Chapter 88 Chapter 88

Chapter 88 Chapter 88
KILLIAN
The first time I faced off against a witch was two weeks after my exile from Eyrosa.
I’d been angry, frustrated, and, according to Mrs Oxborn, wet behind the ears… That was a rather odd phrase—wet behind the ears. All I pictured whenever I heard it was when Aurel licked my ear when I was eleven. He’d only been twelve, but he still should have known better. Annoying fool.
Fabien and I had been living in a duplex that belonged to my uncle, and when Fabien had tried to get me to go with him to meet up with Aurel and Aurora, I’d told him to fuck off. And he did just that. I’d watched him walk down the street from my bedroom window and felt like a jerk once he was out of sight, so I decided to go after him, but when I headed down the stairs, there was a man I didn’t recognize in the foyer.
He was human, so I lowered my guard, thinking he’d walked into the wrong house—my uncle’s house was identical to about four on the street, after all. But his answer to my who are you? being you fucking leech and the subsequent magical attack quickly corrected both assumptions. Apparently, my father had ruined his life—I don’t know how; he didn’t go into details—and he didn’t care for the fact that I wasn’t my father or that said father also ruined my life.
Before then, I’d fought vampires and werewolves, but with those two, I at least had an idea of how the fight would progress and how it would end. The same logic couldn’t really be applied to someone who could bend anything to their will.
I knew he couldn’t kill me—only a specific set of people could accomplish that thanks to my mother—but that didn’t make the fight any less miserable. Fortunately for me and unfortunately for my attacker, he just so happened to receive karmic blowback for his current or past magic use while he was having the time of his life torturing me, and I did not hesitate to take the chance to show him just how quickly his head could turn sideways.
That was also the first time I drained essence from a witch.
The barrier I’d placed on the suite before I went to the kitchen shattered as the blond woman stepped into the hallway, and a muscle in her jaw twitched like I was an inconvenience. “Please don’t make this difficult, night prince. We’re really not here for a fight,” she sighed while I rolled my neck.
Fucking hell. Getting glass in my back was an infuriating experience. Witches attacking me was up there too, but glass... “You’re trespassing.”
“As is needed sometimes.”
The guards standing at the door weren’t reacting, and I couldn’t hear Cameron’s guards moving either, so they must have done something to them. Probably the same thing they’d tried to do when I turned my back to them.
“Killian?” came Calley’s hesitant voice from the study’s doorway, as the hum of magic in my veins turned into a roar. She was far more prepared to face vampires than witches, and though three against one was going to be disgusting, I would not leave Lenore undefended.
Fabien would figure out something was going on soon enough—or Calley would text him—and he’d bring Aurel with him. Aurora was somewhere in the palace too. Either way, I was glad I just fed.
“Stay here,” I muttered, keeping my gaze on the blond woman and her counterparts. Glass crunched under my feet as I took a step forward, and the woman clicked her tongue.
“…You’re going to make this difficult, aren’t you?” She raised her hand just as I dashed forward—or tried to. 
Oh… This was going to be really disgusting.
The corner of her mouth turned up just before she unleashed a roaring stream of flames straight at my face and heat blasted the corridor. My enhanced speed was nowhere to be found, turning my dash into a stupid charge, but the running start still worked in my favor. I dropped my weight, sliding across the polished floor right beneath the blaze, and Cederic came to mind for a moment.
Huh.
The second I reached the end of the hallway, I shifted onto one knee, channeling my momentum into my fist as I drove it into her gut. The impact launched her backward through the doorway, extinguishing the flames as she flew out of the suite’s hallway. Her counterparts immediately took several steps backward.
Listening in on the bedroom confirmed Lenore was still asleep, and I wanted this dealt with before she woke up.
As I quickly rose to my feet, the second witch, the one with the ponytail, snapped her hands forward, and a crushing pressure slammed down on my limbs, trying to bend them in directions I sure as hell didn’t want them to go—directions limbs weren’t even meant to go in. The last witch who had shoulder-length black hair threw her magic in too, bringing a wave around my neck that began to wrench my head to the side.
