Free Deciding Her Faete (Beyond the Veil Book 2) by Sarah Marsh, Elena Kincaid, Maia Dylan Page B

couldn’t believe he had hidden that part of himself from me for so long. I was furious. The mage was surprisingly easy to kill, but I admit, I hesitated with your father and underestimated how fiercely he would fight for his mate and child, which gave Ilyra the opportunity to escape with you.”
    The lights … the blue lights from her palms … cruel laughter … her nightmares—they were echoes of her memories, ones that she had blocked out.
    “I finally caught up with your mother a few days later. Sadly, she had already sent you away. She taunted me that I would never find you, so I ripped out her heart,” Kheelan said dispassionately. “The whore obviously underestimated me, as I did indeed find you, didn’t I?”
    She had stared at Kheelan stony-faced, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of knowing he had gotten to her.
    When he finally left the room, she’d broken down and allowed herself to cry freely, her sobs nearly choking her. Some of what he had said rang true, especially when this time she repeated her mother’s name to herself. Then a memory of her parents flashed through her mind. A woman with blonde hair, blue eyes, and dimples in her cheeks, and a man with flowing red hair and bright green eyes were smiling as they tucked a five-year-old April into bed. They then walked out of her bedroom holding hands. The bittersweet memory only made her cry harder.
    One way or another, Kheelan would suffer for what he did. She’d make damn sure of it.
    Over and over, they’d tortured her, leaving only enough time in between for Frederych to recover from whatever toll it took on him to use his magic on her. During the brief breaks, she thought of her men, praying that Donovan had gotten to Jason in time and that they both had gotten away safely. Jason’s screams still haunted her, but there was one moment when she closed her eyes and thought about the moment Jason had passionately kissed her in the diner, and the time Donovan had kissed her sweetly in her cell, that she fully felt that spark within her. She had touched it in her mind, cautiously at first, not knowing if this was yet another trick of Kheelan’s to torture her.
    The more she explored that part of herself, the more natural it had begun to feel to her and she became even surer that at least most of what she’d been told here was true. She was Fae. She was one of them … a monster like Kheelan and his men. She was going to have to be as ruthless as these bastards if she was going to get out of this mess by using her powers against them.
    By the next day, she had finally learned to reach inside of herself and draw out that spark of magic which until now had only manifested out of instinct. Believing it was actually there had been half the battle, and once April had admitted to herself that she was more than human, it was like a doorway had opened up inside her soul. Behind that door, she’d found the power she had been looking for.
    ****
    When her tormenters arrived back in her cell, bright and early to begin their day’s work of trying to coerce her to heal Kheelan, she was almost eager to see them this time—now that she had a plan. She was grateful that at least the awful sounding king was dead. More than once, she’d caught Kheelan blubbering about his former lover and how he longed to continue in his footsteps.
    And now, as she laughed in Kheelan’s face, tormenting him about his days being numbered, she reveled in that fact that soon he would be wiped off the face of the earth.
    “I’d say you’ve got a week, maybe two tops, by the look of you, Kheels. I am so looking forward to your death.”
    “Again,” he barked at Frederych, who had slowly just risen to his feet.
    “But, Captain, I am not sure I ca—”
    “I said again!”
    This was it, her best chance, she thought. Frederych was truly the only one she feared, as Kheelan was still too weak to hurt her himself, and with him pretty much out of commission for the time being,