Bad Fae | romantasy | Bad Fae #1

Chapter Thirty-Three

The High King had sent us to Hollowglen. He was sure this time.

We'd been met with even more resistance than Thilbane. The battle was still waging around us, but I couldn't... I looked at the bodies at my feet and felt bile rising in my throat. This was not like those monks at Thilbane or any other soldier here at Hollowglen; protect the many by killing the few.

This was all-out murder for a creature who hadn't even needed...

"Yana!" said creature snapped as he grabbed my arm.

I wrenched it away from him and backed up a couple of paces. "Don't touch me," I breathed as Dain's sword flew out to stop a projectile hitting me.

"You can mourn for their pathetic lives when you are safe," he snarled.

"No, Dain!" I hissed. "I will mourn them now."

"I had thought your fae instincts were better than this by now but, in case it missed your inferior senses, they are firing iron at us. We do not have time for your humanity!"

Of course, I could tell. The tang sat upon my tongue and fizzled under my skin uncomfortably.

I bristled. "My humanity? Because it's fae-ness that got us this far, isn't it?" I mean, it was, but I was pissed with him.

"What has got us this far is my ability to do whatever is necessary without crying like a wee human babe!"

I was so angry with him, I didn't even have the words.

"What even is so special about these ones?" he asked. "They almost skewered you not ten minutes before."

And there was the crux of it. The problem with these ones. I was so mad, I wasn't thinking about what I said to him. It all just came out in a rush.

"What's so special about them is that they died because my stupid human brain panicked for a split second that you were in danger. The rational part of my brain knew they weren't really a threat. You could easily handle them, but... The risk they might have been..."

I forced myself to stop talking. I didn't want those thoughts. I didn't want to voice them out loud or in the privacy of my own mind. I didn't want to know they existed, let alone for him to find out. I pushed them into the abyss which, despite its name, was starting to feel mighty cramped.

"You killed them for me?" Of course his answer was amused condescension.

I screamed at him in pure fury, and the force of my power flung out without me even thinking about it. He erupted in a flash of light. Of absence of dark. He was just gone. Dispersed.

Everything around me was silence. No arrows. No bolts. No cries of the dying or injured. Even the air was still. Too still. Like every living thing in the vicinity had been ended. I breathed hard and told myself my heart wasn't thundering in panic that I'd just done something I couldn't undo.

But the shadows flooded back in, seemingly with reinforcements. Wind whipped around me as they swirled. They circled as though reminding me I was the prey, and he was the predator here. That he could snap me in two with very little effort. I could feel the anger in them. In him. Then he was solidifying out of the shadows and stepping towards me.

"You attempt to save my life only to disperse me to light, my bastard princess," he said, his voice low and mocking. But I also saw the pride and the heated desire in him.

My jaw clenched. "I hate you," I growled.

"Do you, Yana?" he purred, stopping just in front of me.

Did I? Yes. With every fibre of my apparently immortal being, I hated him. I hated that my instincts had not been to kill him but to save him, even when Dain of the Voidsworn didn't need saving, particularly by the likes of me. I hated what that might mean. What I refused to acknowledge it meant. Because I hated him and that was all.