But that won’t be our lives.
For our lives are not our own.
I keep walking.
The three of us leave the arena and head uphill to a side of the castle I haven’t yet ventured. We’re on the opposite side of the castle gardens. The moon is high in the sky, and the light it provides feels unnaturally bright tonight. It beacons us as we trek up the extreme incline through the dirt and rubble. My boots slide with every step I take and I can feel the heat of Roman’s hands hovering with every careening step, but he doesn’t dare coddle me. Just sensing his nearness should be a calming ease within my mind.
It’s not, though. My mind blazes with a thousand different thoughts, and none of them are logical.
Attack her.
Before she takes everything from you.
Take her down.
Kill her!
As we reach the top of the hill, I find just how illogical those thoughts are. Because every creature in Hell is waiting there. The slender and eerie hell fae are the first to greet me: with stones.
The first one hits my shoulder, and then they all come raining down, stinging my face and my back as I hunch against the onslaught. Among the jeers of rage and the storm of stones, Roman stomps past me on hard strides that billow dirt around his every step. Sharp teeth snap out from his lips, but before his beast can fully rip out of him, a voice rings out loud and clear.
“Enough!” The scream of the queen flings magic through the air so hard that a wave of force throws back every flying rock. It hits the crowd with pain and shock.
Wide-eyed hell fae, wolves, and demons look toward the elegant and poised queen.
“Cersia is not our enemy. Her beast killed one of our own, but it was a mistake.”
“It was my grandmother!” A furious, unseen voice seethes out.
I peer up from beneath the dirt clinging to my hair. Vanitee is shaking with anger as she glares at her mother. Among the hundreds of hell-kissed creatures, Nyra stands at the front. Vanitee’s hand is around her waist and the two of them look at me with the strangest look in their eyes. Is concern? Fear? A mixture of both?
That’s how I know how fucked up the Night Witch’s mind is. I murdered her mother, but it was just amistakein her tattered little war-bent mind.
We’re all fucked now.
Creatchin smiles out at her people. “A dragon is a special, special thing.”
Special indeed . . .
“With Cersia at our disposal—” Ah, and there it is.Disposal. “We will have everything we need and more. The beautiful sights of the Upper Realm are ours to enjoy. The knowledge of the Lost Realm is ours to absorb. The rightful power of the Hopeless Realm, that too is where my hell fae should have the natural born right to inclusivity. Rejection is no longer a word we will hear simply because we are different. All the realms will respect us and accept us.”
Where the fuck did she get all these realms from? Is she realm shopping in bulk now? Calm down, Queen Plethora.
Goddess, this is worse than I thought. Those places—assuming they exist more than just in her mangled mind—they’ve been selected for centuries of war.
We’vebeen selected for a lifetime of war...
Just like they were before.
As her voice carries on over the nodding but still uncertain crowd, I turn ever so slowly and look up at the most beautiful green eyes. They look beaten now. More so than when he actually was a beaten and abused man. I don’t know why. Why does the idea of me being harmed seem so much more weighing for him?
“Roman,” I whisper on the quietest voice I can muster. He searches my face. “We need to leave. We need to go back to my pack. I have some family there. They’ll hide us. We’ll get through this, but we need to go now.”
I didn’t think he could look more defeated, but in this moment, he does.
“That’s not possible, beautiful. Ravar made sure of that.” His head shakes slowly back and forth, and it’s then that I spot Zilo looming in the dark shadows at a careful distance from the crowd.
“You and I, we need to very quietly make our way toward Zilo. We’ll tell him our plan, tell him to get Avian and meet us in the gardens. We can do this. We’ll get through this.” I’m reassuring him as much as I’m reassuring myself.
