Auren whirls, no doubt having the same thought about someone controlling them. She sends her gold at the soldiers, gilding them where they stand, freezing every organ and muscle and trapping them within the gleam. Her magic sludges out and spreads past the first lines.
But a scream gushes out from the palace doors.
I whip my head in that direction while Auren whirls, and there stands my mother.
Looking pale and terrified, her wide green eyes shine with fear. She’s trussed up like a hunter’s kill, bound with ropes and being held at sword point.
Her gaze connects with mine, and I see the clarity there. Clarity like I haven’t seen in her face for so long. As if she remembers everything, mind whole and intact, and not the muddled mess she became after falling through the rip. It’s cruel that these are the circumstances in which she’d be fully coherent.
“Elore!” Auren shouts.
She starts to rush toward my mother but only takes a single step before I see her leg suddenlysnap. Just like the dragon’s, I hear the bone breaking a second before she crumples to the ground with a scream.
My bellow of terror rips my throat raw. “Auren!”
Her scream cuts directly into my heart. It claws down our bond, pushing every feral fae instinct in me to get to her. To protect her.
I roar rabidly against my restraints, pumped full of fury.
All of this, from the moment we crashed to right now, has only been a matter of seconds. Just seconds, when everything went from right to utterly wrong.
Now, Auren’s hurt, my mother is in danger, my dragon is pinned and in agony, and I’m fucking powerless andtrapped.
Catching movement, my gaze flicks up, and my father appears, stepping out from the doorway of the palace.
He stops next to my mother, and she flinches at his nearness, which makes my bloodboil.
Just as Auren told me, he wears an eye patch, and instead of being completely bald, he has a thin layer of hair on his head. But other than that, he looks just as I remember.
Fucking evil.
“Hello, son.”
Teeth bared, I jerk toward him so I can rip him apart, but my surge of strength doesn’t break me out of this net. My father’s black gaze passes over me dispassionately before his attention latches onto my dragon. “Extraordinary,” he says, his expression lighting up with an excitement I haven’t seen in a very long time. Not since I first sprouted spikes when I was a boy.
From the ground, Auren struggles to shove her arms under her, making gold puddle between her palms upon the ground.
My stomach drops as I watch my father lift his hand.
“No!” I shout, heart beating wildly.
It’s too late. He snaps his fingers, instantly breaking Auren’s arm too.
Her wail of agony is like a blade to the heart. It steals my breath. My vision. Makes me and my trapped dragon both strainand fight against our bindings and roar even louder when we can’t break free and get to her.
My father looks down at her from above. “We’ve been through this before, haven’t we, pet?”
Pet? He dares to call her fuckingpet?
My rage isn’t red hot. It isn’t ice cold. It’s pitch black. Delved deeper than the pits of hell. Soaked in the ashes of death and the shadows of vengeance that are ready to devour.
Small bubbles of gold pop from beneath her palms where she lies on the ground, face twisted in pain.
“You try to attack me, I break you. It’s quite simple,” he tells her.
“You won’t break her.” My voice comes out like a whip, snapping across his face.
He jerks his head to focus on me. He looks at me longer this time, studying me with the same cruel gaze as when I was a boy. Purposely trying to instill his dominance so that I would lower my eyes in fear.
