The Unseelie King (The Kings Book 6) Read Free Page B

attempted to find purchase as the guards edged him over the threshold of the door.
    The Unseelie King couldn’t blame him for fighting. He’d never condemned anyone who hadn’t fought, not when it came to this particular fate. The land beyond the door belonged to the most deceptive of creatures in the fae realms: The unicorn.
    “Please!” the man bellowed frantically. He had no magic to use to aid him in escape. There was no recourse remaining. Caliban had seen to that.
    “I shared nothing! Nothing has been lost to you!”
    That much was true. Caliban had discovered the man’s treachery before any real damage had been done. The Shades were denied their inside information, and Caeoren was taken into custody. But second chances were not in Cal’s repertoire.
    “Try to think happy thoughts,” Caliban advised icily. Then, as the man was thrown violently into the land beyond, and its portal sliced open and shut with tight, imprisoning magic, the Unseelie King turned on his heel to make his way calmly to the double doors across the room.
    There were screams behind him that died into muffled agony as the white door was closed once more. No lock was necessary. No one would willingly enter the unicorn’s forest.
    Once upon a distant time, unicorns had been different. They’d been worthy of the stories humans now told of them. But one day, a curse befell them. It was a curse among curses, and one laid upon them by no other than a Wisher . Out of spite, out of jealousy, or perhaps some sudden fit of anger – no one would ever know. The Wisher then died at the hands of the very creatures he had cursed. And everything changed.
    Unicorns became what they were today and what they had been for thousands of years.
    The noble unicorn was a beautiful creature made of great magic. But contrary to popular human tales, they were not born as the majestic creatures featured on tapestries adorning mansions and castles in the mortal realm. They were in fact born with dull coats, mottled and mousy, and without horns.
    A unicorn’s beauty came over time. It was the direct result of the maddening agony it inflicted upon its victims.
    Unicorns possessed the power to cause their victims to witness first-hand their very worst fears. This would be done over and over again, and little by little, the unicorn’s coat would slowly transform into the pure white or black that mortals associated with it. Every tear a unicorn’s victims shed was a diamond dust shimmer upon its coat, adding to its otherworldly beauty. And as its victim’s torture crescendoed to a pain so vast it brought the victim death, the unicorn at last earned its horn.
    Over and over again, one unicorn after another matured in this grisly manner. The more innocent the victim, the worse its pain, for there was no jaded emotional armor to protect it. Women… children . All manner of fae and mortal fell before the cursed wrath of the unicorn.
    This was why Caliban and his brother had finally locked the creatures away in their own land, one off-limits to all fae, and impossible to reach but through that single, white door.
    Caeoren would suffer his worst fears as if he were living them out, feeling every agonizing detail, time and again, until he at last drew his final, merciful breath.
    Caliban had just aided in the final transformation of a unicorn. There was no more evil deed.
    As he left the judgment chamber and entered another portal that took him to the landing strip of a private black jet, he tried not to let his internal distress show. He knew he would succeed. He’d had eons to practice honing the cold expression on his handsome face and the icicles in his amethyst gaze.
    No one would ever suspect that he hated himself for what he’d done. No one would know that he once more questioned not only his decision, but his very existence. And no one would have the faintest inkling that he was comparing himself to the Goblin King in that moment, thinking that even Damon Chroi