Happily Ever Crowned Read online

  But he held me with ease, my power useless against him, and slid his hand up into my hair, where he picked something from the strands.

  He grinned as he held it before my eyes.

  A spider web.

  Oh, Lucifer.

  It must have been from the tunnels.

  “I think I have every right to touch you, Valora,” he said, his voice lethally quiet. “You’re my wife. I own you. And I think it’s about time I showed you what happens to people who forget their place.”

  I didn’t have time to answer as he snatched my hand and hauled me from my bedroom.

  Adrik, I whispered in my head, knowing it was futile.

  Because I knew where we were heading.

  And it without a doubt involved Adrik.

  Our secrets were about to be revealed to the entire kingdom.

  I wanted to throw Necros away from me. To burn this palace to the ground. But I needed to find Adrik first.

  “Necros.” I struggled against my husband as he dragged me toward the throne room with his hand around my throat.

  “You’ve completely lost your place,” he sighed, noting my choice of using his name rather than his formal address.

  “Necros,” I spat again.

  He curled his fist in response, blocking off my airway.

  I tried to dig my bare feet into the ground, but they skated over the smooth marbled floors. My vision began to blacken as he threw me inside the throne room, causing me to land hard against the ground. I coughed, my throat burning as I inhaled greedily. Tears streamed down my face, eliciting even more hatred from my chest.

  A hatred that expanded into concern and horror as I found Adrik’s unconscious form a few steps away.

  Blood smeared over his forehead where a gunshot wound indented his skull.

  Dead.

  He was gone.

  I was too late.

  “What have you done?” My anger fueled my veins, sending me to my feet and directly into Necros’s chest. My tiny fists bashed hard at his torso, but he pushed me away from him like I was nothing.

  To him, I supposed I was.

  I landed harshly again on the floor and skidded across it.

  “I can smell him on you,” Necros growled. “It’s disgusting.”

  I couldn’t help the hysterical laugh that bubbled from my lips. “You gave me to him, Necros. So of course you smell him on me. You asked him to rape me!”

  “Yes, I did. But that’s not what happened, is it? My whore of a wife enjoyed it. Didn’t you?”

  “Can you blame me?” I retorted, fury getting the best of my tongue. “He at least knows how to touch a woman. You’re just a sick excuse for your gender, too consumed with yourself to think of anyone else. And your cock leaves a lot to be desired.”

  Necros laughed, his amusement harsh, and bent to rip the fabric of my bodice with his fist. His gaze dropped to the bites on my breasts, his smile falling. “Whore.”

  “Weapon,” I corrected, my skin going up in flames.

  Necros’s fist slammed into my face, sending my skull into the marble below. I swore the stone cracked. Or maybe that was my head.

  My power curled inside me, hiding, waiting.

  “What has he told you?” he demanded. “Why’s he really here? Because I know it’s not just to fuck my whore of a wife.” Necros leaned over me and cuffed his hands around my throat. He pushed me back until I hit Adrik’s body, my hand falling into the blood that had flowed from his body onto the floor.

  “He’s a man; why would he talk to me?” I wheezed, playing into his own games. “Squeeze harder, husband. Why don’t you kill me?” I taunted him because I knew he couldn’t murder me until he’d taken my powers. Unfortunately for him, that would never happen. They belonged to Adrik.

  Which meant Adrik was still alive, just healing. The bullet wound was a temporary measure.

  Necros clasped his hand tighter, making my chest burn from the lack of oxygen.

  Dark specks dotted my vision.

  Valora? a warm voice whispered, groggy with sleep.

  Adrik. I smiled, which only enraged my husband further.

  What’s happening? Adrik asked. I can’t move.

  They shot you. Necros knows about us. He’s after your secrets.

  Secrets? he repeated, a hint of confused exhaustion in his mind’s voice.

  Who you are and why you’re here.

  Necros shook me, his words a rumble I refused to hear. Not with the bliss of Adrik’s voice in my head.

