Cyara stepped toward her queen, wings quivering. “You were only too keen to expend resources on the Sacred Trinity before. Why not now?”When it is your life we stand to save.
“Merlin is gone,” Veyka replied, unflinching. “She stole the chalice, and with it any chance of uniting the Sacred Trinity.”
The copper-haired harpy was not intimidated. “That is little more information than we have on the Ethereal Queen and yet you will not stop searching for her.”
There were no thoughts in my head.Veyka.
Veyka gnashed her teeth. “You speak out of turn.”
Cruel, to the most steadfast friend she had. But Cyara was undaunted. “You were the one who granted your Knights the right to speak our minds.”
I could feel the void calling to Veyka, sense her desire to throw herself into it and escape. But her booted feet remained firmly planted in the human realm. “The two are not the same. Finding the Ethereal Queen and joining her power to mine is the only way to banish the succubus.”
“That we knew of,” Cyara countered. “But now we have another way.”
“Anotherpossibility.” She said the word as if it burned her. “It is too late to waste resources on vague hopes. You all have your quests. I expect you to fulfill them to the best of your abilities.”
She turned on her heel and walked away—not toward the village, but in the opposite direction. Toward the mountains. But she did not disappear into the void. I could follow her.
Down the hill, up the next. Increasing in speed. She broke into a run, sucking in the bitter cold air and then exhaling it in angry, ragged puffs. The voices of our friends and allies died away to nothing as we climbed deeper into the mountains. I could feel her exhaustion through the bond—but nothing else.
She was trying to block me out. Or maybe she was so fraught that she was beyond all feeling.
I could not take it a second longer.
“Veyka.”
I expected her to ignore me.Ancestors, she was fast.
“We agreed,” she said without turning, driving step after step into the side of the mountain, climbing ever upward as she pushed the words out. “We talked through all of our assets and our needs and we made a plan. A cool-headed, comprehensiveplan of attack. You are the battle commander. You are the one who told me the importance of—”
“Veyka.” She was fast, but I was faster.
“—making decisions from a place of reason rather than emotion—"
I grabbed her arm, pulling her down. She dodged me as I tried for the other, wrenching the one I held. But I was stronger and bigger and more desperate, even than her.
I grabbed her by both forearms, shaking her hard. “Veyka!”
She stopped fighting, but she refused to look at me.
“Tell me why,” I demanded.
“I already did,” she seethed through clenched teeth.
I did not dare release her arms. She’d run again in an instant. So I lowered my face to hers instead, using my jaw to force hers up, only pulling back far enough that I could look straight into her eyes. “You can hide from them, but not from me. Your soul is mine, and you cannot hide a single slice of yourself from me. Tell me the truth.”
Veyka caught her lower lip between her teeth.
“You have been obsessed with unraveling Arthur’s secrets. Why stop now?”
She tried to look away, but I pressed my forehead to hers.
“Tell me, Princess,” I breathed.
I felt the crack within her as the wall of ice she’d thrown up shattered.
“There is no time, Arran!” she cried, jerking away. I held her tight, but I let her rage. “He gifted me the scabbards. He left me the sword. Did he know that Igraine would try to kill him? Did he know about the Sacred Trinity all along? Or was it all fate, the fucking Ancestors playing with him the same way they’ve played with me? I could spend a lifetime unraveling Arthur’s secrets. But I don’t have a lifetime.”
