Fate & Furies (The Legends of Thezmarr, #3)

by Helen Scheuerer

‘But when it’s used on someone you love?’ he said. ‘There is nothing more powerful.’

‘I don’t want you,’ she told him, knees buckling. ‘I don’t believe you.’ He closed the small gap between them, still clutching her hand. ‘My shirt smells like you,’ he murmured, the sound a low rumble in the shell of her ear. ‘I still have your marks on my back from our last night together. You claimed me long ago, Thea. You don’t get to say I’m not yours now.’

‘I knew from the moment I first kissed you that I’d never think of another woman again. That you were it for me. Despite everything, that hasn’t changed. Nor will it.’

‘You think this is a game to me?’ He yanked her back against him, so she could feel every inch of his cock, even with the layers between them. ‘I haven’t stopped burning for you,’ he growled. ‘And I never will.’

‘If you need something to believe,’ he said, his blood heating as he closed the gap between them and hauled her body to his, ‘then believe this.’ He kissed her. It was the kiss he’d been dying to give her, the kiss that fractured every doubt between them and reforged the cracks with something golden. She tasted just as he remembered, like hope and salvation, like home and his.

‘Come find me at Thezmarr, little brother,’ he said. ‘We’ll be Warswords together.’

Wilder Hawthorne, her mentor, her friend, her love, had endured it all for her.

Of the three trials every Warsword faced, there was a challenge for each of these. One to test the mind, one to test the body, one to test the heart.

Strong of mind, strong of body, strong of heart.

When the light faded and Thea once more felt the cool marble beneath her feet, her eyes were wide open.

‘It’s you we’re following,’ Kipp said. ‘Though in this moment I have no idea why. You’re as thick as Cal’s skull.’ Cal rolled his eyes. ‘What he’s saying is that we’re with you. It’s you we’re loyal to, not some antiquated horseshit laws of Thezmarr.’

‘He loves you. That was never in any doubt. Not to us. I’ll wager that everything he does is for you.’

‘I told myself that it was enough,’ he murmured into her hair, his voice hoarse. ‘That I should be grateful for the time we had. It was more love than most people get in a lifetime. But the truth is, Thea… A thousand lifetimes with you wouldn’t be enough.’

He knew he’d hurt her, but… she’d hurt him, too. He hadn’t dared to say it aloud, but now, as he paced the outskirts of the shadow-touched camp, he finally admitted it to himself.

‘She told her best friend that you would need a warrior fiercer than her to withstand the force of you. Then she told me that I am that warrior, that you found that strength in me. She told me not to let you down.’

‘When I stand against the gods at the end of my days,’ he told her fiercely, ‘I will regret nothing. Not the lies I’ve told, nor the lives I’ve claimed or the rivers of blood I’ve spilt. I do not regret a single moment, because every one of them led me to you.’

Shadows and darkness, and a pair of great membranous wings. The ground shook violently as something – someone – landed before her. Thea drew her sword, her gelding rearing up in fright. She managed to stay on, to control the horse with the Furies-given strength of her legs as the shadows faded and a towering figure emerged from the obsidian mist, twin swords of Naarvian steel swinging at his hips, red-and-black wings outstretched at his back. Thea didn’t lower her sword, but instead, narrowed her eyes as she studied the shadow-touched warrior before her. His dark hair, streaked with silver, was tied up in a knot at the back of his head. Olive skin peeked out from beneath his black armour – Delmirian, if she wasn’t mistaken.

‘It’s time to take a walk on the dark side.’

For all the uncertainty and danger that lay ahead, Thea knew three things. First: that she loved Wilder Hawthorne with every fibre of her being. Second: she would do whatever it took to get him back. And third… No one, neither man nor monster, was going to stop her. ‘I am the storm,’ she vowed. And so, freshly forged with blood and steel, Warsword Althea Embervale, the Shadow of Death, stepped into the darkness to rescue her love.