“If there are,” Minerva said, “They are in the rooms above the library.”
“How far from here?” I asked.
Lyrena answered. “By the passageways, a short detour.”
Now or later. Now or maybe never.
A tremor quaked through my muscles—not my own.Hold on, Princess.
“We don’t have time—”
“I will go, Your Majesty.” Elora spoke from behind me.
I opened my mouth to argue—we needed Elora’s expertise on the battlefield. But the grim set of her eyes stilled my tongue. This was the battlefield. And Elora was ready to do her duty.
“Take two of my terrestrials with you,” I said instead. “And an amorite blade.”
Elora nodded sharply. A loud yell, and she was able to move past the elementals separating us and Lyrena, listening attentively to the latter’s directions for navigating through the concealed passageways. By the time she arrived back at my side, I had Vera and another terrestrial ready to join her.
But she paused, exhaling slowly. I braced myself for her words.
“The Dowager is there as well.”
Igraine. How had I forgotten her? It was a failure as a mate and a commander.
The urge to go to her flooded my senses. After everything we’d learned at the Battle of Avalon, after what she and Gorlois had put Veyka through… my beast roared inside of me, demanding vengeance.
“Is she restrained?” The beast growled through my mouth.
“Yes.”
For Veyka, I wanted to shift. To follow the directions I’d heard Lyrena give to Elora, to tear through any succubus that dared to cross my path. My jaws would rip their heads from their bodies, one by one, until I reached the Dowager. Then I would kill her. More brutally than any succubus could hope to do. I would make it hurt. I would punish her in kind for every brutality she’d heaped upon my mate.
But another tremble was taking hold of me, an ache settling into my bones. Veyka.
For Veyka, I said, “Leave her.” And for myself, I added, “For now.”
Veyka would never forgive herself if another member of her court fell to the succubus at the expense of her own revenge. To save the males closeted away in their cells, yes. But for Igraine? Never.
Watching Elora’s contingent split away was nearly painful. But we were almost back to the rift. I could feel the change in the bond.
The tunnel curved and then there was a burst of light. Lyrena pried open the doorway out of the passage, sending a wall of fire to repulse any succubus on the other side. But the corridor beyond was blessedly empty. A small mercy among the losses we’d already sustained.
An audible gasp rolled through the crowd of elementals as they spilled out into the hallway. For half a breath, I saw the rift as they must have. A rip in the very fabric of the world, opening into a dark and unknown void. And at the center, the glowing edges of the rift illuminating her face and skin so that her entire body seemed to be glowing, was the High Queen of Annwyn.
I shoved the courtiers aside, none too gently, to get to her. Without a thought, I stepped through the rift, earning another cry from the crowd behind. The Queen they’d never seen exhibit any type of magic now stood in control of a power that barely existed in legend. Terror shone in their eyes. One female lifted her hand, sending a spiral of water through the rift from one side to the other. It passed through unchanged, but still they held back.
It was a mother who took the first step. A female who could not be more than sixty years old, with a golden-haired girl on her hip and an older boy’s hand clutched in hers. She was more plainly dressed than most of the survivors. Even disheveled as they all were, the differences were apparent. She wore no jewels, her gown was simply made, her children dressed in pale brown. Servants, I realized.
The most desperate among us even before the invasion of the succubus.
But perhaps those with the most determination to live.
The young mother held her children close and stepped through the rift.
She stumbled slightly as her feet went from the smooth goldstone tiles to the rough-hewn stones of the bridge to Eilean Gayl. But she was upright in a moment. There was my own mother, a hand on the female’s shoulder, ushering her forward.
After that, it was a flood.
