jogs over to us and stops in front of Adam. Adam looks like he’s been expecting this and cocks his head to one side as the guy says, “Adam?”

  Adam doesn’t reply, so the male says, “I thought you were dead. Why’d you abandon us?”

  Adam still doesn’t speak so the Fae pushes him. He doesn’t budge. “Adam Shadus. Stop ignoring me!”

  Adam sags in what looks like relief, then throws his arms around the male in front of him. I take a step forward, but Bastian grabs my wrist and pulls me away.

  “What the hell is happening?” I say to Bastian.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Adam talks to the male Fae until Bastian shouts to him, “We’re leaving, with or without you.”

  The entire team starts to walk off, leaving Adam standing there. Bastian begins to pull me along when he sees my reluctance to follow. I look back at Adam and see him jog to catch up with us. No one says anything to him about the little display with the Fae male, so when he falls into step beside me, I grab his arm and say, “You have some explaining to do.”

  “That’s the thing, until now, I couldn’t,” Adam replies.

  “What do you mean?” I ask him, as we walk along the side of the stream.

  He sighs then answers me. “I was cursed over eight hundred years ago, but I haven’t seen my family for over nine hundred and thirty years give or take.” I open my mouth to say something but Adam cuts me off. “Let me start from the beginning.

  “Back then the Unseelie and the Seelie were still fighting amongst themselves, and the Seelie were also fighting their Demon war. I became a prisoner of war and for the next hundred years, I was held against my will in a small dungeon below the castle in Vyr.

  “It was only when the bitch Queen realised I would never give up my court’s secrets that she employed someone to curse me into service with the Fae Council. I’ve been a slave to either the Seelie crown or the Fae Council ever since.”

  “Wow.” I really didn’t know what else to say. I knew he always looked like a caged animal, but if I knew that this was his reality, I would have tried to help.

  We walk away from the stream and head into a dense section of forest and large ruins as Adam continues to speak. “It wasn’t until you retrieved my file for me that I found a way to escape their clutches. The stupid fools documented everything. My file had a contract in that showed ownership of my curse passing through each Seelie council member, including Summer.

  “Over the years I’ve gained more and more freedom as the world changed around me, but I still had to spend much of my time working for the Guild, Council, or Court. They never expected me to see my family again, which is why I’m usually kept underground in the armouries.

  “To be released I simply needed to face someone who knew me and get them to release my birth name. If it wasn’t for your entanglement with Vex, I couldn’t pass this trip off as working for the Guild and gain back my freedom. I knew my father would make one of my brothers attend; he always has.”

  I stop Adam and throw my arms around him, hugging him as tight as I can. “If I’d have known—

  “I know, Scarlet,” he says, mumbling the words into my shoulder. All these years he’d been a slave. I knew I should have trusted my instincts where he was concerned but he always ended up playing the manipulative Fae, which threw me off.

  I see Bastian watching us and I know he’s heard every word when he doesn’t stop me from offering Adam comfort. It’s then that I realise any attraction I ever felt for Adam is completely gone, my mating bond has erased what little attraction I had felt for him. Now, he was once again my friend, that just happened to be good-looking.

  I release him, and we follow the others who haven’t noticed that we had even stopped.

  “So, what’s the deal with the wings then?” I say, curious.

  “Only the true Unseelie heir has wings,” he says simply, moving ahead of me so he can help me climb over some crumbled stone.

  “So, you’re a prince?”

  “I was. As far as the court is concerned, Aaron is the heir. I have absolutely no idea what sort of welcome I’d get if I went home.”

  “What do you mean, if? Surely you want to go home.”

  “Nine centuries is a long time, Scarlet. I no longer know these people, I can’t just simply go back and expect nothing to have changed.”

  We both stop talking as we reach a bottleneck between a huge wall and the side of a cliff. The trees are thick above us making it quite dark and dank. The whole team is waiting at the widest point. Lykos takes point as Bastian makes sure that Silas and I are positioned in the middle of the group.

  As the men walk through the bottleneck, they have to slide through sideways, all too broad in the shoulders to fit through. Silas turns back to me and grins as she walks through normally. Sometimes being small worked in our favour.

  Halfway through the bottleneck, we reach a small grate of iron bars. As Silas comes to stand in front of it a horrendous howl cuts through the quiet. She freezes, her back flush to the cliff side.

  Aylesbury squeezes past me and touches Silas’s arm. “Whatever’s in there can’t get to you out here.” She nods at him and, inches past the grate, the howling from within slowly cuts off.

  As Aylesbury inches past the grate, three long, clawed fingers shoot out and grasp the metal bar of the grate. The claws are inches from Aylesbury chest. I inhale sharply as he reaches into his pocket for the quantum torch. He turns it on, flashes it in the general direction of the grate, then shouts, “Everybody needs to move quicker. We need to get out of here, now.”

  Bastian, Lykos, and Jared, begin to move through the small space as quickly as their bodies will allow. Aylesbury propels Silas forward while Trenton grabs my arm and starts pushing me past the grate.

  There are more grates in the wall and for each one that we pass a mottled black leathery hand shoots out. Their talon-like fingers barely miss s
cratching Bastian as he struggles to get through the bottleneck.

  It takes five harrowing minutes before the full team has burst through into a large room that has a rotted bed sinking into the floor.

  Silas is clinging to Aylesbury’s arm and breathing heavier than normal. My own heart is racing from either adrenaline or fear.

  I look at Aylesbury, who is staring at the fissure in the wall and say to him, “What did you just see?”

  He doesn’t look at me he looks at Bastian and Lykos when he answers, “Formorians.”

  That one word makes me shiver. I never saw what guarded the entrance to Lykos’s home but whatever these Formorians were, they terrified Aylesbury.

  Another howl hits the air followed by a cracking that sounds like a wall breaking.

  Bastian exchanges a look with Lykos and they both jump into action and begin herding us out of the bedroom. Trenton starts to ask something when Bastian barks out, “Not now,” and shoves me towards the door Aylesbury has just fled through with Silas.

  We come to a stop in the next room that is completely open to the elements. The roof is gone and replaced by creeping vines, and the wall and door that I assume would have been our escape are missing. We are high above the ground without a way to get down.

  I peer over the edge.

  “I hope we have time to get the ropes out because I ain’t jumping that,” Jared says.

  “No time for that. We need to get into the open daylight,” Lykos says as he transforms into a weird-looking creature that almost resembles a gryphon. He flaps his wings, taking flight, and grabs Silas and Aylesbury in his claws. Silas screams as I lean over the edge to see him land safely.

  Adam jumps off the edge as his wings unfurl behind him and he glides gracefully to the floor. He stretches his wings wide before they retreat once more into his back. The back of his shirt now ripped open, revealing a hint of a black tattoo that I had never seen before.

  Phoenix, Trenton, and Jackson step to the edge and jump off. Jared and I both peer over the edge and watch them tuck and roll as they hit the ground. We’re both too busy staring in wonder that we don’t see Bastian shift. The next thing I know we are both grasped around the middle by a giant clawed hand thing. I scream as my stomach rolls, but a second later we are safely on the ground. I turn around to see Bastian shift back from the huge black dragon I’d seen once before.