Shit!He was pushing it, holding on until the last minute. If he went to Ground, it meant days away from Leya, and he was already walking a tightrope there. But if he didn’t, he could likely hurt her. Both options were fucking dismal.
He clamped down on his brittle psychic shields, focusing on the boxes there, his heightened sense of smell already revealing what they were and fromwhere.
Jaw clenched, he hunkered down by the unmarked crates packed with explosives. Cold anger fisted his gut that thesecaeniswouldn’t quit their senseless destruction.
He rose. “Destroy everything without detonating them. We cannot have any more destructive energy here. Godsdamn! What is wrong with these bastards? This is their world too, and they would rather see it reduced to ash and dead seas?”
“Theycan exist elsewhere. We cannot,” Thiorr said, expression molded in stone.
His wounded side throbbing, Aerén lifted his gaze to the craggy ceiling, a sense of hopelessness descending, but as fast, fury resurged. Born with lower power levels, bemoaning their lot in life, thesecaenirebels used any means to get what they wanted, even bringing weapons of war from the human world.
“The two you caught in town?” he gritted out.
“Didn’t get much from them.” Drav’n shut the crate. “They’re in the prison cells.”
“I’ll deal with them when I get back. I need to Ground.”
A few hours was all he needed to take the edge off, then he’d tackle all that awaited him…find Leya and make things right if the difficult female let him.
It wasn’t her fault he was caught in this damn emotional loop. Whatever these feelings were, they knotted his gut whenever she was around.
And she was the one person he couldn’t read.
“I’ll see you back in Cidéra.” He glanced at his former bodyguard. Then, “Watch over her, Thiorr.”
The male nodded. “With my life. But from a distance. Don’t want to spook her.”
Too on edge to react to Thiorr’s dry comment, Aerén dematerialized and coasted through the crevice running through the rugged rockface deep beneath the mountain. He reformed in a small cavern and stilled at the weak pull on his rampant power, realizing far too late the truth of this place.
The white quartz he needed to help him Ground was barely viable this close to where the haunted forest reigned. Everything around it was trapped in its sinister web and dying, even this mountain. But it would have to do for now.
His rigid shields collapsed.
A groan escaped him as power streaked free in white, forking flashes, blasting into the cavern. Rubble and chunks of rocks broke free, cascading down, slamming into him as he fell against the rough granite and slid to his ass.
Breathing rapidly, he shut his eyes—
“Ren!”the childish voice tugged at his heart.
Urias! He didn’t want this. But with his shields collapsed, his memories were unstoppable, and they gushed free…
“Aria, be careful,” he yelled at his four-year-old sister as she darted past. “Stop running—”
“For A’than!” She stuck her hand out, revealing a bunch of wilting blooms.
“You have other brothers, too,” he grumbled, leaping off his horse. “Aria, wait! Don’t go after him.”
The sound of cantering hooves reached him. He glanced back for his sister. No sign of her. Good. Her nursemaid must have taken her.
Drav’n and Lykon appeared from around the building moments later. “Let me get my things, and we can leave,” he called out to his friends.
“I’d suggest a word with yourpaterifirst before you head off on your hike into the mountains,” Thiorr, still seated astride his destrier, cautioned.
A cry that caused his heart to stop resonated across the realm. “Aria!”
Without thought, Aerén flashed toward it. Reforming outside the arena, he bolted inside and faltered to a halt, his mind unable to grasp what his eyes revealed.
Then agony hit, ramming him straight in the heart… Her small body lay on the ground, a sword in her little chest, the wildflowers she’d carried scattered in the blood pooling around her…
