Dannie snorted, and it was so ungoddess-like that she once again reminded me of Earth Dannie. My weird, eccentric friend. “Since the door was barred, all of the realm’s drama has remained internal. No one would know, and it’s only those who live here who see the suffering. The balance is so far skewed, I’m not sure it can ever be righted.” She gestured out to the dead lands again. “This is not only happening here. It’s happening everywhere.”
We’d seen it in the lava fields, where the decay had been so much more widespread than Shadow and Angel had expected.
“They need Shadow to take his place,” Angel mused. “It has to be one of the biggest factors in this imbalance. Cristell not only sucked up ten times her share of power to fill his role, but that much again to keep the spell on the door. She’s killing this world.”
“She is,” Dannie confirmed. “But her power, or the balance of power as you’ve noted, is so far tilted her way, I’m afraid it might be too late.”
“And what happens if this world falls?”
Maybe it wouldn’t be that bad. We could evacuate as many as we could and then let the assholes suffer in the destruction of their own creation.
“It’s an essential part of the Solaris System,” Angel told me. “To lose one could result in the loss of all. There would be a long-reaching impact that we have no idea of.”
Dannie nodded. “Oh yes, not to mention that any creature born of the energy here, including you and your mists, would perish. We cannot survive without this realm.”
“Okay, we must do this,” I said, slumping as more energy seeped from me.
Something was going on with my creatures; I needed to get to them and figure out what was wrong, but I would wait for Shadow to return.
Dannie clapped her hands. “My child deserves his birthright. I lost so much when we were betrayed, and my mate…”
My chest tightened as I finally figured out why she’d bailed on the compound and never returned. “Shadow’s father is dead?”
She nodded. “Yes. Cristell forged the bloodstone into a weapon, this long staff. She used it to destroy any who stood in her way. None of us were ready.”
A staff? Angel and I exchanged a glance. Ixana had said she’d taken the stone as soon as Shadow had been betrayed, so how had Cristell used it as a weapon?
I was about to ask Dannie more about the day Shadow was betrayed, but before I could, the beast himself burst into the clearing. “She’s gone,” he roared. “And she took the creatures.”
It had been what I feared, even as I’d held onto a weak hope that there was another explanation. Dannie was on her feet in an instant, and as her fury grew to match her son’s, flames spun out of control from them both. “I knew it,” she seethed. “I never liked or agreed with their pairing, but my mate insisted that it was a solid match. A strong union between royal families.”
Shadow didn’t seem surprised by this. “She’s no match for me. I saw that from the first moment we reconnected here.”
“What is she doing with my creatures?” I snapped, needing them to get to the point.
“She betrayed us,” Shadow said softly. “She’s either working for Cristell or planning to use the creatures to take her down. Either way, she used our power to get what she wanted, and now she’s gone.”
I took off, sprinting toward the entrance, crossing that soft meadow before I skidded out of the stone archway. I stared across the barren, empty land, my knees near-buckling under me.
They were gone. The desert lands empty.
My scream was long and guttural, and I called the creatures to me, but there was no response. “How?” I sobbed. “How did she command them?”
Shadow was there, as he always was. “She’s been siphoning your energy. I’ve been so focused on you that I missed the obvious signs. She kept touching you, and I thought she was trying to break the ice, but it was betrayal.” He was pissed. So fucking pissed that I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a forest fire of his making rage across this land. If there was anything left to burn, that was. “They’re too far away for you to reach them. We have to follow.”
Siphoning. My. Energy.
That was why I’d felt so drained the closer we’d gotten to the Nexus. Fuck that bitch. I was going to rip her hair out when I caught up with her.
Dannie appeared in the archway but didn’t step out into The Grey Lands. “You must go after her. If she destroys the last of the creatures here, the Nexus will fall.”
Shadow spat out. “Bet that was Cristell’s plan all along. She is so narrow-minded, thinking that she’ll be the strongest once this land is gone.”
“We have to follow her!” I demanded. “I won’t let my creatures be used to win this war.” I took a step forward, but my legs crumbled under me. I almost hit the ground, but Shadow was too fast for that; he caught me, hauling me up into his arms.
“What’s happening?” I asked, the weakness in my legs extending to the rest of me as I hung limply against him.
“You have bonded thousands of creatures to you,” Dannie said in a rush. “And now they’re being stolen away. Stolen away to destroy. Which will destroy you. You must catch up to her now.”
