Mab's eyes darkened, a bit of fire flashing in her black gaze. The sparks seemed to suck up even more of the dusky twilight, instead of reflecting back the faint light.
"Your insolence is noted, little Genevieve, and it does not please me. Or have you forgotten that I have your sweet sister over here at my mercy? That I've had her at my mercy all day long already? I have to say, I'm actually glad things worked out this way. What fun I've had with her, especially in seeing how long and loud I could make her scream while I burned her with my magic. It's been most entertaining. After I kill you, I think I'll start on her face. Melt it right off and then put out her pretty little eyes with my thumbs. I might even let her live, keep her around as a sort of pet. Wouldn't that be fun?"
Rage filled me at her words-cold, black, unending rage. Whatever happened to me, Mab would not hurt my sister again. She would not.
But I didn't let any of what I was feeling show in my hard features, and I didn't look at Bria. If I did that, if I saw the fear in her eyes again, I might come undone, which was something I couldn't afford.
"Oh, no, I haven't forgotten that you have Bria. Kind of sad, though. That you needed a bargaining chip to catch me. But then again, you're not as young as you used to be, are you, Mab?"
Yeah, I was taunting her, but we both knew exactly how this was going to play out. Despite whatever empty promises she'd made to me over the phone, Mab wasn't letting Bria go or me walk out of the courtyard alive. Not unless I made her-not unless Finn, Owen, and the others made her. My part in this was to keep talking and taunting her. Every second I did that was another second that Finn and the others had to slip out of their hiding places in the woods, quietly take out the bounty hunters stationed on the perimeter, and get into position at the edge of the courtyard.
Buying my friends that precious time meant putting on a show for all those in attendance. So instead of staring at Mab, I turned around in a slow circle, looking at each one of the giants and bounty hunters gathered around me. My gaze drifted from one face to another. Most of them stared back at me head-on. After all, it wasn't like I was dealing with choirboys and schoolgirls here. These were professionals who were just as hard and ruthless as I was. But a few shied away from my eyes, while others dropped their heads entirely. Their reluctance to even look at me gave me some hope that my friends would be able to break their ranks and morale long enough to rescue Bria.
"I'm giving everyone here a chance," I said. "Walk away right now, and you can live. I won't come after you afterward. I know what Mab's like. How she's forced some of you to be here against your will. How she's threatened your wives, kids, whatever. I won't hold that against you, not if you leave right now and never look back."
My harsh words echoed through the courtyard, out into the remains of the ruined house, and even into the forest beyond. The stones under my feet muttered at my voice, recognizing it and the hidden elemental power in my words. The stones didn't want to negotiate, they didn't want to let anyone go. No, the stones wanted to lash out, to crush whoever came close and grind their bones into dust, just like I'd done to them once upon a time. Just the way I wanted to do to Mab right now. But some small part of me insisted that I give the others a chance first-which was more than they or the Fire elemental would ever do for me.
There were no takers, of course. Everyone remained where they were, weapons at the ready. Couldn't blame them for that. After all, I was the one seemingly twisting out here in the snow and wind all by my lonesome. Not for long, though. Not for long.
Mab let out a little peal of laughter when no one took me up on my offer. "Oh, please. You don't actually expect to walk out of here alive, do you, Genevieve?"
The sound of her saying my name again, my real name, made that little primal voice in the back of my head start muttering the way that it always did whenever I was around the Fire elemental. Enemy, enemy, enemy...
I shrugged. "It seems to me like you're the one not expecting to walk out of here alive, considering all the men that you brought along with you. Admit it, Mab. You're scared of me. You always have been. Deep down, there's a part of you that realizes that I might be just that much better than you, that much stronger than you. That's why you killed my mother and older sister. That's why you tried to kill me and Bria. Because you've always been scared of us and what we could do to you. At the end of the day, you're nothing but a bully and a f**king coward."
Rage flickered in Mab's eyes, more rage than I had ever seen her show before. I'd hit a little too close to home with my words, but the Fire elemental would never admit it. Not even now, at the end.
"I killed your mother because I wanted to," Mab snarled. "Because she was an arrogant, pompous bitch who took everything that I ever wanted, including your father, Tristan."
I'd once heard Elliot Slater say that Mab had pursued my father because she'd wanted to pass his Stone magic on to any kids that they might have had together, even though that wouldn't have been a certainty. But my father had loved my mother and chosen her instead. Tristan had died when I was a child, supposedly in a car accident, and I barely remembered him.
"Our families have hated each other for years, Genevieve. We've been at war for decades," Mab continued.
"And why is that?" I asked, genuinely curious.
Mab smiled. "My family has always had certain... ideas about how things in Ashland should be run. And your family has always opposed us, being the goody-goodies that they inherently are. Ice elementals. Always so weak. But I was strong enough to make my family's ideas, our plans, a reality. I was strong enough to take my rightful place as the head of the Ashland underworld. But doing all that involved things that your weak, spineless mother didn't approve of, and she felt it was her duty to try to stop me, just as her mother thwarted mine for years before."
"Things like what? Murder? Extortion? Kidnappings? I wonder why Eira had such a problem with all that," I drawled in a mocking tone.
Mab waved her hand. "Please. Eira cared as little about me as I did about her, until one of her friends racked up a gambling debt to me that he just couldn't pay off. So I killed him, and then I killed his family, locking them in their own house and burning it to the ground."
I froze. Owen. She had to be talking about Owen's family and how she'd killed them. Somehow, my mother had known Owen's parents, and she'd started fighting Mab because of their deaths. Just when I thought that I knew everything there was to know about my past, something else reared up to surprise me once more.