Celeste was going to skin Dermot, slowly.
She was going to take her time to break him piece by piece, making sure each cut, each blow a mark for the innumerable people he had harmed. She'd kept a list so far, tallying each and every innocent that had perished due to his cruelty and greed.
She was going to shatter him so fundamentally that he'd beg for the release of death.
And she was going to enjoy every damn minute of it.
Closing her eyes, she dipped quickly into the depths of the tub, submerging herself beneath the scalding water and jasmine-scented bubbles, letting the seeping heat chase away the lingering coldness that had nailed itself in her chest.
What that slaver had implied, how he'd used those children for his own desires-
Celeste scrubbed at her face vigorously beneath the surface, trying to dislodge the oiliness that felt as though it were sticking to her like a second skin.
Utterly inexcusable.
Death had been too lenient a punishment.
She quickly resurfaced, brushing water from her face as she leant back against the high-rimmed tub, her hair floating around her in inky black tendrils.
She half wondered if she could breathe life back into those that Ithaca devoured, if she could bring them back again and again only for the woman to endlessly consume them. A punishment Celeste thought might fit the bill for obtaining a tiny fraction of vengeance that was deserved.
She'd have to ask the woman about it when she got back from scouting.
After the interrogation she'd plucked a single hair and had offered it to Ithaca, knowing full well that the woman would likely take it and leave without another word. To Celeste's surprise she'd refused it, claiming that she hadn't kept her end of the bargain to get Dermot's location and that unlike her, she kept her promises.
Ithaca had disappeared instantly after, with no more than a "I'll return" as parting.
Something inside Celeste had shifted at that, a kernel of respect materializing where only distrust had once sat. Maybe she'd been wrong in assuming the worst of the woman. While not the pinnacle of kindness, she seemed to have some moral code of her own.
A trait that Celeste realized many believed creatures of darkness lacked.
In all of her readings she'd actually found that many monsters were fair in their own ways, even if their reasoning didn't match those of the general populace.
She snorted.
No wonder Lucien had thought she was a ripe terror in her youth.
The memory of his fiery hair was a blurry stain in her mind, the spark of intelligence in his russet eyes something she'd never quite forgotten. From how he'd looked aboard the Siren that night, she realized he hadn't changed in the slightest, still a crafty hunter whom most underestimated, his sharp gaze still discerning everything.
Much in the same way he had in her youth as she tramped through the yard, chasing a little black-haired boy with eyes the color of sapphires as they snuck off to wreak havoc on anyone they, or rather she, saw fit.
The same little boy who liked to sneak them pastries from the kitchen at night when they were supposed to be sleeping, winnowing through the house like a silent phantom as she kept watch in the doorway of her chambers.
His favorite had been cherry, his round cheeks stuffed so full that he'd looked something akin to a squirrel.
He'd been her favorite rodent. Not that she would have ever admitted such a thing.
Celeste stopped at that thought, eyes widening at the realization of what had manifested in her head. A memory.
Vague and barely cohesive, but still a memory.
She braced herself for the lacing pain, waiting for the nausea to hit her but it did not come. Instead, only a faint buzzing chimed through her head, as though a knot that had been too tightly wound had been freed.
A faint image of a young boy with a smile like the sun lingered there, a tug of recognition that normally sent her spiraling. Fumbling, she scrambled for his name, willing it to appear on the edge of her tongue.
The image vanished as quickly as it appeared, leaving only a void in its place, the memory now mere cobwebs that she could conjure nothing from.
Easing herself back, she tried not to dwell on the sensation, tried to ignore the frustration of the fleeting clarity that came to her at odd times. This had been happening more frequently, little bits of information unspooling themselves in her mind when she least expected it, formless flashes of people and places she'd long since suppressed.
She'd confided in Anelisse about them, and her sister had helped her keep track of the bits of information that seemed to disappear as quickly as they formed.
Yet her own family . . . this was the first time she'd remembered anything about them. She normally had no recollection of them, their presence still a shadow lurking in her subconscious that sent her stomach churning anytime she lingered on them.
Not that it wasn't justified, she was certain. It was no doubt a mechanism her mind had crafted to keep her safe from the horrors she'd faced as a child.
Terror-filled memories she could not and had no interest in remembering.
Yet to remember that boy . . . a shiver raced up her spine, the scalding bathwater seeming a world away.
Who had he been?
A friend perhaps? A neighborhood child whom she played with in the evenings? A . . . brother?
Pain sliced through her mind.
She cursed.
There was that familiar sensation, the throbbing in her temple that drove all thoughts from her mind and made her want to drown herself to ease it.
