Summoned to the Wilds (Villains & Virtues, #2)

by A.K. Caggiano

Dear Reader, If you’re going to throw me, please aim for something soft. - The Book

The baby began to properly squall. “Amma, do something.” She held her hands out. “Like what?” “Why are you asking me? Shouldn’t you know?” Amma’s hands fell back to her sides, and all the anxiety went out of her voice. “Why would I know, Damien?” He glanced back to the chamber through the door’s crack, still empty, but for how long with the spawn’s cries rising? “Because you’re, you know, kind and…and nurturing? Also you happen to have breasts.”

Amma glared at him and poked herself in the chest. “These aren’t working, they’re just for show!” “I just, I mean—” Damien rubbed his forehead, the child’s cries, the temple’s aura, and his own stupid words making him as inarticulate as he’d ever been. “They’re warm and nice to be pressed against. That’s what spawn are fond of, no?”

Amma gasped, falling still. “Damien, are you saying I’m your friend?” He groaned, but did not stop alongside her. Being Amma’s friend was preferable, he supposed, to her adversary, but it didn’t feel quite right. At least, it wasn’t exactly what he wanted. Not that what he wanted mattered. “I did kick someone I’ve known since birth into a hole through existence and space at your behest, so you may define that however you see fit.”

Amma sat back from the food, stomach turning. “Now they’re here in servitude and our fodder.” Ivory shrugged. “It’s not forever, they wither away after a while, but there’s no shortage of warm, deserving bodies out there to replace them.”

“I’m sure you’re delicious, and the temptation isn’t lost on us, but you don’t meet our requirements for food.” Asphodel pursed her lips. “Some of us asked to be cursed in this way, many also did not. We do what we must to survive, but to join our den, an oath must be taken to abide by our laws and minimize needless suffering.”

Vampires who only eat bad people, i am for it!

There was nothing to be afraid of, she realized, not here and not anywhere. Not when they were together.

“Oh, why the fuck not—you won’t be allowed to remember this anyway,” he mumbled with a snort and placed the book down to turn to her. “Amma, the only thing that is clear is that I prefer your company, even when you are infuriating, to an entire cave full of vampires. I’d like nothing more than to be with you, but not when you’ve had to coerce yourself into it by way of magic. I do want you, but not like this.”

“And it’s your own bloody fault. I’m a villain, I shouldn’t care about potions or talismans or feelings, but your presence in, what, a moon? In just a moon, your painfully sweet voice has challenged all of my darkest thoughts, your wildly inaccurate yet optimistic outlook has clouded my sight, and your incessant kindness to me—to someone who deserves not a drop of your patience and affection and good will—has undone twenty-seven years of training to be evil. For darkness’s sake, woman, you’ve made me good, and believe when I say that it feels like falling interminably through the Abyss every moment I am not burying my cock in you, but I could not bear it if you woke tomorrow and thought I had hurt you.”

“I can sense your demeanor has grown irate,”—he straightened on his steed—“and I’m unsure there is anything I can say that will not worsen it.”

It’s just so strange, isn’t it? To take me with her? Lycoris even told me that my mother was happy. She said my mother and father were like salamanders in a volcano. Do you know how much a salamander would adore being in a volcano, Amma?” “How much?” “Quite a bloody lot!”

but it made it no less annoying that Em wouldn’t just say that instead of, “Well, you know, a tree is a lot like a loaf of bread, when you think about it,” which was probably true, but also definitely wasn’t.

What if they’d shown up even half a day sooner, before he had come back, and gotten their hands on Amma? He had spent enough time apart from her for a lifetime—no one was taking her away from him again.

“That’s my girl,” Damien murmured, satisfaction running like arcana through his veins as he closed his fist around his magic again. After seeing how steady Amma held the weapon, he’d kill every last person in the whole of The Wilds just for a brief moment alone with her.

It was almost funny how perfectly she fit in his arms, humorous how comfortably her body tucked into his own like they were built just for one another. Even here in the ridiculousness of the Everdarque with ruin looming so close by, it felt like a fucking joke how right it was to hold her and be held. And he knew then, unequivocally, that losing all of it—losing her—was going to be even more painful than never having Amma to begin with.

“No, you don’t understand!” she shouted, voice quickly going raw with distress. “You don’t know what it is to be weak and afraid. I just wanted to be powerful, Damien, and I was doing it for you!” “What?” His hands were held out, face screwed up. “Why?” “I wanted to be strong, to be something that you would think more of, that you would respect, but you—you couldn’t even keep your promise to me that you wouldn’t use that spell again.” Amma sucked in a breath and pressed a hand to her chest. Her heart beat with an anger and ache that she hated so viscerally, she would have rather it stopped all together than go on like this. “Amma, I—” “I’m going for a walk,” she said, eyes falling to the forest floor and voice falling cold. “And you are not going to follow me. You’re going to be the one to sit here and not move, and you can wait and wonder if I’ll come back. Then you can feel for once all of the awful things that go along with being ordered around and left, if blood mages even can feel them.” She turned and headed off into the darkness of the trees, alone.

And Cedric Caldor, Marquis of Brineberth, occupier, tormentor, villain, was dead.

He may have been more than just a man, but blood mages didn’t have wings, and the solidness of the ground was a terribly good equalizer no matter what barreled toward it.