The bone-deep strain I could push through, but the force trying to snap my neck was a different thing.
If I wasn’t a stubborn bastard, the dark-haired witch would have succeeded quickly. If the ponytail witch wasn’t trembling—her mind clearly occupied by the repercussions she’d get if she pushed her magic too far—I wouldn’t have been able to yank the blade from the sheath of one of my glamored guards.
Fuck off.
I whipped my arm back and threw the dagger at the dark-haired witch, but before it could sink into her chest, it burst into bubbles. It took me a moment to realize the blond woman, now back on her feet opposite me, had done that, but having a blade flying toward the dark-haired witch broke the concentration of both witches attacking me.
“Feeling showy, are we?” I stepped into the main hallway and slammed the suite door shut behind me. But before I could lunge at the blond, who seemed way more dangerous than the rest, she flicked her wrist and a force slammed into my shoulders, dropping me to my knees.
“I’m afraid you’ve barely seen anything.”
Fire burst to life in my right hand as I gritted my teeth against the pressure that seemed intent on driving me through the ground, but before I could hurl it at her, a wave wrapped around my wrist, forcing my hand backward. Then it snapped.
Pain exploded up my arm and a strangled noise tore from my throat before the wave moved up to my elbow.
Okay… this isn’t going well.
“Get your act right, child. She could have died,” the blond said as she bent my elbow like a dry twig, and I bit down hard enough to taste blood.
“B-But—” Ponytail looked like she was close to tears.
“Shut up!” the dark-haired witch burst out.
My right hand was trying to heal, but the witch kept it locked in place, preventing me from righting it, and trying to push through the pressure on my shoulders only made it more relentless. Where the fuck is Fabien?
“There’s—”
“Killian?” A familiar voice cut the blond witch off and my head jerked to the right.
“Oh…” That’s right. He moved. “Hi Cameron,” I said, giving him a small smile.
Cameron was leaning sideways out of his suite, his legs still in his suite’s hallway, and he looked thoroughly confused as he took in what was going on. “Is everything alright?”
That was a stupid question, but Lenore—who was thankfully still asleep and now had Calley in the bedroom with her—would be devastated if he got hurt.
“Just ignore us. This is—” A wave gripped my chest, sending a searing sensation through it and I gasped, hot blood spilling over my lips. Fuck me. I coughed, spitting blood on the floor, before lifting my gaze back to him.
He was standing in the main hallway now, his brows snapped together, one hand tucked into his slacks pocket.
I flashed him a smile. “There’s nothing to worry about. Give us some privacy, will you?”
Silence.
Cameron blinked at me before his gaze shifted to my right hand, still forced backward and broken in two places, then to the three women a couple of steps away. They also smiled at him, and though they didn’t seem like they wanted to attack him, they could change their minds if he didn’t leave. When he shifted his attention back to me and opened his mouth to say something, I cut him off.
“Leave, Cameron.”
“Listen to the prince, McGuire,” the blond woman said sweetly, and I gave him a nod before noticing the enchanted necklace around his neck.
His gaze shifted to the guards at my suite’s door, then to those at his. The glamoured men were just staring straight ahead like nothing was happening, but he took their lack of reaction to mean everything was fine.
“Alright,” he muttered before turning to head back into his suite. “Goodnight.”
The witches and I returned our attention to each other, my gaze locked on the blond, and our smiles dropped almost at the same time. Fucking—
A sharp pop filled the air, and for a fraction of a moment, I thought the blond witch had broken something else in my body. But there was no new pain. Then the dark-haired witch crumpled to the ground.
…Oh!
Standing right behind where she’d been seconds ago was Cameron, his hands positioned where her head had been, but the confusion was gone from his expression. He simply looked irritated now, and I couldn’t tell if it was because of me or the situation.
“...Clarisse?” the ponytail witch called, despair creeping into her voice, while the blond simply stared at Cameron with wide eyes, like she couldn’t believe he did that.
Neither do I, actually.
The weight pinning my body and locking my right hand backward suddenly evaporated, and I sucked in a breath as the blond sent Cameron flying backward. Ponytail had descended into hysterics over her fallen sister, but the blond was enraged, practically reeking of murderous intent.
