She shrugged one shoulder. “No. But I think I need to know.”
“You do need to know. Even if I hadna felt your magic, I’d be telling you this now. Wallace put you in the middle of our war. It’s a place I never wanted you to be.”
“Sometimes it doesn’t matter what we want. Fate does whatever she wants.”
There was a long stretch of silence before Charon began talking again. “The screams from Druids and men alike from Cairn Toul still fill my head when I sleep. The pain of every muscle shredding, every bone breaking in multiple places as my god was released is indescribable.”
Laura’s heart missed a beat as she watched fury and despair fill his dark brown eyes. She wanted to go to him, to touch him as he relived his time with Deirdre. He didn’t need to go into detail. She knew the pain he suffered by watching how his body had gone utterly still, every muscle locked.
“The real agony was battling my god for control. Deirdre kept all of us in dungeons deep beneath the earth. We were tortured with magic, brought to the brink of death, and healed by our gods dozens of times a day for months and years, all to break us to her will. Yet, there were a few who were able to stand against Deirdre, who gained control of our gods instead of them controlling us.”
Laura wanted to ask him to stop, but his eyes shone with such stark desolation that she couldn’t get the words past her lips.
“I make no excuses for what I am. I’m a monster, Laura, a beast who dares to walk among mortals. I didna ask to become this, but I will fight against evil until my dying breath.”
His sun-kissed skin disappeared, copper taking its place. Claws a dark copper sprang from his fingers. The horns she’d glimpsed before were startling—and exquisite—with their penetrating copper color and the way they curved around the front of his forehead. She caught a glimpse of fangs, but it was his eyes that held her spellbound.
Copper colored his eyes from corner to corner, bleeding out any white. It was eerie and beautiful to look upon. She could practically feel the coiled violence beneath his muscles, waiting to let loose, but he kept a tight leash on it.
She’d seen how quick and agile he moved when fighting Dale. Before her stood a warrior in the truest sense of the word, a master at battle with the power of a god.
“I’m a Warrior. Ranmond, the god of war, is inside me. He gives me immortality, speed, enhanced senses. And the power to disintegrate anything.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Aiden yelled at Galen and sent a blast of magic against a drough going after the Warrior. Aiden stood in front of Britt, protecting her while she huddled against the building. His magic was nothing compared to that of the droughs attacking, but he wasn’t going to give up. Only death would bring him to his knees.
“Aiden!” he heard his father shout behind him.
Galen dived to the ground to miss a blast of magic from a drough. He came up on Aiden’s right and said, “Get Britt out of here.”
“Nay.” The Warriors were impossibly fast, but they weren’t immune to magic. His father and Galen needed him. “We leave together.”
Galen growled and beheaded a drough before the Druid could use her magic.
Aiden couldn’t believe his eyes when Galen jerked and fell to his knees as black magic held him painfully in its grip. Aiden quickly spotted the drough responsible and sent several blasts of magic at her.
Her red lips twisted in a sneer right before she turned her magic on him. Aiden deflected her first shot as he saw Galen climb to his feet out of the corner of his eyes. Before Aiden could blink, he was hit a second time by the female the instant two other sets of magic slammed into him.
Aiden bit back his bellow of pain. It took every ounce of strength and his growing fury to keep himself upright as his body spasmed, but at least Galen was back on his feet. Aiden could feel his magic slipping away, being drained by the droughs and their too-powerful black magic.
Then he thought of Britt, of his father and Galen, and Aiden pushed aside the agony to focus on his magic pulsing within. He would give them all the time they needed to get free.
Aiden pivoted at the last minute as another blast came at him, and his gaze snagged on a tall woman who stood off to the side, watching. He couldn’t see her face in the shadows, but he knew she was drough. Aiden had no idea why she wasn’t fighting alongside the others. If she joined them, he didn’t stand a chance.
But she didn’t.
It was a reprieve, and he wasn’t going to complain.
Aiden kept himself upright by gripping the side of the building while Galen used his speed to rush the drough with the bright red lips. Galen was almost upon her when Dale intercepted him. But not before Galen sliced the drough down her arm.