  I need to wake up, Adrik said.

  No. Stay asleep. Rest for as long as you can. Trust me this time.

  Valora? he asked as if he couldn’t hear me. And maybe he couldn’t over the roaring beast above me.

  Play dead, Adrik. Trust me.

  With those parting words, I shut him out of my mind and kicked out against my husband. I hit him in the most painful place for a man—between his thighs. He crumpled to the ground, releasing my neck. I gasped fresh air into my lungs once more and tried to scramble away.

  Only to be surrounded by guards.

  I recognized one of them as the man who’d bowed to me in the garden yesterday. His face was covered in bruises, no doubt a punishment for his betrayal. The man was lucky to still be alive.

  “Take a seat on the throne, Your Majesty,” he said flatly. “The king hasn’t finished his discussion yet.”

  I laughed with a choked sound and shook my head. “Never,” I rasped.

  The guard knelt, his eyes meeting mine with some sort of secret question. “Please,” he breathed, the word for my ears alone. Then he glanced over his shoulder to where Necros had pulled a knife out of an intricately woven box.

  I recognized the blade immediately.

  It was one of Adrik’s daggers. Like the ones he’d used to kill the others during my husband’s fucked-up games.

  “I think it’s about time we woke him up, don’t you?” Necros said, his green gaze melting into cruel pools of black. “I’ll ask him the questions myself before I kill him.”

  Those blades would cause irreparable damage, the magic in them meant to wound immortals permanently.

  Necros must have seen the knowledge in my face, the very real fear that he could kill Adrik, because he swirled the knife around in his hand and lowered it toward Adrik’s leg. “I’ll ask you one final time, Valora. Who is he?”

  The guard beside me growled, startling me from my shock.

  He stood and ran for my husband, his spear pointed forward and flames erupting from it. Necros dropped the knife and easily disarmed the male with a flick of his hand.

  “I should have killed you yesterday.” My husband raised his hand, lifting the guard from the floor with a magical hold around the male’s neck. “Nobody dares to defy me. I’m the power here, and each and every one of you needs to remember that. My wife is merely a vessel whose riches I will plunder and control until the day I kill her.”

  “Leave him alone,” I demanded, pushing my way to my feet.

  Necros ignored me, squeezing the noose of energy tighter, causing the guard to choke and sputter, his eyes bulging in his skull.

  “Enough! I shouted. I’d claimed the guard as mine yesterday, and no one threatened what was mine. That included this male I didn’t know. Adrik. Zaya. All of Graystall. The innocents of Caluçon. And anyone else I decided to protect. “Release him.”

  The bastard ignored me, his lips curling as the guard turned blue.

  Flames rippled across my flesh, down my arms and legs, destroying my gown and singeing the air with rising heat.

  I focused on the faces of all the other guards in the room, found their souls within, and flooded their bodies with my power, incinerating them to ash. The energy coiled through the room, the palace, the grounds, searching and seething, desiring anyone and everyone who had wronged me.

  The attendees at our wedding.

  The males who raped Zaya.

  The members of society who sat by and watched my d
egradation and destruction.

  Anyone and everyone with loyalties to my husband.

  I found them all. Wrapped them in my vise. Squeezed.

  “Valora!” Necros grabbed my shoulders. “Stop.”

  Oh, but I’d only just begun. I smiled at him, noted his immunity to my flames, and continued my destruction of everything he held dear.

  His kingdom.

  His palace.

  All the monsters. The loyalists. The blackened spirits who littered this realm.

  The tendrils of my flames twisted and turned, wrapping around my husband’s limbs to keep him in place, to force him to watch my glory. A newfound strength surged through my body, one born of pride and relief. Because my husband no longer had control. He would bow to me now.

  And I forced him to, sending him to his knees with a blow of power.

  I shot a lightning bolt from my left hand, latching onto his precious throne, and threw it out the windows of the throne room. The stained glass bubbled and boiled in its wake, forming a mucky, brown-colored substance that flowed over the stone walls.

