Prophesy 3: His Righteousness by A.E. Via
Război practically threw Adres into his cabin and out of the harmful rays of the setting sun. He stumbled across the floor before falling to his hands and knees, feeling as if he was going to be sick. His stomach was full of his cherished’s blood, his winter-earthy taste still fresh on his tongue. Adres felt as if he’d drank enough to sustain him for weeks which meant… My beloved is probably dying right now. He’d reduced a great alpha like Macauley to dribbles and unintelligible sounds. Adres clutched his stomach, wanting to plunge his dagger through it to end the pain and crushing guilt. If Macauley’s wolf hadn’t attacked him… he would have drank until there was nothing left.
Like a fool, Adres had allowed himself a moment of pleasure, and look what had happened. “Oh gods… have mercy, vă rog. Take my life… not his.”
The sound of Macauley’s fading howls made him slam his hands over his ears. Adres had lied to himself when he thought he could control his hunger until his curse was lifted. He’d never lain with another, slept beside an individual where he’d had to concern himself with the actions of his slumber. Now, he understood why he’d never had the desire to mate.
Adres’s front door was kicked open, and he scurried to the other side of the room to avoid the light filtering in behind Belleron. He leaned against the doorframe and turned his face towards the warm, orange sun as a wistful smile graced his face, the heat turning his pale cheeks a faint hue of pink.
“You can have this too, horseman,” Belleron stated in a smooth tone, as if he was oblivious to Adres’s inner turmoil. “Have you ever seen a butterfly suck the nectar from a coneflower or watched a pack of pups play chase with squirrels under a cloudless powder-blue sky?”
Squirrels, butterflies. What the fuck was Belleron even talking about? Adres was a vampire… he’d never act as sappy and absurd as the ones he’d witnessed living here on the pack lands. His brethren had gotten so content in their romantic bubble that they’d blocked out the real world.
“What makes you think I want that, day-walker?” Adres could only imagine how disheveled he appeared hovering in a corner with his rumpled clothes and hair, reeking of Macauley’s come.
“Because who wouldn’t?” Belleron chuckled lightly.
Adres clenched his fists until his nails cut into his palms and his blood dripped onto the carpet. He wanted to feel anything but this.
“Adres.” Belleron came farther inside. His disapproving scowl lessened the smile lines around his eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me that Macauley was your cherished? I had to hear it from my own.”
How did Aleksei know?
“My other mate.” Belleron tucked the streak of white hair behind his ear. “He smelled you in the room despite what you did to try to hide it.”
“Please leave, my Lord,” Adres said between clenched teeth. His mate’s blood churned uneasily in his stomach as guilt rode him hard enough to make him wish for death.
“How could you do that to Mac? Why did either of you think it had to be kept a secret?”
“It is not your concern—” Fear clamped Adres’s mouth shut as Wrath ducked his head and came through his front door with a cloud of heavy smoke trailing behind him. The heat in the room amplified to the point that Adres had to tear his heavy cloak off.
“I was handling this, Ira,” Bell sighed.
“Yes you were, fragile mate, but men like Adres only understand one language.” Wrath moved around Belleron, his burning eyes lasered on Adres in a way that made him tremble. Thick, black fog whirled around him angrily as Wrath cocked his head to the side as though he didn’t recognize who Adres was… but should have.
His insides twisted as he fell to his knees and bowed his head, needing one last blessing from the demigod, hoping he’d grant his prayer for death as he extended his hand towards him like a begging scoundrel.
Adres heard Belleron’s gasp a second before Wrath’s smoke clutched him around his throat and threw him backwards until his spine connected with the wall. Adres clawed at the restriction crushing his windpipe, but his limbs were useless against Wrath’s heat.
“How dare you dishonor me, horseman. After all we have been through together.”
The warmth in the room climbed to a sweltering temperature as Wrath’s waves orbited above his head. “I was not…” Adres choked, attempting to explain. “I was p-praising you.”
Wrath stretched his arm in Adres’s direction, his fingers splayed as flames gloved his palm in orange and red. “You call that praise. There was a time where you walked beside me. Now, your very presence insults me!” Wrath’s voice echoed around the room before he snapped his hand forward and shot the flames two inches from Adres’s head.
He jerked to get away from the blast. The fire didn’t touch his body, but the heat did, making his skin feel as if it was being peeled away and pinned with iron nails. Macauley’s brother Aleksei had not needed to come in his god form to kill him for what he’d done. Adres would willfully lay down his life for his disgrace.
“Look at what you have become. Have you truly forgotten who you are?”
Adres was engorged on a Volkov alpha’s blood; he was never stronger than he was at that moment. Yet Wrath kept him pinned to the wall with his feet dangling off the floor as if he was nothing. Insignificant.