This was why she did not linger on the past, did not linger on the memories….except for one.
Loitering in the tub she found herself continuously returning to that thought, that single image that had played over and over in her mind since it'd manifested. She was foolish for even dwelling on it, for not just tossing aside, but the vibrancy, the imprint it'd left . . .
Curiosity got the better of her, and she found herself rising. Stepping free of the tub, she quietly wrapped herself in one of the clean towels piled by the foot of the bath and made her way into her chambers toward the long mirror that sat on the far side of her cabin.
It was one of the few remnants of Rufus before her, a large, gaudy monstrosity that Gandriel had made more use of than herself. She likely would have thrown it away had it not been for her sister and first mates' barks of protest about keeping it.
The same loud barks she could hear echoing loudly on deck as they ate breakfast with the crew no doubt watching the sunrise over the ocean front.
Glancing around to ensure she was alone, Celeste gently pulled her hair over a shoulder before releasing a long breath and dropping the back of her towel down to her waist. Steeling herself, she turned, finally daring to face the scars where her wings had once protruded.
She hadn't looked at them since her time in the former makeup room of her ship, back when she'd been dressed as a helpless doll, painted and ripe for the taking.
But now, as she stood here as the captain, as the female leading a task force against slavers . . .
She finally opened her eyes.
For all the ways her body had positively shifted in the last year, from her legs becoming lean with muscle to her once sallow face filling in with softness, the twisted marks down her back had not changed, their raised, red ugliness as prominent as ever.
The gaping maws of two beasts, staring blaringly at her. As though their very presence was a taunt.
The memory she'd managed to skim, that brief moment of pure joy—
She'd flown once.
Had once soared amongst the skies and birds, swifter and stronger than anyone her own age. And now, where her pride had once sat, where the greatest elation she'd ever experienced had been derived, was nothing more than torn muscle and warped skin.
The hollow ghost of a fragment of joy.
"Mine look like that too, you know."
The voice made Celeste jump, startling her out of her inner monologue. Cursing her foolishness, she quickly pulled her towel up around herself, cautiously watching as Nima materialized from the shadows.
"What did you say?" Celeste breathed, trying and failing to understand the words that had left the woman's mouth.
Nima offered a sad, empty smile.
"I said, my scars look just like that." She slowly crept closer, her eyes still trailing to the marks that Celeste had hastily covered. "We let them take our wings, you know. All eleven-hundred of us. We were glad to give them in the name of our King."
A stone dropped into the pit of Celeste's stomach as an uneasiness overtook her. Warning bells tolled in her mind.
"What are you talking about?"
Nima shook her head sadly, as though remembering something from long ago.
"They clipped them first when we were young, our role as females to serve the warrior males who protect us. But the release, the final cut . . ." Something smoldering crossed the woman's features, all signs of her former shyness burned away. "There was pain, yes, but release. A release in knowing that my purpose is far beyond myself."
Celeste stepped back, angling herself away from the woman, the wheels in her mind turning as she scrambled to place Nima's words, the features that had always stood out to her as strange.
Where had she seen them before?
She'd once thought the woman had belonged to the barbarian tribes to the north, or one of the nomad groups of the inner continent, but her speed, her agility . . . of course she wasn't human.
Celeste stepped back defensively, calculating just how she'd knock the blade from the woman's hands, how quickly she would need to move.
"Don't look so scared, Celeste." Disbelief rushed through Celeste at Nima speaking her name. Seeing the slight shift in her features, the woman smiled knowingly. "I know who you are, daughter of Rhysand. Knew it from the moment the shadows sang in your presence at the beach."
Pain like an axe spliced through Celeste's temple, nearly sending her to her knees. She barely managed to stay upright, her focus honing in on her knife belt which sat discarded at her desk, across the room.
Struggling to maintain her grip on consciousness she managed to grind out, "How do you know my name?"
"How could I not?"
Nima hummed as she circled closer, her hand slipping a wickedly sharp blade from her belt.
It clicked. The angular features, the dark skin, the fae-like strength and speed despite the rounded ears of a human . . . the steel blade whose style could belong to only one people.
"You're Illyrian."
"I am."
Her cursed heritage, the blood that had gifted her with the wings she had once cherished most.
What the hell was a wingless female doing on her ship of all places?
The words eleven hundred clanked through her screeching mind, the realization that there were over a thousand of them hunting and searching the continent, Prythian—
Another sharp pain stabbed through Celeste, blurring her vision.
They were looking for her. Had finally managed to hunt her down, to finish the lost heir that her father had failed to kill the first time.
She knew they'd come looking for her, would not stop until the monster got exactly what he wanted.
