Heading back to the safety of the rooms adjoining Epharis', she stepped in to find Letari being dragged off a bloodied and abused looking Jaia by Jagum and the group froze, taking in the room, but they didn't seem to have noticed their arrival.
"I'll kill you!" Letari was screaming and Jaia bared his fangs at her while crawling backwards.
"Psycho bitch, stay away from me!"
"If you touch her again, I'll rip out your heart!"
"Letari stop, you can't kill him!" Jagum cried.
"She'll only be mad for a few decades and then she'll forgive me, but you!" She pointed one furious finger at the vampire. "You... she loved you and you broke her! You just had to have what you wanted, didn't you!"
In the doorway they were silent, stunned into stillness by the normally sweet Letari in full rage.
"I apologised!" Jaia snarled.
"Oh yes, apologised for raping her.... 'I'm so sorry Etani for fucking you when you cried for me to stop, and I couldn't because I had to have what wasn't mine. Please forgive me for leaving you bleeding and in so much pain you went to a fucking werewolf to escape!'" Her sarcasm was brutal, and Etani felt a spark of pride for her twin that vanished in an instant. "I know what you did, and the only reason you weren't the first to create another world from her is because you damaged her too much! Don't you dare even look at my sister again!"
He did look at her though, a slight shift from someone in the doorway catching his attention and his face lost all colour as he found them there.
She couldn't look away from Jaia and she tried to mask her face, but it wasn't working.
"I'm sorry…" he whispered, his face bloodied and tortured from where Letari had tried to claw out his eyes.
"Lee stop," she said gently and Letari looked at her, her fury vanishing into horror.
"No, you weren't supposed to hear that…" she whimpered, limp in Jagum's arms.
"Etani, I'm sorry," Jaia said again, but she couldn't look at him.
She couldn't stop the memories from surfacing, but she did her best to ignore them and stay calm, she had to pretend it didn't matter.
"Clean up the mess," she said, motioning to the destruction of the room and headed for the bathroom. It had not been a good day for her when it came to people saying things to her and she ran the bath, watching with a note of amusement as Cat sniffed at the water.
"Not a wise curiosity, my love," she told him, but he ignored her and was soon splashing around in the shallow pool, much to her delight.
Stripping off her bloodied dress and throwing it into a pile to be burnt, she sat down in the bottom of the bath and splashed water at the cat, smiling when he hissed at her and stalked after a bubble. She thought it best not to add any oils until she removed him from the water, but she waited until the water was touching his belly before turning off the taps and letting him play until he got bored.
Turning the water back on and adding oil, she placed him down on a towel and stepped back into the water, kneeling in the tub while she worked to get him dry on the floor.
"Should come visit you more often," Vincent said from behind her, and she looked around to find him standing casually beside the taps with his hands in his pockets, his eyes on her backside.
Cat was fighting with the towel and she gave up trying to get him to accept her help and instead rested her chin on her arm, fluttering the towel to get him to chase it.
"What brings you back so soon?" she asked, his boots announcing his moving around the bath to where she was and sitting down.
Cat immediately turned on him, hissing and puffing up, but Vincent only looked at him doubtfully and then the little feline was distracted again by a tap on his tail by the corner of the towel in her hand.
"Rumours mostly. I heard the witches seemed to have vanished, and when I went to a familiar coven, I found something interesting."
Looking up at him, she found a long stand of black hair in his hand.
"You found hair?" she asked, rather certain it was hers, but she wasn't going to admit that to him.
"Not to mention a very large amount of blood on a bed," he said.
"Fancy that..." she said dryly, narrowing her eyes at Cat as he tore a hole in the towel.
"The funny thing about blood, to someone like me, is that everyone smells different. Everyone has a very unique taste and smell. You can guess where I'm going with this."
Cat had the towel in his mouth and ran off with it, the end slipping out of her hand and she watched him before she sighed and looked up at Vincent now that she couldn't pretend to be distracted and not paying attention.
"Don't tell me you licked dried blood off a bed…"
"There was enough of it that I didn't have to. The room itself tasted of it."
"So, who was it?" she asked and smiled as he narrowed his eyes. Without his mask it was rather amusing to see his reactions.
"Cute. What happened?" he demanded.
"Hecate wanted her own world, they took Daemon, and me, stuffed us in a room and told us to get to work willingly, or they would find someone else, and they didn't care much for my willingness at that point. She got her world."
"You and the demon?" Vincent asked, surprised.
"It was that or a psychopathic witch, or a string of males. Daemon was at least kind enough to enchant me. The first time at least…" she sighed, tapping her nails on the tiles to try and coax Cat back but he was too busy trying to kill the towel.
"So, you created a world and put her and her witches in it?"
"Yes, and then severed their connection to Faerie."
He was silent, staring at her as she moved away from the edge of the bath and picked out a bottle of lavender. It was by far her favourite, and with her back to him, she lathered herself up and washed it off again.
"You killed a Goddess and her people?" he asked finally.
She looked around at him, curious and with her arms crossed over her chest for modesty. The water had turned at least mostly opaque, but still.
"I didn't kill them. They will be fine there; I only took away the magic."
"Can that world survive without magic?"
"That world is its own entity, not like this one. When I looked, Faerie is sort of... half wrapped around this one, and this one is round, did you know that? I always assumed it was flat like a plate but it's more like a wonky ball with Faerie wrapped around half of it like a blanket." He didn't reply and when she looked around, she found him giving her a very odd look. "What? What did I say?" she asked, unsure.
