I stepped away from Arion, holding his gaze. For the first time, the prince seemed to consider there was no escape.
Heavy tendrils of mists billowed off my palms, thick enough the cold left frigid droplets of water behind. I was going to be cruel, unfeeling, I was about to cause pain that spurred from my own anger, but I did not feel empty.
I wasn’t falling into the cold.
I felt everything—the race of my pulse, the heat of my blood. I felt the wonderment that an entire kingdom went to battle at the first word of my absence. I embraced the laughter we had shared since I stepped foot on their shores. I felt their affection, their jests, and their acceptance.
I felt love. Radiant, burning love for the man who’d taken me as a wife for peace, but had robbed me of every edge of my heart.
It was written like the love in my tales of lore, but so much grander.
Jonas was real.
He was mine.
I felt it all when my darkness engulfed King Gerard where he whimpered and convulsed on the sand from his tortured mind. With a deep draw of air through my nose, I pulled him into the shadows of my affinity, the weight of his soul heavy in my blood.
Sound faded, there were no shouts from warriors, no booms from the sea fae vessels.
A single cry broke out. Arion slumped to his knees, chin down.
“We were meant to lead the elven. You’ve destroyed our people.” The prince’s eyes were red and angry when he looked to me, iridescent strands of my magic curled around his face and arms. Arion didn’t try to run, merely held me in his disdain. “You destroy everything and always will. He will come to hate you for it, as I have.”
A warm palm splayed over the small of my back.
Jonas stood beside me, silent, stalwart.
I closed my eyes and slowly curled my fingers into my palms. Dark mists faded Arion into the void, only his abandoned sword remained.
Pressure stacked on my chest. There was always a moment when I used my affinity as this, to release whatever it was I snared and toss it elsewhere, or to close the gap between this realm and whatever dark Nothing housed the mists.
I tightened my fists and sealed the darkness from returning.
My knees buckled when the force of it lifted abruptly. Jonas curled his arms around my waist, holding me against him. He clung to me, pressed a kiss to the side of my head, and whispered, “There’s my fire.”
I wrapped my arms around his waist, pressing my cheek to the steady thrum of his heartbeat.
It was over.
Chapter 56
The Nightmare Prince
There wasa common knowledge about alver folk—they couldn’t be trusted.
Niklas and Junius were found slinking out of the back courtyard of the elven palace with satchels of fallen white iron blades, silk doublets, and even Eldirard’s circlet.
I snatched it away from his hands. “That is for Skadi.”
Niklas shook his head, as thoughIwere the one in the wrong. “It is like I no longer know you.”
Worse than the smugglers of the Falkyn guild were the damn king and queen.
The recovered circlet in hand, I made my way toward the great hall only to collide with my disheveled mother and father emerging from one of the chambers.
“What the hells are you doing?” Heat boiled in my face when my bleeding father spun around, still adjusting his damn belt. “You couldn’t wait a night, perhaps a day, before defiling the linens?”
“Jonas, really. Emotions run high during a fight. It isn’t all that scandalous.” My mother had the decency to flush as she smoothed her hair.