She'd been so foolish, allowing those who joined her crew to see her face.
And to find her—how long had they been looking? And her father, taking the wings from so many females just to camouflage them, to hide them amongst humans and the fae, so unassuming, non-threatening—
His cruelty had not changed.
Pain tore through her head once more, making the room spin dangerously.
She didn't have time to contemplate further, she needed to move, to get a weapon-
"We've all traveled a very long way looking for our King . . . but to find you . . ." Nima's voice was barely above a whisper but it echoed loudly in Celeste's head, amplifying the sound of the blood pounding through her ears, "I wnder little heir, how did you survive your father's wrath?"
Celeste didn't remember a King, didn't remember anything significant about the Illyrians other than they were her father's footsoldiers, they had always been loyal to their family. But to know that he'd told his people what he'd done, how he'd tried to gut her that night so long ago…..
Had he finally delegated more power to them?
More freedom so that they could execute his agenda more easily?
"What the hell are you talking about?" Celeste groaned, the world spinning around as demonic voices echoed in her mind, the hiss of the monsters she feared the most. "There is no King."
Her worst fears were confirmed, her father was still hunting her.
It took everything she had to push the panic in her chest down, to focus in the moment.
She needed to keep Nima talking, keep her focused on her story long enough for her to finish easing her way towards her desk.
Just a few more small steps, a few more calculated words-
Nima dropped the tip of the blade against the wooden wall, peeling back a curl of wood as she strode closer. "You know, he sent me to kill you." Through her blurred vision and throbbing head, Celeste still caught the wicked smile. "Sent me to kill the daughter he hated most of his children, who threatened his position as High Lord."
Terror tore through Celeste at that, at the notion that she was being hunted, that her father knew she lived.
Yet the King-
"You're his soldiers," Celeste hissed, stepping around the chairs slowly, allowing Nima to herd her even as the words sent confusion coursing through her system. "You're loyal to the Night Court, why do you need a king?"
Fury twisted Nima's features.
Celeste had reached her desk, her knife inches away.
"All good nations need a leader, a warrior who can lead them into battle." Nima had stepped close now, the darkness of her clothes highlighted as she stepped into the rays of sunlight beaming through the large windows. "And you, now knowing that you live….your body will be his prize."
Nima dove at Celeste with the knife at the same time Celeste dove for her own scabbard.
The female landed on top of her, swinging wildly with her dagger as Celeste fumbled with her sheath, trying to free the blade. She cursed her foolishness when she found it empty, no doubt removed by Nima while she bathed.
Growling, Celeste batted the scabbard away, fighting to hold the female back as she aimed blow after blow towards her.
Her strength flagging as her head gave another throb, Celeste managed to work her legs up between them, digging her heel into Nima's stomach before kicking her and launching her back into the wall. Gasping, she rolled weakly from the desk onto the floor, the plush carpet beneath her desk padding her fall.
She tried to rise, willing the patches of blackness in her vision to fade.
The pain in her head had built into an unbearable pressure now, the intensity of it fogging her thoughts, slowing her actions. Celeste snarled her rage, willing her body to move and her mind to silence - she just needed a few more moments of consciousness, a few strong blows to down Nima.
It would not come to her.
Heaviness leaked into her limbs as she tried and failed to rise. Boots appeared in Celeste's line of vision, her father's sentinel now standing above her. Celeste gave a final snarl, knowing that there was nothing she could do, nothing that could stop the blow the female was prepared to make.
A thundering of footsteps, then-
Something wet sprayed across Celeste's face as Nima gave a gutted gasp, her knife clamoring to the floor, the static of electricity suddenly filling the air.
"Celeste! Are you all right?" Gandriel slipped his arms under her, pulling her close as he smoothed the hair away from her face, his fingers gentle but sticky with blood. The blackness still danced at the edge of Celeste's vision, threatening to consume her.
Yet all she could muster, all she could fathom . . .
It came out as a sob.
"She knew." Tears streaked down her face as panicked sobs began to wrack her body. "She knew."
He'd found her, and he wouldn't stop until she was dead.
Until he finally reclaimed his prize.
"What did she know, Celeste? Celeste!" Gandriel patted her face lightly, willing her to stay conscious. She heard the soft patter of footsteps as Anelisse appeared above her, silver eyes wide.
"She was sent by my father." The very word made Celeste's body shriek in protest, the screaming of the demons in her mind a deafening wail. "She's an Illyrian, they took her wings, wings like I used to have-" Celeste could feel it then, the sweet embrace of oblivion claiming her as she gave a final whisper before plunging into the darkness. "They took my wings."
