Scales rippled across my skin and I drew in a deep breath, inhaling the feeling of pain and grief which clung to her, and she released a choked sob as the vines in her hands fell away.
“We’ll hurt you if you don’t move,” Caleb warned.
“Do what you want. I don’t care anymore,” she said, shaking her head. “My daughter is gone. My son hates me and the man I dedicated my life to has only ever been using me.”
“Lionel Acrux uses everyone,” I pointed out and a flare of defiance and heartache shuddered through her as she shook her head, but she couldn’t hold her tongue now that I had my grip tight around her emotions and I coaxed more from her.
“He loved me,” she said. “We were something special. At least we were until…”
Hatred and jealousy poured through her in a black and aching torrent, and I was gifted flashes of her memories, of Lionel with his new queen, the shadow bitch Lavinia, kissing her, praising her, marrying her.
“We need a binding needle to stop her,” I said, suddenly certain that she would give it to us. “If we can cut her off from the shadows then we can kill her. Don’t you want to see her dead?”
Excitement tumbled through Stella at that suggestion, followed by fear and a sense of loyalty to the man who had brought the shadow bitch here, but I fought against that feeling and focused on encouraging the vengeful emotions within her, the jealousy and hatred, gifting her visions of Lavinia dead and gone, her influence lifted from Lionel’s shoulders.
Stella broke a sob as she stepped aside suddenly, leaving the way clear for Caleb as he shot past her down into the basement, returning only a moment later with a binding needle in his fist. A blast of earth magic burst from him and he bound Stella in vines as she cried out in alarm, unable to raise a hand to fight back while I held her in the lure of my gifts.
I pressed my power into her harder, forcing her to fall asleep and making sure she wouldn’t wake for hours to come as she fell to the floor with a crash.
“Do you think we should kill her?” I asked, raising my gaze to Caleb who considered it for a moment before shaking his head.
“Let’s leave that choice up to Orion. It’s his bitch mom after all.”
I nodded my agreement and he hoisted me off of my feet, shooting us back out of her house and tearing across the sweeping grounds towards the Acrux Manor.
I lifted us back up into the air as we approached the tower above Darius’s room, and Caleb sped us back through the house until we were right outside the courtyard where our parents were still bleeding for the benefit of the Shadow Princess.
“You wanna stitch it or watch my back?” Caleb asked, the two of us glancing around fearfully as we heard Seth howling somewhere in the house, but it didn’t sound like he was in trouble, more like he was on the hunt.
“I’ve got you,” I said, turning my attention to the courtyard again as I set my gaze on my dad and gritted my jaw. There were still a few Nymphs out there, but they would be nothing to us.
I twisted my fingers and let water trickle from my fingertips, trails of it snaking out into the courtyard and heading for the Nymphs where they stood watch in their Fae-like forms. The water raced towards them until it found their boots then moved up and over them, the temperature warmed so that they wouldn’t even notice as the drops of it brushed against their skin.
The moment I had contact with all of them, I tugged on my power, snapping my fist closed and taking hold of the blood in their veins, freezing it solid in a single heartbeat and all four of them fell crashing to the stone floor of the courtyard dead before they’d even realised that they were under attack. It took a good chunk of my power and I released a long breath from the exertion.
Caleb shot out ahead of me, leaping up onto the stone altar with the needle in his hand and started work on closing the rift.
I ran behind him, hurrying to my dad’s side and grasping his arm as he raised his head to look at me in shock.
“Max?” he gasped, his skin seeming taut across his bones like the power of the shadows was sucking the essence of him right out of his skin.
I nodded firmly as I took in the blood and power which rose from the wound on his wrist, tugging him towards that foul entity. There were heavy chains bolting him to the ground so that he couldn’t be sucked right into it and my gut twisted with hatred for the fucking assholes who had done this to him.
“We’re gonna get you the fuck out of here. Then we can all go celebrate Darius killing Lionel together.”