Kiss of Vengeance (True Immortality 2)

The crying was coming from Niamh, who knelt over her brother’s body, shuddering.

“No,” Rose wheezed, stumbling to her feet to go to her friend.

Fionn reached for her, but Rose pushed his hands away, tripping over bodies that would haunt her nightmares. Falling at Niamh’s side, Rose saw Ronan’s slumped figure. His unseeing eyes stared up at the ceiling, his features resting stiffly in the fearful expression he’d worn before he’d …

They were too late.

The coven had stolen his life. All for nothing. The spell wouldn’t have taken Rose down, let alone both her and Niamh.

Fionn observed the siblings with a grim countenance, and Rose looked past him to the carnage he’d created. Fury filled her. Those hateful, narrow-minded, traitorous, murdering fools had brought this on themselves. Rose just wished Fionn had shown up sooner.

“Niamh.” She rested a hand on the girl’s shoulder. Niamh flinched when she looked at Rose. So lost, in far more pain than Rose had been when the iron entered her body.

“I tried.” Niamh clutched at her own wrist. There were smears of blood on it but no wound. “It kept healing over. I tried.”

Tears flooded Rose’s eyes. “I know. I’m so sorry.”

“I saw it coming. I saw it happen before—” Niamh retched, sagging sideways to vomit on the hardwood as far from her brother’s body as she could get. Her back heaved as she tried to eject all the bile and grief inside her.

Fionn lowered to his haunches and surprised Rose by gently lifting Niamh’s hair out of her face. When her body calmed, she sat back on her heels and looked at Fionn.

Whatever he saw in her made his usually granite expression soften. “You’ve nothing to fear from me, ceann beag.”

This surprised Rose. What did it mean?

“Not directly,” Niamh’s voice was hoarse, her words flat, dead. “I see that now. But you can still bring devastation to this world, Rí Mac Tíre.”

Confusion crossed his face. Rose felt much the same. If Niamh had nothing to fear from Fionn, but he was still a threat, then the other fae-borne was still in danger of Fionn. At least according to the psychic.

Niamh pulled away and turned to Rose, who almost flinched at the deadness of her eyes. “Promise me, Rose.”

Rose understood, and although she had no idea if she could ever forgive Fionn, she could trick him. She could make him think she had … if it meant protecting this girl; if it meant protecting a world that could not withstand a war with hundreds of thousands of beings as powerful as Fionn.

“We’ll do it together.” She attempted to reach for Niamh, but the girl jerked away, turning to her brother.

Without another word, Niamh pressed an elegant, ring-bedecked hand to Ronan’s shoulder and sobbed quietly as magic tingled in the air.

Rose gasped, falling back against the couch as Ronan’s skin cracked and his body crumbled.

Just crumbled.

Into ash.

The ash moved around the edges, like wind was pushing it into a small tornado.

Until in its place was a dark blue vase with a silver eagle on its center.

Silently weeping, Niamh picked up the urn that Rose was sure now held Ronan’s ashes, hugged it to her body, bowed over in pain … and vanished.

Rose cried out, lunging at the space where she’d been.

Too late.

Silence filled the room. Rose’s awareness moved beyond Fionn to the corpses, nausea rising in her gut.

Useless, meaningless death.

She watched as they crumbled, just as Ronan had, until they were nothing but piles of ash.

Fionn’s doing.

Their eyes locked and she watched him as he stood, the silver box with An Breitheamh in his hands. He shifted it, cradling the box against his ribs, and held out his free hand to Rose. Uncertain of her next steps, she allowed him to pull her to her feet. His expression held her arrested for a moment. There was something working behind his eyes, something like disbelief. Maybe even awe.

“I can’t leave you here now,” Fionn finally said.

“Did you know?”

“Know what?”

Rose drew in a shuddering breath just as sirens sounded in the distance.

“We have to leave, Rose.”

That the German police were on their way to the apartment mattered little to her. She had a choice to make and no way of knowing which was the right one. “Did you know … that we’re …” Her lips trembled before the word could choke its way out. With a huff of self-directed exasperation, Rose said, “Mates. That we’re mated?”

Something darkened in Fionn’s expression. Something that made her heart pound and her body shiver and sparkle with life, the kind of alive she’d never felt before. Despite everything. “I realized after the fight. How did you …?”

“Niamh. She’s known since Zagreb. That’s why she disappeared. She knew … at least she thought that I was safe with you.”

“You are.” Fionn glanced at the window as the sirens grew closer. “As is Niamh, which I’ll explain later. But, Rose, we need to leave.”

“Was I always safe?”

“Yes,” he bit out. “I didn’t even realize it myself, but yes. You’ve never been in danger of me. I could never hurt you.”

He could never hurt her. This percolated in Rose’s mind.

“Now let’s go.”

“You have An Breitheamh, which means you still plan to go after Aine.”

He didn’t answer verbally, but she saw she was right.

Apparently a mating bond wasn’t everything.

Bitterness swelled inside her.

Niamh wanted Rose to convince Fionn not to take his revenge. She might be able to if she pretended not to feel betrayed anymore, if she seduced him and made him fall deeper into the mating bond.

However, that didn’t mean he’d stop his plans. There was no certainty of that if their mating hadn’t already changed his mind. This was an immortal who had been planning his vengeance for three centuries.

A twenty-five-year-old, Irish-American newbie fae would not alter that.

Then again, Rose could still hear him roaring her name after the iron knife pierced her body.

There was rage and grief in his voice.

“Did you come here just for An Breitheamh or for me too?”

“An Breitheamh. But then you saved my life.” He wrapped a hand around her biceps and huffed impatiently, “Let’s go. Meet me at Marienplatz.”

Rose studied him thoughtfully. Fionn wouldn’t exactly be able to search for the other fae-borne to use in his revenge plot if he was too busy chasing her around Europe. Not only would it keep him distracted, worrying about her fate and attempting to bring her to heel so he could get on with his stupid plans, but it also meant Rose wouldn’t have to pretend she didn’t want to knee him in the balls over and over again.

Softening her expression, she stepped into his space, a hand on his chest near the silver box. His green gaze locked on hers, desire in them he no longer hid. “You hurt me,” she whispered, as she slipped a hand into his overcoat pocket.

“I know.” The words seemed dragged out of him. “And I planned to let you go. But that was when I confused your actions for mine, or what mine would have been. I expected you to take revenge and instead … You…” He hesitated, something like awe in his eyes. “Rose, I need to keep you safe.”

The words caused an ache so deep in her, she almost faltered as she withdrew the shampoo bottle she knew he’d been using to trace her. Instead, she leaned into his hard body and pushed up onto her tiptoes, relieved when he bent his head toward hers.