I had no words, because there were none. Nothing I could say would make this better.
I held her, rocking us gently back and forth on the ground as night fell and the army she’d brought together made camp somewhere behind us.
Veyka’s mouth moved against my throat, forming words I couldn’t quite hear.
I eased her forward, steeling myself against the mix of blood and bile and tears that coated her pale face. “What was that, Princess?”
“Take my weapons,” she rasped. “Bind my arms and legs.”
I shook my head. “You will be defenseless.”
“I am a succubus, Arran.” She was shaking again. Ancestors, I’d only finally gotten her to stop minutes before. But she got more words out. “I can still use my void power. But at least disarmed, with my hands and ankles tied, whoever I attack will have a chance.”
“Veyka.” She was going to make me beg.
But her eyes had drifted beyond me, over my shoulder. I followed her gaze, found the line of soldiers who’d been stationed to watch over us. Or guard the campfromus.
“It will make them feel better,” she murmured. “Feel safer.”
I refused to look any closer at the warriors behind us. I did not want to see the worry or fear or scorn in their eyes. Seeing all of those things in Veyka’s had already broken my heart. She shifted again in my arms, her eyes begging mine, just like I’d predicted.
This is wrong.“Bring the shackles,” I called over my shoulder.
Veyka reached up and stroked my face.
“It will be all right,” she whispered.
“You should not be the one comforting me.”
Solid metal clanked to the ground beside me. Footsteps retreated. Veyka disentangled herself enough to reach for the shackles, slipping them into my hands. Then holding up her own.
No. I can’t.
She pressed her lips to mine.Do it.Please.
I pressed the thick metal pin into place, and it felt like I might as well have closed it around my heart.
74
VEYKA
For the first time since Baylaur, all of the Knights of the Round Table were present. Cyara, Lyrena, Gwen, Arran, and I took the same positions we would have at the actual table. But we were not in the goldstone palace, with that mighty stone creation to anchor us, names in glowing golden scrollwork.
We stood in the center of a massive command tent, on a compacted dirt floor where a circle had been sketched out, and within it, two identical maps. One of the Effren Valley, one of the valley below Eldermist that the humans called Camlann.
Osheen took the spot that would have belonged to Parys. I could think of none among us more deserving. I tried to smile at him, but it must have come out as something else, because the terrestrial winced and then nodded in acknowledgment instead of smiling back at me. I’d cleaned the blood and black bile from my skin. But that did not make me any less of a monster, and after that display with the rift, we all knew it.
Mordred and Mya held the other two positions. Standing, rather than sitting. One is not yet known, and the bravest of the five shall be his father.Arran’s son, and the Siege Perilous.
Others listened and waited on the outskirts of the circle. Elora, Agravayn, Evander. The human called Sylva and another human leader I’d never met. Taliya and Isolde stood on opposite sides of the tent, the Faeries still not keen on one another.
The first true meeting of the Knights of the Round Table. And if I could not keep this monster inside of me under control, quite possibly the last.
I understood what I needed to do to banish the succubus back to their realm forever. None of the others had asked it of me yet, though it had to be on their minds. Every moment I lingered in this form I was a danger. But whether it was out of respect for what I’d offered and now endured, out fear of Arran, I did not know.
The realization of what I must do had come to me during the long day, opening rift after rift, battling the succubus for control of my mind. Letting this thing inside of me had bestowed a new power—the shadows. Tendrils of the void that I could pull into this realm with me and wield like weapons. I’d paid with my soul for this new power, so it must be integral to banishing the succubus.
But if I could not keep control long enough to do it, then the sacrifice would be for nothing and Annwyn and the human realm would fall.
