Chapter Fifty-Nine

***KEIRAN***

Hands still shoved inside his pockets, Xaden stalks from the throne room to the front steps of my castle, past the watchtower, and to the woods beyond.
I couldn’t care less where he goes.

Fuck him.

I hurry to the Offering’s side and brace her against my shoulder and nudge her calf. Gods, her blood smells almost as sweet and tempting and fuckable as her. Little reckless fuck toy.

“Lift up,” I order her and she does as I have commanded.

There’s a nasty cut on the arch of her foot from the glass of the shattered windows.

And as much as I want to blame Xaden, the prick he is, for her injury, this one is completely on me.

I lost my mind, what was it…just a few hours earlier? I had raved and wrecked and ruined everything in my path when I lost my Pearl, letting it slip just out of my grasp again.

Xaden absolutely destroying me with his power was a reminder enough of how weak I am.

Being near my magic had recharged me, yes, but just enough to sustain me for a bit.

My wards surrounding my people are a dull, aching strain against my chest, and I can feel the reminder of what lurks beyond.

Things are just as dangerous and hunting as Xaden.

Fuck him.

The Offerings' soft sobs draw me back to the present.

“Kallias,” I say.

“On it,” he says, then disappears down the hall.

Rhodes portals for a second, then is back again, handing me over one of his white cotton shirts.

“Hold on to me, sweetheart,” I tell Remi, and she winds her arms around my neck and I lift her easily. I carry her to the couch and set her down in the corner so I can position her bleeding foot on my lap. Wet crimson is already seeping into my pants.

I debate licking it.

Kallias returns with a first aid kit, a hot brand already in his hand.

“It’s not that bad!” The Offering protests, and tries to yank her foot back.

I hold onto her ankle, unrelenting. “Do not fight me,” I tell her. “It’s a gaping wound, and you are human. It will heal faster if we close it.”

She falls back against the cushion, muttering something about the barbarism of it all.

I look over at her and find the edge of terror in her pretty blue eyes. Just a few shades darker than mine, but such a royal, honest color. Pure, sky blue. Mine are the color of sea glass ice.

She is stronger than we all allow ourselves to believe, yes, but we all must dread something.

Not that long ago, the thing I feared most was losing my people. But with the Offering’s scent still on me and her blood soaking my clothes, that fear is transforming right before my very eyes.

Watching her bleed, watching the bruises beginning to bloom around her throat from Xaden’s hand…something deep inside my chest twists.

I don’t want to let her go.

I don’t want her to disappear like everything I’ve ever loved and slip off in the night and leave me alone. I don’t want to become anything more than a hollowed man left with nothing but darkness and a festering wound where my heart used to lay.

I am very, very cold inside. And the Offering is the sky and all beyond.

I want to be light and warm.

I snap my fingers at the nearest bottle of rum and Kallias fetches it for me so I can soak his shirt. When I put the cotton to the Offering’s foot, she hisses in return and flails on my grip.

“Hold still.”

“It hurts.”

The whine in her voice turns me on. I push it aside.

“You were going to let Xaden do with you what he pleased and you’re complaining about a little bit of hurt?”

She groans and rolls her eyes. Any other time I would have pulled her over my knee.

Wouldn’t I?

“We need to fucking address Xaden,” Rhodes says pouring liquor over the metal brand.

“One problem at a time,” I hiss back.

Once the blood is cleaned up, I get a better look at the cut. It’s about three inches long and still seeping.

Gods I wish I had my full magic to heal her.

I wish that her magic could heal her.

I bet she could do it, given the story I heard just a few hours earlier about the White Pearl and Kallias and Rhodes.

The funny thing about magic, it never seems to grant us the privilege of being able to help ourselves.

Or our people, in my case.

“Give her something to drink,” I say to the twins as Kallias hands over the burning hot metal.

“Lie back, darling,” Kallias orders, then jokes to his twin.

We were supposed to be filling her with something else tonight.

Remi seems to hear them or at the very least sense the teasing remark. She gives us all a skeptical look.

“You’ll let us fuck your mouth however we like but not care for you when you’re injured?” I ask. She looks like a wounded forest creature, a scared little doe.

And not in the way I normally like.

“Please, Remi,” I add, savoring the syllables of her name for the second time this evening on my tongue. “Let me take care of you.”