"You saw our worlds?" he asked, and she nodded.
"Yes, why is that the thing you focused on?"
"I just…. I didn't think anyone could see our world." He was still staring at her and she shrugged, turning her back to him once more while she rubbed oil into her skin.
"Need me to get your back?" he asked.
"Need me to remove your arm?"
"Before or after I do your back?"
"Before."
"Why do you hate me? I'm just trying to be helpful," he pouted.
"Goodbye Vincent."
She was trying hard not to smile, but it was hard when he was being playful and she lifted her arms to rub oil into her hair, catching his grin out of the corner of her eye.
"Oh, right I have something for you," he said, and her eyes lit up as he seemed to draw the weapon out of thin air.
Hurrying to rinse out her hair and the oil from her skin, she moved back to his side of the bath and dried off her hands on a towel before taking it.
It was jarringly heavy, and she lifted herself up onto her knees to hold it away from the water.
"It's really nice," she purred happily, looking it over.
"Yes, they are…" he murmured, and she smiled, running her thumb over the wire but when she looked up, he was looking down at her chest rather than the weapon.
"I'm going to shoot you in the face," she warned.
He blinked, looking up at her face and then the crossbow that she was aiming at him.
"You have to arm it first," he said, amused, though his eyes slid from the bow back to her chest.
Ignoring him, she turned the weapon over and found a small cache of weapons stuck to the bottom and frowned as she turned it back over, trying to figure out how to arm it.
"How?" she asked, confused.
"I'm not going to tell you if you're just going to shoot me."
"Stop staring at my chest."
"I'm not staring at your chest."
He was staring at her chest.
"I'm staring at your breasts, completely different," he clarified.
Frowning down at the bow, she spun the bolt and slammed it down into his thigh without looking up, another one already in her hand while he howled.
The door burst open, but she didn't bother looking up as she stuck the silvery metal between her teeth and her fingers curled around the string.
Pressing the butt against her stomach, she pried the wire down until it snapped into place and hummed to herself while Vincent was being pounced on by at least three others.
Turning, she stood and set herself, the bolt sliding into place and the crossbow lowering to aim at Vincent's face. His eyes went huge as he took her in, naked and dripping water with the bow held aimed for his face.
"I think I'm in love…" he gasped, staring up at her.
She smiled down at him, his wide mouth pulling up into a grin of appreciation.
"Why did you give her a projectile?" Daemon sighed, grabbing the bolt, and ripping it free of Vincent's thigh.
Ignoring the bellow of pain, her eyes lifted at a low whistle from Dirdos as he came into the room, but then her eyes found Jaia, and the crossbow was lifting before she really thought about it.
His hands went up in surrender as she looked up at him, hating that his eyes were on her while she had no clothes on.
"Etani… put down the bow," Dirdos said slowly, and all eyes came up to find her, her attention and the bow both fixed on Jaia and his tense face.
No one was game enough to try and grab her or try and shove down the weapon, instead Dirdos moved with a painful slowness to stand between her and Jaia, though that only made her wonder how many people she could kill in one go. Could she go through Dirdos to get to Jaia? It was an interesting thought.
Someone hit her, and she was suddenly underwater, unable to see who it was that had tackled her.
They grabbed the bow and ripped it from her hands, and she surfaced, spluttering and glaring as she looked up and found Kai.
He looked furious as he ripped the bolts out and placed the weapon on the floor behind the bath.
"You are not going to kill him!" Kai shouted, and she flinched, always shocked on the rare occasion that he yelled at her.
Shifting back from him, she reached out and grabbed the towel, wrapping it around herself as she stood and stepped out of the bath, unable to look at either of them again.
It would have been so easy to shoot him, it would have made her happy, but she knew she couldn't.
Jaia moved out of the way as she headed for the door and she slipped out, leaving the suite and heading back for her own suite next to Alaric's, the room blissfully empty and she couldn't even think when the last time was that she had actually been fully alone in those rooms.
Throwing open the doors to the balcony and the windows, she smiled and closed her eyes at the warm sunshine on her face.
She had wanted nothing more than to shoot him for what he had done to her, she wanted to see him suffering for the way he had made her suffer, and yet she couldn't do it because of Kai.
It would destroy him if she hurt Jaia. He would never forgive her and still, part of her just wanted to do it anyway. She just wanted to be free of him.
She should have let that bolt fly while she had the chance, but then she realised she had no idea how to shoot the stupid thing.
Growling, she looked down at the ground far below, glaring at nothing and trying not to think about the vampire.
She didn't know how she felt about him. She felt betrayed and angry, scared, and battered. But then, that part of her that was a creature and not a person was impressed by his boldness and admittedly, a little aroused by his actions. A man who knew what he wanted and took it, appealed to that part of her brain in a way that was not smart nor rational, it was a primal need to be dominated by her mate, and he had done that so completely. It was part of what made Dirdos so appealing to her, as well as many of the others in her life.
It dawned on her exactly what kind of male her magic tended to attract the most, men who rose to the challenge of her strength and wanted to crush her. It drew men who wanted a woman who would fight them and be difficult. It explained why so many of them were abusive, and why she seemed to bounce back from that abuse.
She was built to withstand it, and to some dark deep extent, enjoy it.
Closing her eyes, she bit hard on her lower lip and then stood, heading back inside to get dressed.