Broken Dove (Fantasyland #4)(70)

They were all Apollo, the girl a female version, a very cute, very pretty female version, but they both were all him. No red hair. No brown eyes. No freckles.

Dark thick hair. Olive toned skin.

Jade eyes.

They were beautiful.

Beautiful.

My heart started bleeding.

The boy was in bed with the girl, holding her close, and she was trembling so badly, she shook her brother and I could see the tassels on the canopy on her bed shaking as well.

She was petrified, her face saturated with it.

There was no blood. No visible injuries.

But one of them had gotten to her.

I felt this realization hit Apollo as his rage permeated the room.

The girl whispered a trembling, “Papa.”

At the sound of her little scared voice, it happened.

I was suddenly on fire. Every inch of my skin blistering. My eyes burning. My brain boiling.

Without a thought, not even knowing what I intended to do, I tore my hand from Apollo’s and raced out of the room, down the hall, the stairs and out the opened front door, my heavy cloak billowing behind me.

I stopped in the snow, my cloak flying forward to wrap around me, and I counted.

Eight bodies.

I turned instantly to the man standing closest to me.

Gaston.

I stomped to him, wrapped my fist in his sweater and snapped, “Where are the other two?”

“Maddie—”

I beat his sweater into his chest, got up on my toes and screeched, “Where are the other two?”

His fingers began to curl on my biceps and he started, “Maybe we should—”

I pulled from him, moved blindly away and saw it.

Tracks and drag marks in the snow leading along the front of the house and around the corner.

I sprinted that way, following the tracks. I raced down the side of the house, into the back garden, past a pretty gazebo, a large greenhouse and into the forest beyond where I saw two torches lighting the outside of a small outbuilding.

Without hesitation, I ran to it and stormed in.

There was a man hanging by his hands from a hook. He was shirtless and bleeding profusely from a variety of wounds as well as a serious pummeling he took to his face.

Hans and Remi were standing close to him.

There was another man, also shirtless and bleeding, tied to a chair in the center of the space.

Derrik was standing behind him.

Laures was working him.

When I arrived, all the men looked to me in surprise and they kept their eyes on me when I stomped straight to the man in the chair, shoving past Laures and I bent, getting right in his face.

“What did you do to her?” I shrieked.

A hand came to rest on my shoulder and I heard Remi whisper, “Maddie.”

I shrugged it off and wrapped my gloved hand under the man’s jaw and shoved it back.

He grunted but I dropped my face back to his and screamed, “She’s just a little girl!” I got closer, my fingers curling deep into his flesh. “You monster! What did you do to her?”

“Mad—” Remi tried again but I whirled and shot past him.

My hand darting out, I nabbed the knife on Laures’ belt.

“Bloody hell.” I heard Hans mutter but I didn’t hesitate.

No, I didn’t.

I didn’t hesitate or think.

I was f**king focused.

I turned back to the man in the chair, held the point of the knife to the hinge of his jaw and demanded, “Who sent you?”

The man’s eyes held mine and he said nothing.

I pressed the tip into his flesh, he pushed back against the chair and I screeched, “Who sent you?”

He again said nothing.

Controlled by emotion, still burning inside and out, I took the knife from his jaw and sunk it violently into the flesh of his shoulder.

He let out a pained grunt that didn’t register on me.

I just pulled the knife out to three simultaneous masculine “bloody hells” and one “by the gods” and returned it to his jaw.

“Who sent you?”

Then suddenly I wasn’t in his face anymore, neither did I have the knife.

I was, instead, pressed back deep into Apollo’s body with his arm around my belly.

And then, with Apollo, we leaned forward as he flashed the knife out.

And that was when I watched the gaping, red gash across the man’s throat slither open, blood pouring down his chest. He sucked in a breath, got zero air and an instant later, found his death with surprise in his eyes.

I had no reaction to this. I also had no time to have a reaction.

Without hesitation, Apollo turned both of us and we were across the room like a shot. He held me to his front as he held the knife to the man hanging on the hook’s throat.

“Now you know I will not waver,” he growled. “Who sent you?”

The man was staring with big eyes at the freshly dead man in the chair but when Apollo pressed the knife to his throat, his eyes shot to him.

And I watched them grow cold.

“The queen is just,” he announced bizarrely.

“The queen is not here,” Apollo returned.

“She’ll not be best pleased, you dispense justice in your gardener’s shack,” he stated and I finally looked around.

Yep. We were in a gardener’s shack.