The green wyvern twitched a few times before her body rolled over, displaying a soft underbelly that shone like the pearls Loche had seen in the old royal collection in Ellow, before she started sinking.
More screeches could be heard in the distance, and while Loche couldn’t see through the gray smoke gathering around too many of the ships, he knew from the way the wyvern swimming around their vessel cried out that more of them were dying.
So useless. So fucking useless.
It was the only thing Loche could think of as he dragged his fiery-haired wife to him and pressed tired lips against hers. While Iviry didn’t wrap her arms around him—perhaps because of the blood painting her skin almost the same color as her hair—she responded like she’d done last night. As if she were starving and Loche was the only thing that could satisfy her.
They’d made love so many times last night that Loche was a bit worried he might not be able to keep up, before she’d curled into his arms and had whispered once more that she loved him.
He’d just held her like that—neither of them sleeping, both just… appreciating the other’s company, appreciating not being alone.
Pulling back, Iviry’s sorrow-filled eyes found his as she asked softly, “Together?”
Loche nodded.
They’d go down together. He’d fight until his last fucking breath to keep her alive—because he had no doubt she could continue to rule Havlands without him should they somehow win this—but if it came to that, if there was nothing but the end, he’d hold on to her until the last moment.
He couldn’t even regret all the days they’d stayed away from each other the past weeks.
He wouldn’t have been here then.
He wouldn’t have felt the things he now did.
He wouldn’t trust another person with the dearest thing to him.
His people. His nation. His promise to create a better world.
Iviry seemed to understand where his mind wentbecause her blue eyes shaded with tears even as she tried to smile at him. “I trust you too. I’m so?—”
She didn’t have time to finish the sentence before someone screamed “Watch out,” and a cold thrill rushed down Loche’s back when Iviry was torn from him and he was slammed into the deck as he reached for her.
Jumping to his feet, he realized a large black feline stalked between the two of them, her tail whipping irritably back and forth as Iviry hissed at her, the Fae looking more like a cat herself as her fingers tensed—ready to scratch out those dark, evil eyes.
Loche swore to himself. But somehow… he wasn’t surprised.
His fucking mother had arrived.
Loche and Iviry had understood quickly that someone must have tipped off the Oakgards’ Fae, and he’d had his fucking suspicions from the beginning, but… they’d left his mother to rot in that cellar with the Oakgards’ Fae who wouldn’t bend the knee.
How the fuck had she gotten out? And why had she turned on everyone in Havlands if she was the reason the foreign Fae had found them—and without any of his spies noticing?
Gods, he’d never fucking hated anyone so much in his life.
Rebel leader…
He clicked his tongue when her black eyes bore into his. She wasn’t anything noble. There wasn’t a respectable bone in her body. She didn’t fight for the shifters because she believed in a new world for them. She did it for herself. For power. For fucking revenge.
A sharp smile spread across Loche’s face as he refused to look away from her.
“We’re not the same, you and I,” Loche spat at the feline. “You’re not my mother. You never will be. And when you die today… I will make sure no one ever takes your name or any of your nicknames into their mouth again.”
The massive cat roared at him, but Loche merely rolled his eyes. He knew the truth of his words. This… thing before him… she wasnothingto him. She meantnothingto him.
She might have carried him at one point in her miserable fucking life, but that was it.
He felt it then. A final fucking shedding of his mother’s shadow.
It was time he stepped into the light, and that light was the fiery Fae whose blue eyes found his every time he searched for them, and who looked at him the way he wanted to look at himself in a mirror one day.
