“Cut another path!” Bladin yells at Charen.
I strike down seeker after seeker, but they keep coming. Unstoppable.
Charen summons more dark magic. “I’m trying to—”
The seekers stop.
Stop as if frozen in place.
Tristano shakes a seeker off his blade. “What in the Spires is—”
“The king of day.” All the seekers say it together, the sound deafening and chilling at the same time.
Selene slits a seeker’s throat as she strides toward me. “I have delivered him as promised, King Eraldon.”
“What?” I jump down to meet her on the ground, the marshy terrain pulling at my boots as I shove frozen seekers out of my way.
“Is this a double cross or a triple cross?” She taps her chin. “Quadruple cross?”
My hopes, such as they were, dissolve. If Selene is on Eraldon’s side, I never had a chance of saving Emma. Rage, the kind that burns in a glow of ever-darker fire, lights in my veins.
“I trusted you.” I slice through a tangle of seekers to reach her, to end the obsidian once and for all.
“More the fool you, my king.” She grins, her black opalescent eyes glinting in the dark.
“You traitorous wretch!” Everett charges for her, but she holds up a hand and encases him in vines.
Charen, Bladin, and Tristano lunge for her, but they meet the same fate. Her magic is too powerful for even Charen to overcome.
I use what little magic I have to shove my sword straight to her heart.
She catches the blade between her stone hands and winks at me. “This is going to hurt.” With a flourish of magic so strong it singes my hair, she blasts me off my feet. “Take the stone, king of day,” she whispers through my mind as I struggle to catch my breath, my heart stopping.
I hear my warriors yell as I fly up into the night, the moon so beautiful here, then plummet like a falling star to the hard ground somewhere far, far below.
18
Emma
“Solano? He’s here?” I can’t seem to understand what Captain Graves is saying.
“Nearby. The patrols are searching for him.” The seeker keeps his eyes ahead, never chancing a look at me. “His warriors are in the dungeon, bound with suppression spells.”
“Bound? By who?” I can’t follow what’s happened. We took the keep not hours ago. Why is the day king here?
“Selene.”
“Who’s Selene?” I step toward him.
He finally meets my gaze. “An obsidian witch.”
I swallow hard. “From the Spires?”
He nods, his mouth twitching up in an ugly smirk. “She brought the day king straight to us.”
I grip his throat and squeeze. “Apparently not if the patrols are still searching for him. Fool.”
He claps his mouth shut. I shove him out the door to my chambers and slam it.