Adres had never felt humidity so intense, and he had once braved a mission in the Death Valley. Wrath possessed the kind of heat that seeped into his bones and burned from the inside out. Adres groaned as Wrath formed another explosion of fire with his fist. True terror seized his heart and pumped fear through his veins.
“You have let this curse defeat you.” Wrath’s voice rippled like the aftershocks of an explosion. “You once wielded that evil as a great weapon. And when you prayed to me on the battlefield, I answered the call.”
Belleron stood silently amongst the smoke that invaded every space in the cabin except the space around him. He was practically basking in the heat as if it was an ambiance.
“Now you cower in the dark in shame while your beloved lies dying at your own hand!”
Adres attempted to holler, but his mouth was filled with liquid fire as a coil of smoke pressed across his throat like a steel bar. Desperation yanked at him, fight or flight overriding his senses as he tried to take a breath before he lost consciousness.
“The spell has now darkened your light until you can no longer recognize it.” Wrath extinguished the flames in his hand, but Adres was unable to feel a second of relief as the smoke around him formed into the shape of an arrow that Wrath shot directly into his heart.
Adres jolted violently as hundreds of the evil wards locked around his soul disintegrated at once. The pain was so instant and sharp that it knocked the last of the air from his lungs, preventing the wail from escaping his throat.
Wrath came closer, but his imposing presence was blurred by the smoke as visions began to form within the layers. Adres was able to make out a reflection of himself fighting as a young warrior with Wrath by his side. Acrid fumes slithered up his nose and threaded through his brain as another image of an eight-foot giant in a gold Corinthian helmet with rich mahogany feathers appeared before him. He was draped in heavy bronze-colored robes that had embroidery similar to his own and diamonds decorating the long train. He rode in a chariot pulled by six ebony Friesian warhorses three times the size of Război.
Wrath’s voice was compelling as he explained.“Your great ancestors were the Titans of the wind who controlled the four cardinal directions. You,Adres, are the descendant of the west. Your father, the great Titan Tephyros, was more feared than the gods. His steeds were inescapable, and as he charged onto the battlefield, he shook the earth around him. When he mated with a vampire queen—your mother—she gave him many heirs.”
The curse had made him forget.
“You think those nectar-breath, privileged fairies are the ones who gave you that magic?” Wrath curled his lip in disgust as the heat in the room rose another few degrees. “It was always yours. They just unlocked it for you.”
“Oh my gods.” Belleron shook his head as he stared up at Adres’s suspended body, Wrath’s binds of smoke restraining him harder than titanium shackles.
“Look how you have disgraced your name.” Wrath yanked his hand back to his side, and Adres hit the floor like a boulder. The vapors and fumes attempted to choke him as a dense cloud enveloped his head. “I’m not even in my god form, Orestes. I should be no match for you.”
What did he call me?
The edges of Adres’s vision got brighter in the corners as he slowly got to his feet, his eyes never leaving Wrath’s. Belleron placed his hand on his mate’s broad shoulder, and Adres didn’t know if he was trying to intervene and stop them or if he was taking cover.
Adres held his hand out and whispered for his sword on the wind. A second later, the handle slammed into his palm and ignited with an iridescent light that made the waves of heat and the putrid smoke vanish with a booming crack resounding like lightning striking concrete. Wrath narrowed his eyes as he glanced around the small cabin that appeared as if nothing had ever happened. As if he had not just brought the outskirts of the underworld into Adres’s living quarters.
“The Mother chose you as Macauley’s true mate for a purpose. You are the light of the west winds, Cavalerie. Your magic brings forth the spring greenery and ripened fruits after winter. But your curse has blinded you.” The flames in Wrath’s eyes began to cool to an ocean blue, his growly voice trailing off as he rumbled, “Remember who you are, old friend.”
Adres held his sword in front of him as if he had never seen it before.
“Go to my brother, please. He needs you.”
Adres glanced up and locked eyes with Aleksei Volkov. The blue in his irises was murky like the Devil’s Sea after a storm, and Adres could sense that Wrath hadn’t receded very far. Aleksei took Belleron’s hand and led him towards the front door. He paused just before crossing the threshold and turned to face him.
“And I don’t care if you’re my brother’s mate or not. If you ever do that to him again and leave him to die, I’ll gladly allow Wrath to surface for as long as he needs to torture and kill you, Titan of the west wind.”
Adres didn’t drop his head and continue down his spiral of despair. He could feel parts of himself that had been locked away for a very long time. Parts he thought had been severed. Adres released the handle of his Hwando, and instead of it hitting the table, it levitated in the air, its edges reflecting silvery shards of light around the room.
Adres had forgotten.
He removed his clothes and went to the westernmost part of his cabin and settled on the hardwood floor to meditate for the first time in over three hundred years. He wanted to see exactly how much of the curse Wrath had been able to demolish.
Maybe it would be enough for his beloved to forgive him.