I just needed to find him, needed to see him smile and tell me my fear was unwarranted. To hear a sarcastic remark fall from his lips. To feel?—
An arm wrapped around my shoulders.
A blade pressed into my throat.
“I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” a familiar, cruel voice snarled.
“Aird,” I gasped. “No, I have to…I need to find…”
My breathing turned ragged, limbs thrashing and neck arching into the blade. The cool sting passed through my flesh, a bead of blood forming. As the chancellor of the Mindshapers dragged me roughly away from the rubble, I watched that spot I’d seen Tolek disappear.
He’s okay. I told myself.He’s alive. Half of my heart was in my throat, the other half buried beneath that rubble—please, Spirits, let him be okay.
Aird tugged me so quickly around corners that I lost track of where we went through the curtain of smoke. Lost track of where Tol had been.
He threw me up against a wall. Angelborn dug into my shoulder blades. The cool kiss of his jagged knife was still at my throat, above my emblem necklace.
That roaring silence echoed in my head. But Aird gripped my wrist, twisting until Starfire fell from my grip.
“The queen wants you,” he sneered.
The queen…Tolek…the queen.
It snapped into place in my mind, then.
Kakias was here. She’d evaded our search for weeks, only to deliver herself to our doorstep.
And I shoved aside all fear for my best friend, assured myself that there was no way he’d leave me, and looked into the steel-gray eyes of the Mindshaper chancellor.
“She had the decency to show up?” I growled.
“She does what she wants when it serves her,” he spat. His rancid breath was hot against my skin. Spirits, the smoke was preferable to this.
But I considered what he said. Kakias refused to be controlled. Refused to share her plans with those around her. She may be a corrupted, bloodthirsty ruler, but she was also cunning and meticulous.
If she was here, it meant this attack was more than an unprecedented advantage against us. She had a reason for the explosion in Damenal tonight—for her disturbing presence—and I was willingto bet it stretched further than disrupting our most sacred holiday.
I was willing to bet it ended with me.
“Where is she?” I hissed as his knife pressed deeper.
Aird’s face faltered ever so slightly, but I caught the moment of hesitation. The belief that I’d hand myself over.
A cruel smile split my lips. “I only ask so I can repay her for the surprise she’s gifted us tonight.” I blinked innocently, sarcasm thick in my voice.
With a growl, he gripped my shoulder and threw me to the ground. My head snapped back into the cobblestone, vision blurring for a moment.
“Ugh,” I groaned. “I really should have killed you.”
But my hand stretched out. Fingers grazed Starfire.
And Aird’s eyes were only on me.
“You’ll come quietly to the queen,” Aird snarled, prowling toward me. “Or this battle will end with everyone you care about suffering slow, torturous deaths.”
His eyes roamed over my body, sneering, from the neckline of my sheer gown to where the hem had ridden up my thighs, and that was when I realized—he knew who I was, my legacy, my position, yet he still saw me as nothing more than a young girl.
A toy, incapable and unworthy of power.
