I blinked in surprise from the shadows at the same time Ryland and Varian narrowed their gaze on my hiding place. Fuck, so much for secretly slipping a knife between their ribs in some empty alleyway and calling it a day.
The shadows split apart and I stepped into the light, a careless smirk on my lips to mask my dry throat, my blue eyes colder than the glittering snow on the mountains around us, my black hair braided to my waist.
I’d come dressed for battle, in a worn breastplate ofpolished silver, leather gauntlets edged in deadly spikes, and two well-used knives at my thighs. My casual swagger wasn’t feigned. It was the walk of someone who’d strode across battlefields and throne rooms and killing fields and would keep walking until there was no one left to fight.
Yes, that’s right. Look at me. I’m no longer the broken girl you left behind.
After fifty years on the front lines, I’m no longer a girl at all.
I rose from the ashes and remade myself into a fucking monster.
Ryland and Varian’s faces shone with the same shocked confusion I’d felt at seeing them for the first time since the failed Blackwater heist. Brutal satisfaction moved through me as I stepped forward to flank Anaria, glad the dais gave me an extra three feet of height, glad I looked down on these two males who had decimated my life in such immutable ways.
“Lyrae?” Ryland’s dazed expression softened, and in that one brief moment the world shifted on its axis before his expression hardened once again into his usual charmed arrogance, the prince of thieves, untouched by the world around him.
“Well. Lyrae Antares,” his eyes flashed brighter than his smile. “You’re a long way from the Southwell slums.”
“Not so far as you’d think,” I told him, unable to keep the edge from my voice. “You, however, are a long way from the gallows, where you belong.”
“You two…know each other?” Instantly, Zephryn and Raziel formed a wall of muscle at my back, the dragon shifter’s powerful magic washing over me, my heart thrashing in my chest as the past crashed down around me.
“Lyrae, is everything…all right?” Zeph asked quietly, his big hand curling over my shoulder and squeezing gently.
Zeph was big and mean, with an impossibly big heart, and one word would have him ripping Ryland’s arrogant face off his arrogant body. But…I took a breath. The situation in the Shadowlands was truly dire, and I could not afford to wallow in my miserable past, not when all our futures were at risk.
Today was not about me.
Today was about dealing with this threat, avenging the deaths of my soldiers, and keeping our realm safe.
I needed to be clear headed, acting as the queen’s commander, focused on the problem at hand.
But the past had me twisted up in its ugly fingers, hate and betrayal and the fragments of my broken heart racing through my veins in a poisonous slurry.
“Just an old friend, who wouldn’t deprive me of making some coin on the side,” Ryland said quickly, Varian’s eyes bouncing between my face and my sword, sweat beading on his brow. “We’ve all known each other too long to let the past come between us, right, Lyrae?”
“Let’s move this meeting to the War Room,” Zephryn suggested softly, his huge hand wrapping around my arm in a show of support.
“Sort this out in private.”
“That won’t be necessary.” I pulled out of his grasp, hissing, “Like Ryland said, we’re old friends. Far be it from me to stand in the way of him and his friend making some coin, since that’s what they’re both so good at.”
A hundred years of fury swept through me like a tide, and much like seeing these two again, I was unprepared for its arrival.
2
LYRAE
Icouldn’t do this.
I couldn’t look at the two of them and know they were the ones Torin had called to get us out of this mess. Couldn’t believe Anaria would place the welfare of the entire kingdom in their bloodstained, incompetent hands.
Yes, the High Seer had an apocalyptic vision, and no, her visions were never wrong.
This ridiculously named Prince of Darkness had declared war, but my queen had already eliminated two corrupt kings, ripped down the walls between worlds and united all three realms into a shining new kingdom—Valarian.
Anaria was powerful, and had an equally powerful court behind her.
Surely, we didn’t need these two arseholes to save us?
