Page 37 of The Marked and the Broken
“You fucking cut me, you asshole,” Knox roars at Nash.
“It was an accident, you baby. Give me your arm, and I’ll heal it,” Nash offers, disdain dripping from his tone.
“Fuck you, we have our own healer. But you should get the hell away from me before Ryker is done, or I’ll fuck you up so bad it’ll take a healer days to fix you,” Knox threatens, and I start walking toward them ready, yet again, to break up their drama.
Knox extends his arm to Ryker, and I watch as blood drips freely from his arm and lands on the packed dirt below him. I don’t know why, in that moment, everything clicks together, but it does. All the uneasiness and warnings that my instincts have been hammering me with since before we got here fall into place, and I see a horrifyingly clear picture. Maybe it was Aydin and Evrin talking about how Silva came home before them, and the lights I noticed were on in the barn late last night. Or maybe it’s the color of the dirt as it soaks up Knox’s blood, creating a mottled splotch that looks eerily familiar, but I suddenly know where Lachlan and the others have been getting their leads. And I’m fucking pissed.
I take off for the tree line behind us, sprinting hard and pumping magic into my runes so I can move even faster. I hear shouts behind me, but I don’t have a second to lose to stop and explain what I just realized. I flash through the trees until I see the barrier and the barn. I wrap my hands in Defensive magic, and they glow from the orange-yellow magical casing. I lace that with Sentinel magic and run at the barrier full out. I punch out at the barrier when I’m close enough, and I feel it shatter beneath my fist. I run through the shards of magic as they crumble into nothing, and I ready myself for what I know I’m about to find.
I blow the front door off its hinges with Elemental magic and run through, doing the same to the second door, before Silva emerges from the dirt room I knew he’d be in. Our eyes lock, and I see surprise there for a second before his gaze fills with indignation.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he demands.
I take menacing steps toward him. “What the fuck do you thinkyou’redoing? Did you not fucking learn from the last time you did this? Did you really think I would just sit by and let you do it again?” I throw an arm out in the direction of the dirt room he just walked out of. “Move,” I order.
“I have every right to use all means at my disposal to find out—” Silva defends, but I cut off the bullshit justifications, and I slam him with air, forcing him to get out of my way. Silva has a protective barrier up around him in a blink, and he doesn’t budge.
“You don’t want to do this, little girl,” Silva warns me.
“Not true actually. You’ve fucking earned this fair and square.”
I push harder at him with air and then throw another barrier on top of the one he already has around him. I check for weak spots in his cast and compress my barrier around him. It seals under his feet, and I use the Elemental magic I’m already directing at him to start to lift him up and out of my way. Silva starts to chant something and then he claps his hands together and a white light shoots out from his palms, melting my barrier and dropping him back into place. A small sound of annoyance slips out of me, and Silva smirks in my direction at the sound of it.
I click my tongue at him with disappointment. “Silva, you didn’t think that was all I had, did you? I’ve been working hard while you’ve been away,” I tell him sweetly.
I infuse an Offensive cast with the air magic I’m calling on and then braid it all together with a Defensive cast. My magic flashes out like a whip and wraps around Silva’s barrier. His smug look turns worried when I pull back on my threads and his barrier crumbles around him. I tighten the cast around him and yank him out of my way.
Silva slams into the wall of maps and crashes down on the desk that Valen and I christened. I debate for a second which weapon I want to reach for, but I decide, for this asshole, we’ll go old school. I run at him as he pushes himself off the desk to stand, and I punch him in the stomach. Silva rallies and kicks out at my knee, but I twist, and he gets my lower thigh instead. He grabs the computer screen and throws it at me, but it ricochets off the barrier I just called on and slams to the ground.
Silva and I trade hits and misses, but he could learn a thing or two from his nephews, as they are way better at hand-to-hand than he is.
“Ten years ago, you tortured a lamia looking for my dad and the others who went missing,” I grind out as my fist lands at Silva’s ribs, and I spin to avoid another kick to my lower body. “You dumbasses let that lamia convince you that a baby killed Lachlan’s brother and was somehow responsible for all of your problems in life.”
I punctuate my statement with a knee to his thigh, a cuff on his ears, and another hit to his ribs. He reaches out, trying to land a jab, but I grab his forearm with one hand and thrust my other hand up at his elbow. Silva screams as I break his arm, but his pain doesn’t mean shit to me. I grab him by his pony tail and kick his feet out from under him.
“You want someone to blame for all your problems? Blame that fucker,” I seethe at him as I hold his face above the black, broken computer screen. Silva’s reflection stares up at him through the spidering cracks of the monitor.
“You’re fucking lucky your nephews are about to run through the front door and stop me from killing you. Maybe someday you can pull your head out of your ass long enough to realize how lucky you are to have them. Until then, you better stay the fuck away from me.” I smash Silva’s head against the desk, and he crumbles to the ground, out cold.
“What the hell, Vinna?” Bastien yells from the front of the barn.
Good. He and Valen can deal with their fucked up uncle. I’m already across the room and gripping the door knob that leads to the dirt room, whose purpose I couldn’t figure out until five minutes ago. I push the door open, and sure enough, exactly as I feared, there is a lamia that’s bruised, battered, dripping blood, and tied to a chair.
He looks up toward the doorway as I step through it, and I throw a hand over my mouth to stop the sound of a gasp from traveling too far. Brown hair, olive skin, and stunning crystal-blue eyes look up at me. I recognize him instantly. It’s the lamia that was with Sorik that day on Silas’s pack territory.
How the hell did he get here?
16
“What are you doing here?” hisses out of both of our mouths at exactly the same time.
I step toward him, taking in his state, and I tear off my shirt and press it against the deep cuts lining his right arm. He throws his head back and hisses in pain when I apply more pressure, and I apologize as I look for any more damage to his body that needs immediate attention.
“By the stars, what was he doing to you?” I ask absently as I take in all the bruises.
“We graduated from beating to cutting about an hour ago,” he informs me.
Rage simmers inside of me, and I hope the twins get Silva the hell out of here, or I might press for a round two with him. I run my eyes over the chair the lamia is strapped into, and it looks like Silva or one of the others made it. Pieces look welded together and constructed just for this purpose, and my stomach roils when I wonder how many lamia they’ve done this to.