  It was time.

  Necros would die here today. Whether by my hand or Adrik’s.

  I felt my lover stirring as my husband broke the energy binding his ankles and wrists. His own gifts were coming to the forefront, his fury over the devastation I’d caused fueling his steps toward me.

  I wasn’t done yet, not by a long shot, my power still seeking and destroying, but his energy coiled around mine, crushing me beneath his iron fist.

  “You caught me off guard,” he said, the promise of death swirling in his tone. “But I’m still stronger.”

  A lie.

  The only reason he bested me now was a result of the insidious vows I’d murmured all those months ago. Without the restrictions, I’d slay him.

  As he would soon find out, with Adrik stirring behind him.

  Because Adrik could absorb my powers, could use them where I couldn’t.

  It might kill me, or deplete my energy for life, but both were sacrifices I was willing to make. For the betterment of the Underworld. To destroy the vile presence that was Necros.

  “You’ll lose,” I whispered, smiling through the onslaught of his magical assault.

  Life or death.

  Love or fear.

  Adrik or Necros.

  There was only one choice in each.

  I had made my decisions.

  “You want to know who Adrik is? Then why don’t you ask him yourself?”

  I rolled my neck, cracking it sharply in the cold room.

  Ash swept across the marble floor, the bodies of former guards diminished beneath Valora’s impressive display of power. Only one remained—the one at my side. He’d helped me stand, his head bowed in reverence not to me but to his queen.

  To the goddess rippling in flames.

  Fuck, she was beautiful.

  Even losing to Necros’s will, she resembled a being of pure light and power. Her husband’s hands were circling her neck, his biceps bulging as he tried to choke her out. I wondered if Valora even realized it. She hadn’t taken a breath in minutes, yet seemed to be overflowing with life.

  I felt it humming through my veins, warming my skin, begging me to take over, to pull her energy into myself and use it to finish the King of Caluçon.

  No, not her power… but Valora.

  Her words were on repeat in my mind, telling me to absorb her gifts and finish him. She knew the costs, had accepted them, and was trying to convince me to take charge.

  No.

  We would find another way.

  I picked up my knives from the casing on the floor, thankful to Necros for bringing them to me, and twirled the familiar weight between my fingers.

  “Twenty-five years ago, you stole my kingdom,” I said, my voice deep and clear and filled with renewed life. “A prophecy told you the King of Shadows would take your life. I’m here today to see that destiny fulfilled.”

  I threw a blade toward his back, only to watch a wave of power brush it aside. He tossed Valora to the side, knocking her into the sole remaining throne, and turned. “I killed the King of Shadows with my bare hands,” he seethed, coiling his dark energy around me in thick ropes of pain.

  “You killed the former King of Shadows,” I corrected, using another knife to cut through the invisible strands. He hissed at the burn, then growled as I disappeared into smoke to return on his other side. “My father,” I whispered, directly into his ear, before shifting again to the corner of the room.

  He spun, searching. “Impossible.”

  “Is it?” I breathed, sending the words through the air on a wisp of smoke, curling it around his skin. “Lux raised me as her own, as a favor to King Maverick and Queen Soren. My parents. The ones you killed in this very palace before claiming it as your own.”

  I whispered around him in a cloud, slicing out with my blade across his bare arm, then ghosting back to my place before he could grab me. He whirled again, his growl vibrating the walls.

  “Some might say you brought this on yourself,” I continued softly. “That destroying my kingdom was what breathed rebellion into my blood, and the dark need to carve my name into your burning flesh.” I slithered by him once more, adding another mark, followed swiftly by a third to complete the A in his arm.

  His energy shot out, wrapping around me again and halting my retreating steps. I sliced through the bands with my blade, spinning and dodging as he sent more blasts my way.

  Use my power! Valora demanded, trying to push her essence into me.

