“Doesn’t matter. They’re too late.” Malin’s voice was calm and steady.
Like black threads weaving through the wood, darkness gathered from shadows. It peeled away from the dark side of the trees, from rocks, from beneath the shrubs, and built into a wall of night.
Malin turned her palm as though reaching into the wall, and when she pulled back another hand was clasped in hers. The king.
Darkly clad figures stepped through the shadows, blades in hand, faces lined in blood, kohl, some kept bows on their backs and clambered up the trees to find a position. They spilled into the palace courtyard like a dark tide flowing over the shore.
Breath caught. A few paces away, near the king and queen, a figure broke through the darkness.
It was a girlish dream, to see the hero storming the castle to rescue his beloved.
In every dream where my life might unravel like the romantic fae tales of my books, I never anticipated my hero would be blood-soaked and murderous without a hint of honorable intentions on his features.
He was my sweetest nightmare.
I knew his walk—swift and determined. Those arms held me fiercely and tenderly. His hood was knocked off his head and his hair was windblown and tousled.
A sob croaked in my chest. I gathered my skirt in one hand and rushed in his direction. “Jonas!”
My nightmare spun around. The beautiful green of his eyes was glossy black. Bright or shadowed, I loved it all. I’d take it all. Jonas could laugh and tease, or he could slaughter and torture. If he was mine, what else mattered?
Jonas hesitated for half a breath, then shoved through the rising alver army.
Five paces, two, then my arms hooked around his neck. I clung to him, legs around his waist, face buried in the warmth of his skin.
“Skadi.” He held me against him, his mouth against my throat, kissing me across my jaw, my neck, behind my ear. “Gods, let me see you.”
He pulled back, brushing hair from my eyes. I gave him a heartbeat to inspect my face before I kissed him. I kissed him the way I ought to have done before watching him walk down that corridor.
“You came,” I whispered against his lips.
“Not even an army of the gods would stop me. Remember?”
“Cover!” The shout came from Raum.
Jonas let me fall off his body and raced us behind a thick tree. He cradled my head against his heart in the same moment the air whistled with the sound of arrows flinging into the wood. One steel tip thudded into the trunk in front of us.
Jonas jolted and tightened his grip around my body.
When the shower of elven arrows ceased, alvers in the shadows returned the fire. Their arrows did not merely strike the wall of the palace, they sparked in flames or rattled the stone, crumbling one watchtower.
“Dipped in explosive elixirs,” Jonas was quick to explain.
“I can’t use my affinity.” I held out my wrists.
For a breath, Jonas seemed frozen, his thumb gently touching the bloodied skin around the white iron. “I’ll peel the skin off their bones.”
“Agreed, but let me help do it.”
With a gleam in his black eyes, Jonas plucked his tricky whalebone from his belt and had the levers keeping the manacles around my wrists opened in a few clever maneuvers. He hovered his mouth close, a devious smirk on his face. “Be monstrous, Wife.”
Chapter 54
The Nightmare Prince
Blood coated Skadi’s wrists,a bruise was forming on her cheek. She’d been touched, and I would take the fingers of the ones who’d done it bit by bit—pluck the fingernails first, peel the skin next, then cut through the bone.
Logic reminded me our time apart was brief, but it did not diminish the damage done. The elven fatally underestimated my affections for my wife. Where they thought they could return to the far seas, prepare over time to face the frustrations of the alver clans, now they would realize their mistake.
