King of Pain - Tasha Black

1

Cullen

Cullen Ward roared and pushed his magic to its limit.

He felt the strain on his mind as well as his muscles as he brought an army of shadows to life around him to hold strong against the light.

A bead of sweat stung his eyes.

All three of his brothers and their queens stood before him, furiously gathering their forces to oust Cullen from the human realm. The King of Light assaulted him with magical bursts while the King of Darkness smothered him in an inky cloak of midnight. The King of the Wilds was burning the very life force from the surrounding forest to bolster their attacks.

Seeing the three of them work together was almost more painful than their magical onslaught.

Almost.

Cullen himself had once been the King of Order, but he had learned to feed on pain, an endless fuel source in this miserable realm.

And yet even with so much power at his fingertips, he still felt himself inexorably pushed through the veil between the mortal realm and the fae.

How can they stand against me at all? I should be able to demolish them with a thought.

But somehow, his brothers were willing to drain themselves to push him back into faerie. They were pushing harder than he’d ever imagined they could.

Cullen glanced around at their queens, fighting their own hearts out beside them, and he understood.

His brothers had something to fight for.

It was only a matter of time before they bested him. He could already smell the forest around them burning with the invisible fire of his youngest brother’s life essence. The fool was willing to sacrifice himself for these mortals.

As the veil between worlds opened to suck him in, the faintest hint of another scent slipped between realms and caressed his senses.

Cullen froze, all thoughts of the battle forgotten.

Jessica…

The redolence of tea roses and vanilla sent his memory reeling.

He reclines on a soft blanket in the shade of a mighty oak. She sits beside him, legs curled under her, jotting notes in a leather-bound journal. The scratch of her pen against the paper tickles his senses.

Suddenly he had no strength left to fight his brothers.

And more importantly, he had no desire to resist.

If any part of Jessica was on the other side, he had no more need of the mortal realm after all.

His brother’s invisible fire was expanding now, licking at the stone wall that separated the garden and the mansion from the woods.

Cullen was barely holding on. The power was almost too much for him to resist.

But it also proved too much for his little brother.

The King of the Wilds fell onto his side, the last of his life energy spent. His queen wailed in agony.

Her pain was exquisite. It surged into Cullen, filling him with all the power he could handle - more than enough to defeat his remaining brothers and end the short lives of their mortal queens.

He knew exactly what he needed to do next.

For the first time in decades, a genuine smile graced Cullen Ward’s stern features. He took one final look at his brothers.

And then he let go.

2

Cullen

Cullen landed hard on his ass on the checkerboard floor of an empty ballroom.

He knew where he was immediately - his brother Dorian had spent centuries wasting away in this glorified prison.

Cullen had no intention of doing the same.

“Your majesty.” A familiar voice floated across the room, cloyingly sweet and groveling.

He turned to see a woman in a bird mask and ball gown approaching, bent practically in half with delight as she bowed and curtseyed her way to him.

“Golda,” he said dismissively, recognizing the fae handmaid.

“I see it worked,” Golda said. Her voice was soft, but clear as a bell.

“What worked?” he asked.

“I tricked the human girl into breaking the mirror,” Golda laughed.

“Why?” he asked.

Had he not sensed Jessica’s presence in this place, he would have murdered Golda where she stood, simply for starting the chain of events that landed him in this wretched place. As it was, he was still undecided about it.

She shrugged. She didn’t need a reason - chaos was in her blood.

Oh, how quickly he had lost track of the folk and their ways. He had almost forgotten the root of his own careless treachery.

But there was no time now for reminiscence.

He glanced at the window but saw only his reflection against the darkness outside.

This mansion was the same as the one in the real world, except that here each day was exactly the same - a loop of repeating time that ended each