“I am afraid your second in command has been disappearing quite a lot of late,” he told me, making me look towards the tear in our realm that had been there moments before. I gripped the armrests of the antique chair with enough force I felt it strain in my hands.
“When?” I snapped.
“From what I can gather, it has been times he was needed to be useful in his exchange of information,” he replied, making me grit my teeth and wish I had an explanation for it, or the patience, but right now, I didn’t.
“Tell me of the spell’s casting.”
“It is being finished as we speak, for Alvaro is with our armies, administering the last of what Nero made.” I raised a brow at the admiration I heard in his tone for the handy little witch.
“Nero?” I questioned seeing as he had quickly forgone the title of ‘witch’, now becoming more personal.
“I find her to be intriguing,” he admitted with a shrug of his shoulders, making me scoff,
“That she is but heed my warning Carn’reau, be sure that is all you find in her or you will find one pissed off Wyvern trying to torch the tail of your Zilant.” Carn’reau actually cracked a grin and I honestly couldn’t say when I had ever seen it before. But then again, it was not as if we had conversed in this manner before. It also wasn’t exactly what one would call a warm sight. No, more primeval and the face of a man that would enjoy ripping your throat out with his teeth. Which meant that I also didn’t think the charming, light-hearted, redheaded rogue had much of a competition on his hands.
“As fun as that sounds, I believe my efforts are best served in aiding my King on keeping his Chosen One safe.” His response came with a slight bow of his head and a thankful change of subject when discussing newly recruited souls in need of training.
This conversation lasted some time, including a tour of the new training grounds and barracks Carn’reau had commissioned for my growing army. Meaning that it was a few hours later when I was making my way back up into my tower and making the next fucked up discovery. One that had me close to tearing my fucking bed apart when I found an important piece of it missing…
Amelia was gone.
“Amelia!”
I yelled her name after fisting the sheets and tearing the material in my hands, making it come apart like paper. Then I roared her name again,
“AMELIA!” I scanned the room, looking for any evidence of her and saw some clothes lay over the back of one of the chairs, telling me that she had at least woken and got dressed. Could it not be as bad as I first thought, could she have just woken and found herself needing to freshen up in my pool?
I closed my eyes and tried to locate her presence. But without partaking in the blood exchange between us since the day the Hex tried to claim her, then it took me longer and even then, the results weren’t what I wanted. Yet, something was there and lingered, almost as if it were too far away to be sure. I felt a snarl rip from me before my eyes snapped open and I stalked down to the last place I felt her. Another furious question penetrated the anger and had me cracking the crystal beneath my feet,
Where the fuck was Nero?
“You’d better have a good fucking excuse, witch!” I snapped as I reached the bottom step, and only came to a dead stop the second I looked up. I frowned the moment I scented blood in the air and my relief was only from the fact that it didn’t belong to Amelia.
“What the fuck?” I muttered as my mind tried to make sense of what I was smelling. Because if I had walked in here blindfolded and relied on my other senses, then I would have sworn upon opening my eyes to find myself surrounded by a pile of mortal body parts after a massacre occurred.
It was a mix of different blood types all watered down which brought my footsteps to the cause. The pool of water in front of me, even though it was now clear, I suspected it hadn’t been this way the entire time. A crimson residue remained around the edge of the pool that had spilled over onto the tile. I looked behind me sniffing