Beauty (A Faery Story 3)

Her father floated in front of her, the hags and Torin ignoring him as they continued their argument. Her father kept his eyes on her. “Tell them I did love them. My sons. They will make great kings, and you are already a queen. You didn’t need a crown, Bron. You only needed your strong heart.”

He moved forward, his essence merging with hers.

The whispers died, but she was shot through with life. Her father had given her everything. He’d waited, given up his after, to give her one last gift. One last chance at life. She was suffused with energy. She brimmed with it. She could do this.

“What just happened?” the skinny one asked, looking around the room as though searching for a threat.

She took a step back, her will a palpable thing. In that moment, she felt like a queen.

The hags cackled and Torin yelled. The guards began to tap their swords looking for something to kill. Bron could hear her compatriots waiting for the time and the time was now.

Bronwyn did what she’d been born to do. She opened her soul and connected them all. A hundred bondmates, their power soaring and reaching out. The hag who had eaten all those souls gasped, and Bron realized the hag’s mistake. The hag was Bronwyn’s, caught in a net of her own making. Those souls that lived inside her wanted to be free, and Bronwyn gave them a way, a path to the after.

The large hag shook and her head fell back, all the souls rushing out through her mouth and eyes and ears, killing her in an instant.

Torin turned and tried to flee, but Maris caught him. She fell to the floor, caught in the power. Her mouth opened and a scream rent the air, but she held on to Torin, dragging him down, keeping him close. Bron felt her will. This was for her. This was for her love and the girl she’d been. Maris believed in vengeance and she was at peace with death.

But Bron believed in love. Vengeance had burned away in the face of love. Love for her family and her husbands. Love for her people. Love for what was right in the world.

She was the vessel and it was right.

Bron felt the fire. It sizzled through her soul. She pulled it from Shim, dragging his power into her hands, and with a great yell she sent it out. It raced from her skin. Heat, white and hot, flashed through her, a great wave of purity. She sent it to engulf the hags and Torin and Maris, sent it out further to every soul on the hags’ leash. There was no way to free those they had corrupted except to send them to the after.

Fire reigned, pouring from her every cell a cascade of purifying blaze that wiped clean Torin’s evil.

Bron let it rage and rage, the heat crackling around her and then, when she was sure it was enough, she let it go.

She slumped down, her body held up only by the chains that bound her. Her clothes had gone in the crisp of the flames, the fire burning so hot that there was nothing but stone and metal left in the room. Even the bones were ashes.

Weariness settled over her, but she needed to hear them. Feel them.

Nothing. The connection had burnt out as it had before.

Or was it something worse? Minutes passed and she struggled against the bonds. She needed to get to them. What if it had all been for nothing and they were dead and gone and she’d been left alone?

She loved them. Unabashedly, unashamedly, and now that she’d served her purpose she wanted nothing more than the life they had promised her. Their own kingdom and children to love, a lifetime to know her soul’s mates.

She needed that lifetime. She needed her forever.

Boot steps hurried along the floor, echoing through the hallways. “Bronwyn?”

“Lach!” Her voice was hoarse, but she called out anyway. She knew his voice. She opened herself and there it was. The connection was tenuous, but it was there. It would grow again. They would nurture the bond between them, and they would have it again.

His face came into view, his gorgeous, imperfectly perfect face, and then Shim was beside him, his eyes tired, but his lips smiling.

They held her, their arms encasing her and lifting her up.

“It was a close thing, love,” Shim said.

“Shim passed out again. You have to remind me that Shim passes out every time you reach into his head and pull his power out. He damn near killed me.” Lach kissed her.

Joy welled inside Bronwyn. It had worked. She was alive and whole and ready to live past this. “Get me out of here.”

Lach shook his head. “Not a chance. We like you just the way you are, love. Bound and safe.”

“We’ve decided keeping you locked up will keep you out of trouble.” But he was smiling and winking as he said it.

She grinned. They thought she was trouble now. Wait until they met their children. She was sure there was lots of glorious, amazing trouble to come.