“The realm is in an uproar, the people terrified, and the palace is on lockdown.” Brock stands at my side, his hard gaze on every move I make. I know what he’s going to say. But he can’t ask me to stay here, not when Emma’s in danger, not when everything inside me demands I chase her until there’s nothing left of me.
“Sire, you can’t leave the people. Not now.”
“I can’t abandon her to Eraldon.” I wave Brock away and choose a crossbow.
“You can’t abandon yourpeople.” He puts a hand on my shoulder.
I throw him off and whirl. “She’s theirqueen! You expect me to remain here while Eraldon tortures her or worse? No.”
Tristano starts, “I hate to side with Brock—”
“Thendon’t.” A streak of sunfire lights from the tip of my finger and ends right where his nose begins.
His eyes widen, and for once he shuts his mouth.
Brock tries again, this time giving me his sternest tone. “You can’t leave the realm. You can’t cross the border with night unless you want to start a war that will lead to more casualties than either side can bear.”
“I will get her back.” My feral is in complete agreement, its claws ticking against my skull as it paces in my mind. Letting Eraldon have her isn’t an option. Even now, my mate bond calls to me, tells me that Emma is far away and suffering. I can’t bear it.
“Brock is right,” Charen intones from his seat at the table behind me. “Now that we know the seekers are our true enemy, we have to prepare. We have to step up patrols and calm the populace. Word has spread faster than a succubus’s legs, and it won’t be long before the people along our border will begin to abandon their farms.”
Why is he talking to me about farms?She’sgone. Don’t they understand that? My mate is gone.Stolen. I only just mated her, and I’ve already let her down. I close my eyes for only a moment, but I see her in that monster’s arms. Helpless, terrified, and then full of pain. Because I couldn’t save her.
“I will retrieve Emma, and then I will handle whatever the realm needs. But until my mate is safe, I won’t—”
“She was bitten.” Bladin says the words quietly, but I hear each one.
I turn on him. “You don’t know that.”
“I saw it.” Charen’s usual gloom is five times darker. “He ripped into her throat.”
“No.” I grip the armor rack and lean into it.
“It’s true.” Brock hovers behind me. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but she’s either turned or …”
The room goes silent. The unspoken word hanging in the air. But my mate isn’t dead. Not when I can still feel her in my veins, ghosting through my soul, and dancing in my heart. She lives. Her heart beating for me just as mine beats for her.
“She lives.” I stand again and take a deep breath before considering an array of silver arrows in several different quivers along the wall. “I will take a small group of soldiers to the border, quietly enter the night realm, and take her back.”
“You’ll never make it over the border quietly. You know this, my lord. It is specifically warded to alert the Nightkeep the moment a day realm noble crosses the barrier.”
“It doesn’t matter.” I choose a quiver and strap it over my shoulder. “I’ll be in and out so quickly that it will seem inconsequential.”
“My lord, she’s a changeling—”
“She’s your queen!” I turn and grip Brock by the throat, my feral demanding I rip him to shreds. The entire room glows with sunlight so bright the chairs and table bleach out to a dull gray. “She is your queen, and you will treat her as such.”
Brock doesn’t fight me, doesn’t so much as blink in my grip even as his skin bubbles and blisters beneath my hand.
“Solano.” It’s Charen’s voice. “Brock isn’t the enemy. We’re your friends.”
I take a shuddering breath, the light fading as I try to wrestle my feral and my fear. Neither of them wants to relent. My feral demands my mate, and my fear for her overrides every other concern I have. She is my life, my eternal one. I can’t let her go.
“My lord,” Brock’s words are strangled. “As I was saying, she’s a changeling, so if she survived the bite—”
“She did,” I growl.
“Then she lives now as a seeker. Not in the form you knew her.” His sad tone reaches me, even though the words enrage my feral. “She’s changed.”