Absolutely not.
I surged off my knees and drove straight for her, my left hand clamping around the side of her face before she could register that her hold on me had broken. With everything I had, I slammed her head into the wall behind her, and a heavy thud echoed in the hallway. She went limp, the hand she’d stretched towards Cameron falling to her side, before I let her drop.
Then I snapped my head toward Cameron and when I saw that he was already on his feet, unharmed, I turned my attention to the ponytail witch. She was on the floor, sobbing, and the moment our gazes met, she descended even further into hysterics.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” she cried the moment I took a step toward her. “I didn’t want to do it! I didn’t want to! They said they would fix everything.”
My frown deepened. They?
“All we had to do was get—” She suddenly froze, the words dying in her throat, and I narrowed my eyes.
“Hey.” I took another step forward, ready to snuff the life out of her if she so much as twitched her fingers, but her panic dissolved into nothingness. Her jaw went slack, her eyes rolled back, and she crumpled without a sound, joining her sisters.
…What the fuck?
“What was she talking about?” Cameron asked, now standing a couple of feet away from me.
My gaze bounced between him and ponytail before finally settling on him as I rolled my right arm which was now fully healed. “I have no idea,” I answered before my gaze dropped to his necklace and the thought I’d had in the kitchen—if his father had another one—resurfaced for a moment before I waved it away. It was important, but this wasn’t the time for that. “Thank you.”
He gave me a once-over. “I didn’t do it for you.”
“I figured,” I replied, my gaze dropping to the blond woman. If her emotions hadn’t run high after Cameron killed the dark-haired witch, I’d probably still be on my knees, and Cameron would probably be—
Fabien and Aurel appeared beside me, the air stirring around me from their dash, and I raised a brow at them.
“Oh dear. You two didn’t have to come so early,” I said as Fabien quickly took in the bodies littering the floor.
“What happened?” Aurel asked, his eyes wide, and I shot him a look that said what do you think?
Fabien frowned as he crouched next to the blond woman and brushed her hair away from her face. “I just saw Calley’s message. Aurel didn’t let me have my phone until now.”
“To be fair, I didn’t think she was calling for something important,” Aurel said in a rush as Fabien added, “And we didn’t hear anything happening up here.”
So they put a spell on the hallway too.
I shifted my attention to the guards, who were still staring straight ahead. They’d bowed when I showed up, so they weren’t completely gone, but the fact that they were still like this even after the witches were dead told me the witches must have put some sort of timer on their glamor spell.
“How did they get into the city?” Aurel asked, watching Fabien inspect the blond woman’s arms for her coven mark, and the scents that had caught my attention came back to mind. I worked my jaw.
“They used your blood.”
His head snapped to face me, his brows furrowed. “My blood?!” he blurted out, then a moment later, realization dawned on his face. “Ohhhhh… Wow.”
But why? Why would they come all the way here to attack me? They could have just attacked me in the club before or after Aurel gave his blood to that witch as payment... And why the fuck did they have Lenore’s scent on them?
They said they would fix everything rang in my ears and I glanced at ponytail, my nails digging into my palms.
“Find out what coven they’re from and everything you can about it,” I said to Fabien and he nodded before glancing at the other two bodies.
“Are we going to report this to the King?” he asked.
The last time witches had come into the city—to attack my father—was several decades before my mother died. Yes, one or more had come to rob the vault five days ago, but they hadn’t attacked anyone. Now this… aside from the fact that they’d come for me, it felt incredibly odd.
“Find out what you can about their coven first.”
He nodded again, and I walked over as he rose to his feet, already knowing what I was about to do. Lenore’s scent tickled my nostrils as I crouched beside the blond, and I gritted my teeth before closing her eyes.
I needed answers. Fast.
“What are you—”
“Shhhh,” Aurel cut Cameron off and Lenore shushing me before she fell asleep came to mind as I took the woman’s hand in mine, reaching for the magic lingering beneath her skin—essence.
“Let’s get this over with,” I muttered.