Gandriel hadn't thought before he acted, hadn't even considered the consequences of his actions when he'd seen Nima standing over Celeste and had swept up the knife discarded by the door and plunged it into Nima's back, hot blood rushing over his fingers.
She was the first he'd ever directly killed.
The first person who had ever died by his hand.
Yet to protect Celeste, to keep that one vital flame alive . . .
There had been no hesitation, only an overwhelming sense of fear that had driven him to act, a single thrust that had dropped the female instantly, the knife tumbling from her hands as she sank to the floor with a sickening thud.
A friend, he'd called Nima a friend, and now she was dead and Celeste incapacitated-
He'd only ventured to the cabin on a whim, a strange inkling feeling telling him that he should go fetch Celeste for breakfast, if only to save her from her own thoughts that morning after their harrowing night in the brig with the slaver. After Ithaca's little show that had nearly left him vomiting over the rail.
And if he'd been even a second later . . .
He'd refused to dwell on it.
Instead, he'd rushed to Celeste and scooped her up into his arms in a panic, frantically scanning her body for blood, for any indication of the injury that Nima had likely inflicted. He'd nearly wept when he found none.
Yet when he'd spoken to her, when he tried to see if she was all right, to see what had happened-
"They took my wings."
The words had felt like ice water rushing down his spine, pieces of a puzzle clicking together in his mind as he shared knowing glances with Anelisse who'd rushed into the room the second she'd heard the commotion and the thud of Nima's body.
The scars that he had seen on Celeste's back, the terrible things that he'd first laid eyes on the first night she'd slept on his couch in Marchedor-
How could he have not realized that Celeste was part Illyrian?
That those brutal scars were an imprint of an appendage that had been ripped from her?
Like losing a limb, he realized, it would have been like losing a limb for her. Her father had handicapped her, ripping a vital piece of her away.
And from her scars, the way he remembered the puckered skin looking-he truly didn't know how she'd survived it. How she hadn't perished from the pain and blood loss alone.
He vaguely recalled that the Illyrians were the mother people of the Night Court, the bat-winged lesser fae that made up the backbone of the High Lord of Night's forces. Brutal, backwards, and downright misogynistic, as his aunt Carmen had once taught him while he'd poured through books on the peoples of Prythian.
Assholes too, she'd muttered under her breath as he flipped through pages.
And Celeste, when she'd described her people to him so many months ago aboard the Siren that night, her hesitancy to reveal too much . . . he was as foolish as they came.
And that bastard who had sired her was now sending wingless soldiers to hunt her.
"Anelisse," Gandriel said, lifting Celeste into his arms as he stood, fury boiling his blood, "check Nima's back."
The blonde looked at him in confusion, "Why?"
"Just do it."
Nodding, Anelisse made her way to the woman's still warm corpse before pulling her shirt free, revealing two short scars at her shoulder blades. The same place where Celeste's were.
Except these were square and sharply outlined, a clean cut and clipping, not the ragged mess that stretched across Celeste's back where hers had been torn from her.
"No," Anelisse breathed, horror lacing across her features as she reached the same conclusion that Gandriel had arrived at, the realization of just how Celeste had lost her wings. "They tore them from her."
Tears dribbled down her cheeks.
The bastards had shown more mercy to their soldiers than they did for their own daughter. Something icy settled in Gandriel, his hold tightening around Celeste instinctively, protectively.
For all that he had balked at his heritage, at his power, the blood of a High Lord ran through his own veins. The power, the ability to protect and serve those who mattered most….
Perhaps he'd be facing the High Lord of Night sooner than he'd thought.
His anger and fear smoldered when he felt Celeste move against him, sighing in relief as the spell she'd fallen into ended and she let out a small groan of pain. A small blessing that she'd come out of this one quickly.
The tap of footsteps outside the door had Gandriel tensing, his magic rallying against another attack—
"Impressive, Gandriel," Ithaca mused from the doorway, "I didn't know you had it in you to kill someone in cold blood."
His patience fled him, replaced by a malice he hadn't known he possessed.
"Not another fucking word, Ithaca," he growled, half-tempted to throw his own magic at the woman from her perch. She seemed none the wiser to the threat as she stepped into the room, eyes surveying the scene.
"I'm surprised it took her this long to attack," she mused, inspecting Nima's fallen body with vague amusement. Fury laced through Gandriel as he realized she'd known who Nima was all along, and what her intentions had been. "A shame it didn't work, I was hoping she'd free me of this little bond with our dear captain."
Gandriel nearly unleashed a thunderbolt at the woman when Celeste stirred and interrupted in a voice weighed with exhaustion and muffled against his chest.
"Fuck you."