A primitive realm scraped raw by wind and old magic, where the air tasted like sand and sorrow, where even the sky looked bruised—low clouds dragging their bellies over jagged peaks, dulling everything to gray.
The ward was gone, but the skies were still a flat pewter, the lake a solid plane of unbroken ice, and yet, as I stood on the ramparts, I sensed something in the world shift.
Not a tremor.
A breath.
Like a deep inhale before a leap off a cliff.
Rooke stood at the edge of the low wall, a lonely silhouette against the desolate landscape. The Crown weighed down his head, the staff glimmered, the mirrored globe at the top swirling with…something that almost looked sentient.
Rooke, who wanted to make everything perfect for me.
Rooke, who thought I was…extraordinary.
Beside me, Ryland leaned on the parapet, eyes sharp, muscles tense, while Varian stood on my other side with his arms crossed, the posture of a male who—by his own muttered admission—trusted nothing about this entireprocess, but was too curious to look away. And Zephryn loomed by a wall ten paces away from us, a hint of cynicism in his expression.
Like me, the dragon shifter had seen some shit in his life, so maybe he had a right to be jaded, here at the end of things.
Or the beginning, depending on how today worked out.
I wished Ariel was here to see this, instead of cheating Tavion Montgomery out of all his money, but I was glad she was finally free, enjoying life, torturing the white-haired wolf shifter who was usually torturing me.
Honestly, the bastard wouldn’t know what hit him.
Rooke’s intense gaze was locked on the snow-dusted ice, the barren hills beyond, the black sand beyond even those.
Everything dead and frozen, devoid of life.
He glanced at me once, then swallowed, elegant fingers resting lightly on the balustrade, the thin layer of snow melting around his fingertips. “This realm used to be beautiful. My mother told me so many stories of forests so thick there was almost no sun beneath the branches, of fish-filled rivers racing over rocks, quiet valleys filled with deer and other small animals,” he said softly.
“She always liked the small, quiet things, my mother. Always found beauty in the rain, not the storm.”
“I wish I could have met her,” I murmured, moving to lean over the edge so I could see the shoreline below, still churned up from the fight with Gravelock, thankfully cleared of bodies, though I didn’t ask how.
“So do I,” Rooke murmured, the Triune’s power pulsing around us, silver and gold rivers flowing along the staff, the bloodstone tips of his crown sparkling like they’d caught a shaft of pure sunlight. Above us, the clouds seemed to thin;if I squinted, I could almost imagine a weak winter sun nudging through.
“You don’t have to give them up,” I whispered. “This magic is yours, by right. Power your family stored over the millennia.”
Rooke’s jaw tightened. “Stored,” he repeated, electricity sparking in the air around him. “No, power wehoarded. Kept forourselves. But no more,” he murmured. “No more.” His blue eyes were storm-dark, lit from within by more of those gilded veins as he stared down at me for a long beat.
Then his mouth tightened, not quite a smile. “I’m not hanging onto the past,” he said softly. “I’m using it to create something new. With you.”
The air crackled, charged with energy.
Runes flared to life along the staff’s length, golden symbols igniting, one by one, and from that dark globe, light spilled out in glittering beams, like a window cut into the hearth of a house, though I doubted the magic inside was warm or especially friendly.
Rooke closed his eyes.
And I felt him reach.
Down.
Past his fears, into the bones of the castle, into the heart of this realm, barren and broken and carved out by a thief who wanted to be king.
Then Rooke opened his eyes, no longer blue, no longer…Fae.
Not entirely, anyway.
