Chapter Fifty

***REMI***

Kallias and I jump apart like we’re on fire like we’re guilty about something.

Immediately, the energy shifts from something of a daze to cold, hard edges.

Keiran doesn’t address any of us. His ice blue eyes just travel to the bottle Kallias and I are holding, the blood on our hands, and then Rhodes.

Without a word, he goes to the painting that Kallias had retrieved his rum from, then tears the painting to shreds with nothing but his bare hands.
Something is wrong.

Very wrong.

Behind the painting, rows, and rows of various glasses of alcohol are displayed. Keiran picks one at random, and chugs half the bottle.

When he finally stops, there is tension in his shoulders. His veins are on full display and his hair is a mess.

That familiar wall between me and him rises to full height. The one that separates me and him from the others. I can’t reach out and touch him like I can Kallias and Rhodes.

I’ve never seen the King in such disarray.

“Did you find your Pearl?” Kallias dares to ask.

Xaden shoots us a look that is undeniably a warning.

Keiran cracks his neck.

The hairs on the back of my neck raise.

Keiran curls his hand around the bottle and smashes it against the wall. Rhodes steps in immediately to protect me as it shatters, glass and scented liquor spraying everywhere. Then Kieran grabs another bottle and smashes that too.

As his arm runs down the length of the shelves, destroying everything in his wake, Xaden speaks with a quiet intensity.

“Get her out of here,” the Demon Slayer orders the twins, and then he and Vienna go for Keiran.

I’ve never seen him so angry, and a part of me wants to calm him, to make him feel better.

“Remi,” Rhodes warns, and the adrenaline in my chest rises.

“I want to help him–”

From across the room, Keiran roars. He smashes a window, then another.

Kallias’s body is hard and firm against my own, steering me away. “Come, baby girl,” he says, then blocks my view of Keiran with his shoulder.

My stomach churns.

“He lost his pearl,” I say, pressing my body into the comfort of Kallias’s arms. “He didn’t get his pearl–”

“Remi,” Rhodes warns, coming around the other side of us and grabbing my other arm. “It’s going to be okay.”

The twins open a portal, and we step directly into the center of their massive room. It doesn’t take me a second to go over to the candles and starlight of Rhodes's bed, to find comfort in his shadows.

“H-how can you say that?” I ask Rhodes, resuming our conversation. “This is everything we worked for, we killed the witches.”

Kallias growls. “Not all of them.”

I continue on. “He didn’t get his magic back, which means his people are all going to die and,” I take a deep breath, “Keiran is going to have to kill me to get his powers back, he’s going to bleed me dry–”

“Remi.” Rhodes takes my face between his hands and makes me look at him. Even floors above the throne room, Keiran’s rage and destruction echo through the halls. “Listen to me, Keiran is not going to kill you.”

“Do you hear him?” I press. “He’s going to snap and come for me next–”

“Is Keiran angry?” Rhodes laughs. “Yes. But he is not going to come up here and hurt you.”

“But he’s breaking his own castle.”

“He’ll repair it in the morning.”

“He didn’t get his Pearl.”

“It would seem so.”

“It’s all my fault.”

“What? No.” The fine lines around Rhodes’ jaw deepen as he drowns. “How can you say that?”

“It was my ancestors that stole his magic. He’s lost it now, twice, because of me.”

“No,” Kallias shakes his head. “Our mothers conspired to steal the flower.”

I raise my head and stop crying.

“What?”

“We’ve been thinking for a while,” Kallias says, steering me out of the bed and towards their outdoor bath.“Our mothers were not good people,” he uses a wisp of magic to light the candles surrounding the heated pool. “They wanted to rule the Seven Isles on their own, and were always out to overthrow Kerian.”
I can hardly believe his words. “Are you suggesting they forced a Solis Princess into stealing the flower?”

Kallias and Rhodes shrug. Kallias undoes my shirt as Rhodes undoes my skirt, then the twins have me naked before them. “Possibly,” they answer at the same time, both looking my naked body up and down, at the same time.

“When they were performing the ritual,” I say, my voice catching. “It felt like they were draining my power.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Rhodes says, “everyone in the Seven Isles is after one thing.”

“What?”

“Each other’s powers.”

He eyes me up and down with his brother. I noticed the bulge in his pants and immediately got the strong urge to touch him there.

Is it wrong that I want to kiss them both? I almost lost one of them tonight.

Maybe it is wrong. Maybe it is fucked up. Maybe that’s why I feel like I belong here more than my mother’s house.

My eyes rove over Kallias body. He’s still shirtless, but his chest is coated in blood.

“Bathe with me,” I hardly recognize the tone, let alone the words that come out of my mouth.

“Remi,” he warns but doesn’t protest as my fingertips come to rest on his chest, circling the hard contour of his ab muscles. He moans as my hand raises, skimming over where his injury was, and suddenly I’m aching with the need for him inside me.

“I am grateful to you, for eternity,” my thighs clench as Kallias presses a kiss to the back of my hand. “For saving my life, I will never forget this.”

“It was just my blood.”

“It was power,” he taps just above my breast, right over my heart. I can’t help but arch my back at his touch, silently pleading he’ll venture further. “Power and determination to save me.”

I giggle. Which is strange for me. I’m not one to…giggle.

“Well, Rhodes would have killed me if I let you die.”

I allow my hand to travel from his abs to the thick v-line of his waist, and then right as I’m about to hook my hand in his pants, he grabs my wrist.

“Take a bath, Remi. Get clean.” He drops my arm. “Don’t come out until we tell you.”

“Y-you’re leaving me?” I ask, looking right at his brother.

Rhodes has a dark shadow on his face, only making him look shaper. “If we stay here for a second longer, we’ll be bending you over the edge of the pool and fucking you until your ribs are bruised.”

I’m taken aback by the boldness in his words, then straighten my back. “M-maybe I want that.”

“I don’t,” he says. “When I finally get my cock in that tight pussy, it will not be when you’re dazed from blood loss.”

I open my mouth to protest, but Rhodes shuts it down.

“Clean up, now. Then sleep on my bed.”

Something about the way he says his bed… makes me want to beg. He catches on, of course, the skilled Hunter he is. Rhodes catches on to everything.
“Be a good girl,” he tells me, his eyes turning to storms. “And do as I say.”

Then both of them are gone.

Rhodes is the calmest of the group, which is exactly why when he commands me, breaks his temper, it’s much more exciting when the others do it.

When I finally convince the twins to help me lose my virginity, I want him to enter me first.