I go still as stone at the sound of that rich voice, dark with promise.
“So can I.”
I spin around, my heart thundering. Neri stands just inside the doors of Fia Drumera’s grand meeting hall.
And Alexus Thibault is with him.
Formalities and royal etiquette be damned. I hobble toward my old friend as quickly as I can and throw myself into his arms. He holds me tightly and buries his head in the crook of my shoulder. He isn’t weeping, but I can feel sorrow emanating from him. It’s so thick that it saturates the entire room.
When I pull back and take his face in my hands, I see cuts and blooming bruises, the odor of fresh blood pungent enough to twist my stomach and burn my throat. “What happened? Where’s Colden? Raina?”
I graze my thumb over the skin beneath Alexus’s busted and swollen lip, taking in the sight of his bleeding nose and blackening eye. Even worse, the shredded remains of his midnight tunic reveal a crimson-streaked chest, slashed as though by claws.
I turn a murderous look on Neri. He wipes the back of his hand under his nose to catch dripping blood before it reaches his lips. His pristine clothes are filthy and torn in places, too, with red splatters everywhere.
“What in gods’ death did you do?” I snap.
His brow draws down into an irritated frown. “Why does everyone always blameme?Yourfriendhere didn’t want to return with me. Imagine that. I tried to make him, and he blasted me with his magick, trying to fucking obliterate me, which didn’t work, clearly. It pissed me off, though, and I happened to have a few centuries of pent-up frustrations to take out on someone, namely him, so we had a tussle, in the fucking desert, where this great, pre-eminent sorcerer crash-landed because he still doesn’t have full reign of his pathetic power.”
Before I can reply, a ball of blue flame launches toward the side of Neri’s head. I hardly have time to think before he throws his hand up, catching it. The fire turns to frost and rains from his fist to the floor.
He glares across the room at Fia Drumera, his golden-brown eyes now aglow. “Be thankful I didn’t just impale you with a thousand needles of ice.”
She shakes her head in disgust, her gaze roving up and down his impressive stature. “You look a bit different without your marks, but otherwise, you haven’t changed at all. Still an arrogant brute trying to be the fairest maiden’s hero.”
I think back to the way he studied himself in the grove. It was his marks, whatever they might’ve been, that were missing.
He grins, swiping at the blood running down his chin as though it’s an annoyance. “Brute? I thought I was the devil. The bad guy. The dastardly villain of the fairytale.”
“You are awaste,” she spits. “A god who thinks with his prick and little else.”
“Are you envious that my prick never thought about you?”
A golden dagger sails from Fia to Neri. He snatches it from the air before the blade can wedge into his face.
Slowly, he turns the knife in his hand andtsks.“Now you’re just asking for trouble, Fia.”
Her scholars stand and draw their curved blades, magi of the highest Summerland order. Their beloved queen rounds the table and stalks toward Neri, grabbing the discarded scroll. Each member of our Northland crew remains seated, but their hands slip to their weapons, as mine does, the room humming with the Summerlanders’ tempered magick.
Without reservation, Fia Drumera approaches Neri, chin raised, and extends the scroll. “You might be breathing now,” she says. “But I know this holy land. It doesn’t take well to being trampled upon and abused by foreigners, especially gods who were exiled from the living realm and condemned to eternity in the Shadow World.” She jerks her chin at the scroll. “Go on. Read your old lover’s letter. Learn your fate, wolf.”
He stabs the dagger into the sheath hanging from Fia Drumera’s side and plucks the scroll from her hand. The room is silent as he reads.
“Do you truly think Asha and I never discussed this?” he says with a sarcastic tone. “There’s no evidence save for rumors that it’s real. If it is, then the grove is going to curse me, and most likely the prince and Thamaos as well. I don’t know about them, but I’m not scared of a little magick doled out by a bunch of ancient trees.”
“Perhaps not,” Fia replies. “But they’re going to curseheras well.”
I try not to wither under Fia’s dark stare when her gaze shifts to me, all while trying to ignore the strange sense of foreboding that falls over the room and creeps up my spine. A life for a life. I suppose I should’ve inquired about the extent of that particular requirement.
“Fuck all,” Alexus mutters as Neri looks my way.
The wolf’s expression isn’t so arrogant now. That haughty smirk of his falls a little, and the muscles in his jaw tighten as he clings to a mask of indifference. He corrects, but I can see unease haunting the sparkle in his eyes, as though the thought of my suffering the consequence of our crime is somehow worse than if it happened to him alone.
Even though I feel lightheaded, and the scent of blood makes my stomach rumble, I react much the same as Neri, attempting to appear unaffected as the queen steps closer.
“I thought so highly of your mother,” she says. “What would Ophelia think if she could see you now? Here, in her homeland, making a mockery of the goddess mother Loria and her grove, standing with Neri, a self-serving and condemned god, all because you chose to defile the most sacred ground in all the world.”
“To retrieve a weapon thatIwield,” I defend. “A weapon we desperately need. Neri will bring me Thamaos’s bones. Today. And the Prince of the East’s head. I’ve commanded him so. Perhaps once that part is over, we can all work together to prevent further bloodshed and truly heal Tiressia as a united continent.”
