This felt different.
Will glanced at Aya, her face shuttering further as the crowd hissed and jeered at the sight of her.
This felt like submitting, and he did not want to.
He did not want to.
Aya’s gaze found his, as if she’d sensed his panic.
No…shehadsensed his panic, his fury, his obstinance. He’d sent every bit of it through that connection between them, and it had her hesitating at the foot of the throne while Hyacinth raised her hands to quiet the crowd.
A crowd they would never assuage on their own.
Fight with me, he pleaded through his gaze. And perhaps it made him selfish to ask this of her, perhaps it made him undeserving, but she did not come home to die.
He would be damned if he stood by andlet her die.
“Welcome,” Hyacinth greeted the crowd. “Tonight, you serve as witnesses for the gods’ justice.” Her voice carried with the same strength she’d used at the Sanctification just months ago. But Will tuned her out as she continued on, his stare fixed on Aya.
Fight with me. Please fight with me.
He saw the exact moment Aya agreed. It was nothing more than a subtle glance at her shackles. He waited for the flare of light that would surely follow, but it never came.
Instead, there was a deafeningBANGas the doors at the back of the hall blew open. The crowd screamed, the wood exploding, sending chips of it flying throughout the hall.
Will whirled to face the chaos, his heart lurching into his throat as he took in the mess of debris littered throughout the space.
“Terribly sorry for the interruption, Your Majesty,” Mathias Denier drawled as he stepped through the haze of dust, his long fingers brushing the dirt off his fine black jacket. “But I think you’ll find that not everyone agrees with your sentencing.”
Will heard Aya’s sharp gasp as she stared at the crime lord.
He hadn’t come alone.
Behind him stood thirty Dyminara, weapons at the ready, some of their bonded wolves weaving through the gaps between the warriors, their hackles raised. Galda stood at the front, her full lips pressed into a ferocious line.
And there, at Mathias’s side, stood a man Will didn’t think he’d ever see again.
Callais Veliri was alive.
***
“What is the meaning of this?” Hyacinth demanded, her voice colder than Aya had ever heard it. And yet the bitterness in it hardly reached her. Not when her father was standing atMathias’s side, a sword clenched awkwardly in his hands.
He was alive.
How was he alive?
“The people need to hear her truth,” Yara declared from Mathias’s other side.
Later. Aya could get her answers later. For now…
She forced her gaze away from Pa to take in the young warrior. Yara lifted her chin, her hazel eyes flashing in the torchlight. “I heard what you told her in this throne room,” Yara told her. “And I believe you.”
A weak, disbelieving sound escaped Aya. But Hyacinth, it seemed, was unmoved.
“She is manipulating you,” Hyacinth warned Yara. “She murdered our last queen!”
“And here I thought you bestowed that honorable accusation on me,” Will said as he finally cut off the flow of his affinity into Aya.
