“That is your first lesson you should take to heart as a Knight of the Round Table. How I feel and what I want are inconsequential to what I must do.”
I loved Arran more than myself. For him, I would ignore the selfish parts of myself.
Swallowing back a sigh, I kicked Mordred’s hatchet toward his feet. “You’re responsible for getting yourself out of here.”
He frowned in confusion, but I did not wait to explain. I used the void to take myself up to the top, to Arran’s side. It took every ounce of my remaining strength not to collapse into his arms.
“Isolde,” Arran demanded.
I shook my head. “Not here.”
Arran growled in my ear, but he slipped his arm around my waist and started toward the stairs.
Overhead, a fractious caw split the air. A single raven swooped down from the sky, passing the battlements, aiming for the inner bailey. Everyone knew what to expect, clearing away a landing zone. I was too addled to realize what was happening.
The raven landed, shifting into a petite female with blue-black hair that matched her raven’s wings. Another femalereached out to steady her, but she threw out a hand to hold her at bay.
I’d never seen her before in my life. But she knew exactly who we were as she gasped the words out. “Word from Outpost! The Spit is under attack!”
43
VEYKA
“How old are these reports?” Arran peppered the soldier with a steady stream of questions as we climbed. Stair after stair, up and up and up the spiraling tower. At least these were wider than the ones at Eilean Gayl. The two males could easily walk abreast.
“A day or two, at least. It would have taken that long for the human to reach the rift, pass into the Shadow Wood, and then make their way here.” To Outpost, the terrestrial fort perched on the edge of the continent overlooking the Spit.
The Spit was neutral territory, belonging to neither the elemental nor terrestrial fae kingdom. The terrestrials watched for treason from their tower, dubbed Outpost. The elementals did the same in the west from Skywatch.
I rolled my shoulder as we climbed, half-listening to Arran’s briefing as I assessed the hasty healing Isolde had done. I hadn’t even bothered to change out of my blood-stained clothing. As soon as I could bend my arm without screaming, we were on our way to Outpost.
We reached the top of the tower. But even from there, it was impossible to see all the way across the Spit from this tower toits elemental twin. Still, I braced my hands against the stone sill and leaned, eyes straining to see what was not there.
Skywatch did not appear through the clouds. Nor did the succubus’ dark specter mar the stretch of unclaimed land. The only sounds were the waves crashing against the shore and the call of birds—some of them surely shifters on patrol.
Waves.
“The Split Sea,” I croaked, hardly believing what I saw with my own two eyes. “It is moving.”
The terrestrial jerked his chin in confirmation. “For a few weeks now.”
Weeks. A few weeks ago we’d been in Eilean Gayl, rescuing the refugees from the goldstone palace. That could not be a coincidence, could it?
I leaned further, looking north to where the Split Sea stretched out. The soldier was right—the waves were not contained to the shore. The entire sea was a roiling tempest of gray and blue.
A low growl told me what Arran and his beast thought about how far I was leaning out the window. I settled my weight on my forearms and let my toes lift off of the stone floor.
The soldier gasped. I guess that growl wasn’t just for me.
I ignored the look Arran leveled me as I put solid stone beneath my feet once more. I still needed to punish his stubborn ass for what had happened in the Pit.
“Have any of the males under your patrol succumbed to the succubus?” I addressed the soldier. He wore the typical wool vest favored by the terrestrials, buttoned at an angle across his chest that terminated at his shoulder. He wore his hair cropped close to his head, which made the awestruck looks he kept shooting Arran even more apparent.
Fear wasn’t the only thing my Brutal Prince inspired, it seemed.
“Two in the last hour,” the soldier admitted.
We’d never used any kind of mechanism to measure the rate at which the succubus stole the minds and then the bodies of their victims. Once they had taken over, we’d seen how they degraded, expelling the soul within in torrents of black bile until all that remained was a skeletal husk that felt no pain and could only be felled by amorite weapons.
