“Do you have a death wish?” I breathed.
She tensed, the crumple of those maps she’d protected filling both of our pointed ears. She inhaled slowly and then spoke on the exhale. “I wish to serve Annwyn.”
“And I am the High Queen of Annwyn. Which means you serve me,” I ground out, advancing one step.
Cyara did not flinch. She held my eyes with her turquoise ones, her wings tucking in tight to her body. “I only want what is best for my kingdom.”
“That sounds a hell of a lot like the justification that Gawayn used when he slaughtered Cyara and Charis.”
I hated myself the moment the words left my mouth. But I could not take them back. Worse, I was not sure I wanted to. They’d hit their mark, Cyara dropping the maps on the ground, her wings drooping.
The fire to my left leapt, flames reaching toward the sky, spiraling up above my head. Her flames, then. They crackled for several long seconds before settling. She picked up the maps, rolling them carefully and tucking them away.
I needed to walk away before I said or did something worse. It was my fault that my mate was near death, and I was just as surely going to destroy my closest friendship. But I could not move. Could not give in. Could not see past the collision of feelings and attempts to ice over them inside of my body.
Cyara straightened, her wings pristine as they arched over her head. “We cannot stay here forever. Are you at least considering what we will do if—”
I exploded.
“Of course, I have been thinking about it! You are so fond of reminding me that I am High Queen of Annwyn. As if I could ever forget it. As if every beat of my heart, I do not know what that means. Annwyn is meant to be ruled by us—two of us. Arran and me, a balance of elementals and terrestrials. I was never meant to do it alone!”
I’m not fit to do it alone.
I did not want to know if my friends heard the words I was too afraid to speak.
I turned my back on all of them, taking another gulp of aural before throwing it down in the dirt beside my pack.
“It does not matter how close we are to Eilean Gayl,” I said to no one… everyone. To myself. “I am not leaving Arran.”
I disappeared into the falling darkness, my body craving release. But I was no longer hungry for food.
6
VEYKA
They were easy to find, in the end.
The scent of their fear left a trail from where I’d killed the succubus straight to their camp. Even after a day spent jumping through the void again and again, it only took me three jumps to cover the many miles between our camp and theirs.
When I’d first gone through the void, during those arduous training sessions with Arran, the fatigue would grow. Each jump a bit slower than the last. But now, the beating of my heart was from excitement, not exertion.
My power was growing.
Even as I looked down on them from high in the branches of a pine tree, where I’d made my final appearance from the void, I could feel the hungry hum of my power.More, it seemed to say.Further. Again.
I tightened the leash, just as Arran had taught me.Soon, I whispered to it lovingly. I only needed a minute to plot my course.
Three humans and seven fae.
All that remained of the force Gorlois had attacked us with on the shores of Avalon.
It would have taken me ages to find them without my void power. But now? Less than a day. The other scent I’d caught on the pine-scented wind as I moved in and out of the void… I was still deciding what to do with that. But it did not affect what was about to happen.
The humans passed around a flask of some watered-down, human made spirit. The fae warriors did not deign to drink it. I could not recall if they were elementals or terrestrials. If they were terrestrials, they’d been stupid to select this campsite. The branches of the pine trees did not begin until nearly twenty feet up; too far for any but the most powerful of their flora-gifted to make use of. The dead pine needles on the forest floor would not answer their commands. That much, I’d learned from months of traveling with Arran and Osheen.
If they were shifters… my magic flared inside of me.It does not matter.
No, it did not. Either way, they were dead.
