AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter Thirty
Skylar
I scrambled forward, reaching the fallen queen. Marcella’s eyes were wide, her expression showing fear for the first time. All my interactions with her had been cold and calculating. Now, I was seeing past that to the fear that drove all of it. Everything she did was about gaining power because she was afraid of living without it. Afraid of living with rejection; maybe even afraid of living alone.
I used to think that was my destiny. To be alone. I’d accepted it. I even thought maybe it was better. But I was wrong. We all needed someone, but it came as a two-way street. You had to give; not just take. Marcella wasn’t capable of that.
The queen shuddered, her body convulsing as the final death moved in on her. I reached into her pocket and felt the two stones. Marcella grunted as she tried to lift her arm but she only managed a few inches of movement before the ash took her.
Her body darkened, turning gray as a statue before my eyes. Then she crumbled, leaving nothing but dust. I shoved the stones into my pocket, ready to protect them with my life. As Lola had.
I looked up to see Marcella’s killer. The woman was breathing heavy, her eyes wide. She looked like she was in shock.
“Thank you,” I said.
“I didn’t do it for you.” She looked over at Clara. “You’re free now. We both are.”
A burst of light exploded through the room, cutting across the battle. It hit me like a wave of ice cold water, making me gasp for breath. Everything slowed, then seemed to stop.
I’d been through this before and I looked around, hoping to find David alive and well. Hoping to find all my mates alive and well.
When my eyes met his, I felt relief so great, it was as if I’d just come up for air after far too long under water. He walked toward me, Elias joining him. My knees felt weak. So far, two of my mates were safe. I glanced around, looking for Xander.
“He’s over there,” David said, pointing toward the tiger. Xander was poised to close his jaws around the tiger’s neck. Both of the shifters, frozen in place.
“So this time stopping thing only lets Demons through?” I asked.
“I wondered if you two were really looking for me,” Clara said. “You never did teach me how to do the time stop thing.”
I turned to see the lost sister Elias and David had been looking for all this time. She looked as tired and run down as she had when we first met in the dungeon cell. She’d been through so much, and she had just lost her mate. While she’d turned her mate down, I knew she had to be feeling the severing of that bond. It couldn’t be easy no matter what the situation.
Elias walked over to Clara. “I didn’t know you were alive. This whole time, I’d been after the Knights. Chasing ghosts.”
“It’s okay,” Clara said. “I’m okay.”
“You both look terrible,” David said, looking at Clara, then turning his gaze on me.
“Well, nice to see you alive, too,” I teased.
“We need to get you both out of here,” he said.
“We need to end this. We can’t just leave everyone frozen and we can’t leave our friends,” I said.
David frowned. “I thought you might say something like that. We can move our allies and Elias can explode the rest.”
“No,” Clara said. “Some of these vampires are awful, but many didn’t have a choice.”
“They can’t compel each other,” David said. “They chose to work for her.”
“Some of us didn’t know what we were getting into when we joined her,” the woman who killed Marcella said.
“You should all be thanking her,” Clara said. “Justine is the one who delivered the final death.”
“Leave the others to me,” Justine said. “I can clean the mess up. Explain what happened to the other royals.”
“You sure?” Elias asked.
“Take care of your sister,” Justine said. “And your mate.”
