“Damn you!”
Tempest faltered, her gaze flinging to the high advisor and Kerune still standing beside Ivenrail’s throne. They grinned, savoring what they knew was coming.
The king was not going to release his controller after the wedding. He was going to kill me now.
I stiffened my spine and struggled to my feet.
“How dare you touch him?” Another blast of Ivenrail’s power to the back of my legs sent me down onto my knees again, the skin splitting from the impact. I bit back my howl and looked him in the eye, dragging up a sneer.
“Is that all you have?” I drawled.
His hand snapped out, his thumb hitting my forehead hard enough to fling my head backward.
Pinning my head with his other hand, he drained.
And drained.
And drained.
He sucked in more power than he ever had before. I sensed he wouldn’t stop this time. After all, with Kerune as his new enforcer and in charge of the dregs, he no longer had need of a controller, now did he?
To my right, my fury twitched, drawing my eye.
She was love personified. Her beauty eclipsed the moon. Her smile outshone the stars. In her eyes, I found endless skies. In her voice, a gentle stream's murmur. I longed to savor the joy I felt when I was with her until I drew my last breath.
I imprinted her image in my mind because I feared when this was over, I’d no longer remember.
Vexxion, no,she wailed, breaking through the walls surrounding my mind.Please.I need you.
Wait. Wait.My second word came out weaker, and I despised myself for sounding this way when I’d done all I could to remain strong.
If she attacked him without the weapon, he’d kill her. I had to hold on until he let go and was distracted long enough for her to reach me.
Would she still feel love for me when this was over?
I struggled to hold onto the last bit that made me the man she loved, but with Ivenrail’s thumb still grinding against my forehead, his mind sucking away the last of my power, I feared I couldn’t hold on.
He drained me.
More. So much more.
When he’d burned me in his dungeons, I’d screamed. I was a boy back then, a child who’d been forced to watch his mother be tortured. She’d died before giving Ivenrail what he wanted: access to the Court of Lydel. In that, she stole his chance to cement his rule over all of faerie. He stole our magical core, but she held just enough back to keep him from claiming it all. That was why I was able to slowly siphon it back. A sacrifice made by a woman who loved her son above all others, who loved him despite who his father was.
Moments before she died, she spirited the dagger into the room. I’d kept it hidden all this time.
It was time to show Ivenrail I was as strong as my mother.
“I give you nothing,” I cried out, my voice wrenching through the room.
He jerked his thumb away from my forehead and shook his head. “You give whatever I ask for.” Pivoting, he stalked back up onto the platform, approaching Brenna. She gaped up at him with tears in her eyes and screams jerking up her throat.
His thumb thrust against her forehead again, and sheshuddered, her screams coming to a halt as if he’d made the vines tighten around her body again, some encircling her neck to cut off her air.
Fuck, how I tried to remain upright. My gaze sought Tempest’s and the fear and hope there made everything inside me wrench sideways.
She still believed in me.
If only she knew.
