His to Save

Chapter Two - a meeting

Damien POV

I sighed exhausted as I slumped back into the chair and looked around the room at everyone. I had just arrived back from the East after Brand immediately summoned me, probably due to another of Lillian's conquests that I had stumbled upon.

A daily occurrence at this point.

Evelyn was looking at the floor emotionlessly, so still she could have been mistaken for a statue. She had dark sunken circles under her eyes and her body looked horrifically thin as Matthias stared longingly at her, sharing the same bags under his eyes.

I sipped my drink as I caught my own reflection in the glass and I sighed, I looked equally as terrible, as if all sense of life had been sucked out of me.

I felt as if my own heart had been ripped out of my chest with Lillian gone, and I couldn't even think of what my brother was going through, his own mate. If I was going through this much pain I couldn't even imagine what he felt.

Six months she had been gone now, six months since we had failed her, since I had failed her.

Bethany was dead, little Bethany, our ray of sunshine within this dark castle was forever gone. She would never grace us with her sweet laughter or her little smile, I had failed. We deserved everything we were going to get from Lillian.

Lillian hated each one of us and blamed us all equally, however Evelyn took the entire event much harsher on herself, once which I had no resistance against.

She knew but she couldn't do anything about it, she couldn't have changed the outcome if she had tried. She had told Brand when she saw it, trying to figure a way to stop it, but there was no way.

And if I knew Lillian, which I did, if she had known that Brand knew what was going to happen, I don't think he would be alive right now.

That little bit of power we had experienced on the battlefield sent shivers of fear down my spine.

That was raw power, unlike anything I had ever witnessed in my entire lifetime, even from her mother, that was nothing compared to what Lillian had acquired.

She was dangerous and angry, but we needed to stop her, I had to try, or Brand was going to be forced to do the unthinkable, and I wasn't going to let that happen, over my dead fucking body.

We all looked up as Brand walked into the room, a bottle in his hand as he slammed the door behind him, he looked like shit.

I stood up as I pulled his chair out and he slumped into it, he looked exhausted. I had never seen him like this, nor had anyone else. He wasn't even this distraught after our parents were gone. We were trying to find an exact location to Lillian's castle and to her, but so far we were not successful. Almost as if she had personally removed the location off of every map we owned.

"So the east of the North is clear" I started pointing to the map as everyone turned their attention to me,

"I'm assuming she has decided to locate in these mountains. It has the most cover and there are meant to be ruins here from the old kings and queens if I can remember correctly. I've been doing some research and I've gone through the books she would have read during her time here but most of the locations within the north have been wiped clean" I continued as Evelyn met my gaze briefly and immediately looked back down,

"However, we don't know what kind of defence she has set up, or what we would be going into or what we would be sending our men into. It could just be a death trap and we can't afford to send innocent men in. It's just not right" I said as Brand let out a deep breath and sat up in his chair.