  It came too suddenly, causing my feet to trip beneath me and sending me to the floor. I rolled to avoid a deadly blast from Necros, then fought to mist to the shadows but found my ankle trapped in one of his sticky webs.

  Valora’s warmth burned through my veins, her gift an addiction that called to my instincts. But I couldn’t use it, not when I knew what would happen to her.

  Stop forcing it, I growled.

  Take it, she pleaded. Please.

  She seemed to think Necros was winning, perhaps because of the purple smog climbing ominously over my prone form.

  “You’re weak,” the king spat, walking toward me. “I can’t believe I ever feared you.”

  Adrik! she screamed, her fire engulfing me from head to foot, but Necros’s energy penetrated it, his power immune to hers.

  Unless I wielded it.

  This was what I desired all my life.

  What I’d been bred and trained to do.

  But hurting Valora…

  I can’t.

  Her agony pierced my heart, her resolve crumbling into ash around me as Necros overruled her. His essence wrapped around my throat, squeezing, threatening to end me. I used my knife against it, but another developed in its wake, like Medusa’s snakelike hair but in the form of lethal claws from the beast hovering over me.

  “When I’m finished with you, I’m going to destroy her,” Necros seethed. “Her power is mine. The vows she spoke promised that whatever she owned, she would share. With me. And I will take what’s mine, demolish Noxia for raising you, and make sure your name is a rumor of the past. A forgotten promise that everyone will only remember as a failure.”

  I narrowed my gaze.

  Not at his pledge to harm me.

  But to those I cared about.

  No. He would not win. I refused. My knife sliced through yet another branch and the one that came after it, all while he laughed at my plight.

  Valora was right.

  I had to use her power to stop him.

  I was weakened by the unexpected bullet his minions had fired into my brain, my body not yet at full strength despite the desire in my heart to slay this maleficent creature.

  I needed just a little more strength.

  From Valora.

  I closed my eyes, seeking our connection and finding it wide open, her heart mine for the taking. And I broke off a piece that I swore to return.

  Flames erupted acros
s my skin, forming in my hands, granting me an electrical current that I used against Necros. He screamed as I drove the spark into his chest, my precision resolute.

  Violet waves erupted from him, encasing him in a sea of protection.

  I growled, irritated at being cut off. Annoyed that he still possessed so much of his own aura to create such a shield.

  And then he shouted to the skies above, demanding the Almighty’s presence to give him his due. “Lucifer!” he bellowed over and over again.

  The floor shook.

  Marble pillars cracked.

  The sky above cackled with resounding explosions.

  Valora grabbed my arm, forcing me back, her palms caressing my cheeks, my head, my neck. She’d created some sort of perimeter, the fire burning brightly. But I knew it was no match for what was coming.

  Necros had called upon the Supreme Being. The fallen angel who dictated all of the Underworld. And the rumble beneath our feet said he was responding to the call.

  We were doomed.

  Killing Necros, we could accomplish together.

  But neither of us was ready to face Lucifer.

  “So we go down fighting,” Valora whispered, her lips close to mine. “I’m with you to the end, Adrik. Even if it means giving you my inner star. I’ll give it all if it means remaining by your side.”

  I kissed her, accepting the vow, the promise, the pledge for eternity. Even if it was short-lived, we were in this together now.

  My sweet star.

  My Valora.

  My queen.

  My heart.

  An overwhelming blindness sent us both to our knees, but her perimeter remained, glowing harshly and preventing entry.

  Until a sweep of a stern hand dissolved the power to ash.

  Lucifer had arrived, his expression one of esteemed boredom. “Well.” He glanced around, taking in the damage of the once great throne room and gazing out at the grounds beyond. “I see you’ve been busy, daughter of mine.”

  “Daughter?” I repeated, wondering if I’d heard him right.

  “Mmm,” the Devil replied, his hands clasped behind his back as he wandered the room. “Interesting redecorating choice,” he commented, his gaze on the bronze-covered walls. “Might I suggest something a little more ornate for the future throne room? Perhaps a sparkle of light?”