The tears swimming in her eyes finally burst forward, and wetness drips down her cheeks and nose. I’ve met her mother. I know that woman has never given her a gentle hand in her life, but I had hoped, at the very least, that her sisters or someone had.

The look she’s giving me suggests she’s never had anyone be kind to her in her life.

And that…moves something within me.

Something that also makes me want to…cry?

I can be brutal and heartless and wicked, treat her like my personal fuck toy, but I do protects what’s mine. I will care for her when she’s wounded and she will submit to it, and I will prove to her she can have both from me.

I will never betray her when she needs me most.

Finally, the Offering repositions and settles back against the cushions. I give Rhodes a nod.

Within seconds, the Offering sighs out in relief. Rhodes has the extremely rare and powerful magic of controlling people’s emotions, and Remi succumbs to a deep sleep.

Those of lesser minds, that is.

“Good?” I ask Rhodes.

He nods. “She should be good for a while.”

I set the brand on her foot and started closing her wound. The Offering barely notices.

“He almost killed you,” Kallias says. He stands on the other side of the couch, his hands barely grazing across the Offering’s cheek.

“Yes, but he didn’t.”

“Only because the Offering distracted him,” Rhodes notes.

For centuries I’ve been defending Xaden’s behavior to the twins. Fucking centuries. And each time Xaden does something like this, it becomes harder and harder to stand beside him as a brother.

The smell of the Offering’s flesh burning fills the room. We’ll have to take her to a healer in the city for the pain, but healing a burn is easier than a gaping, infected wound.

“He just needs to find a balance,” I argue. But even I know that is bullshit. Xaden has been on my Isle for centuries, had the Death Pearl since the day he was born…made, whatever you can call what that twisted island made of him. If he was going to find balance or control, he would have by now.

“If you get your Pearl back,” Rhodes starts, “do you think you can control him?”

“Hard to say.”

I probably can’t.

The Lands Once Lost live inside Xaden, he is them.

And I’d be a fool to even entertain the idea that I can control that place.

Once the wound is sealed, I remove the brand and hand it to Kallias. Rhodes is ready with the tin of salve he makes regularly, and when I scoop the lid open, it smells like ocean and seaweed and earth.

Like his home.

I gently rub it into the wound before wrapping the Offerings foot with gauze and tying it off.

“Keep her calm for a while,” I tell them. “She needs her rest.”

Kallias and Rhodes regard me in a manner that says, you've never cared about the needs of anyone before, let alone girls.

Wherever the Offering has traveled in her sleep, she’s far gone from us and the castle.

Which is probably for the best, for now.

Our home was not ready for her, for someone so human and breakable.

But we’re all going to adjust. We’re all going to try to mend our wounds.

As twisted and fucked up as we are.

My cock thickens as my mind conjures images of the twins fucking her mouth.

Gods above, I loved watching her get used.

But only by those I know and trust the most. I would never let my guards touch her, never let any male from my city get close enough to breathe the same air as her.
Xaden was right about one thing–the Offering knew how to checkmate me.

The thought of anyone else laying a hand on her makes me want to break bones.

I look over to her laid out on the couch, her legs still draped over my lap. Her skin is warm and soft beneath my hands. I want to curl beside her. I want to hold her to me.

But the urge is both foreign and ill-fitting.

I am the cruel and ancient King of this island.

And I wear the mask of it to protect us all.

I’m not usually territorial. I don’t usually care enough about a woman to bother. But every inch of her pale skin is something I want to conquer. Something I want to go to war for.

I need to get the fuck out of here before I fuck her again, with or without her consciousness.

Gently, I slide underneath her and conjure a blanket from my tomb. She curls into the warmth and moans when I drape it over her.
My stomach turns for a very different reason.

“I’ll be back,” I tell the twins. “Watch over her with your life.”

“Of course,” Kallias says, but his protection is expected.

I raise my brows at the rogue one.

“She’s as much ours as she is yours,” Rhodes sighs. “You don’t have to tell us to watch over what we already wish to protect.”

They're pushing more than they usually do. A swirl of jealousy and unspoken promises hangs in the air between us.

It’s no secret they’ve wanted Xaden out for centuries. Not because they don’t care for him, but because he pulls shit like this.

One problem at a time.

I give them a quick nod before I turn to the woods, off in search of the Demon Slayer.