“You want to join us,” Dyna concluded.
Lucenna scoffed. Her heels clicked on the floor as she drew up to her side. “You think we would allow that after all of your lies?”
Klyde searched her face. “I kept the full truth because I needed to, love. But I didn’t outright lie.”
“The truth spell is not perfect,” Zev said gruffly. His tall frame came to Dyna’s other side, and he crossed his arms, making his white tunic tighten across his broad chest. Sharp fangs peeked past his lips as he spoke. “You may have told us the truth now, but how are we to know what else you have omitted? You’re aMorken. You could easily change your mind later about whose side you’re truly on.”
“I am only on one side.” Klyde looked out through the window at Skelling Rise. It offered a view of farmhouses on distant hills past theforest, smoke drifting from the many chimneys. The snowy landscape glittered beautifully, like a blanket of diamond dust in the morning. “The side that protects this town and its people. Tarn deserves to be brought to justice for what he has done.” He met her gaze again. “But as of now, no one has the power or the strength to defeat him.”
And they never would if Tarn gained immortality. It was his ultimate ambition, and she had made it her purpose to defeat him.
“You are quite right about that,” Dyna said. “Tarn is dangerous, and you have no idea how much so.”
His mouth curved in a harsh smirk. “Oh, but I do. The viceroy told me enough before his death, and I learned the rest from my mother’s journals. Tarn is a descendant of the Ice Phoenix. And I knowexactlywhat he used to put that hole in my father’s chest.”
Something about the way he said it made Dyna go still, because she sensed there was far more to Klyde than they fathomed.
“What makes you believe you can inhibit him, Captain?” Rawn asked.
Klyde’s smirk widened into a sharp smile. One that was callous and cunning. Confident. “Because, mate, he isn’t the only one with a powerful ancestor.”
The statement drew a pause as Dyna took in his meaning.
She glanced at his mercenary coat draped on the chaise, the firelight gleaming over the white sigil of a bird’s skull. It was a symbol that represented more than their town, but who they were.
She inhaled a faint breath. “You’re a Skelling.”
CHAPTER 2
Lucenna
Lucenna hated liars. Hated it even more when they fooled her. She felt utterly stupid for not seeing Klyde for what he was. It made her so angry she choked on it, and looking at him only made it spew from her pores.
Dark blond hair had fallen around his jaw in rumpled waves, still tousled from his sleep. A light sheen of sweat glistened on his bare chest beneath the light of her purple Essence that contained him.
She leaned down until they were eye to eye. This close, she got a full view of his scars and his familiar scent that reminded her of the sea. Klyde looked back at her silently as she searched his eyes forsomethingto support his claim. Yet all she saw was a man.
A useless, lying man.
Lucenna narrowed her eyes. “The Skellings are extinct.”
“Or so they say, love,” Klyde replied in his smooth, brogue accent.
“I am not yourlove,” she hissed. He winced at the tightening grip of her magic.
Lucenna had long misplaced her book on the Ice Phoenix, but she had read it several times over. And once she had been told about these Skelling creatures who were as large and powerful as dragons, she had done some research of her own.
“TheSkellings became extinct during the Dark War,” Lucenna told the others as she straightened. “He is no more a Skelling than I am compelled to believe him.”
Zev’s eyes bled bright yellow with his wolf, and he took a deliberate sniff. “He smells human to me.”
Rawn canted his head, making one of his pointed ears poke out of his hair as he studied the captain. No doubt listening to his heartbeat.
Klyde frowned at her. “We can discuss Everfrost history at another time. You and I both know I can speak nothing but the truth.”
Even as the power of the truth spell hummed in the air, Lucenna couldn’t help but distrust everything he said.
“What does this have to do with Tarn?” Zev asked.
