Metal. Blood. Heat.Home.
Every part of me sings, and I collapse into him, only vaguely aware of us remounting theglacialmara.
“I knew that you would come,” I say through sobs. “You made it.”
His arm tightens around me, but the raging storm within him doesn’t calm.
I feel him slice through someone, but I close my eyes and clutch to him as my injuries continue to heal.
Everything is too much. Too much death. Too much gore.
My eyes squeeze shut to it all, and for the first time in weeks, I let someone else hold me.
After endless days of torture. Of humiliation. Of outfits and chains and leashes, of spells and literal drowning.
A ray of light.
One that I don’t deserve but that I run into nonetheless.
“We need to get the women away before any others are hurt,” I call up to him. “I—I did all I can.”
“Shh, you did enough. No more putting yourself in danger.” His hand cups the back of my neck. “We will get them all out unharmed.”
The elves’ arrows and blades cut through bone, and their armored beasts tear at flesh until the small troupe of giants is reduced to a mount of steaming death.
The Enduares and elves crowd behind the women, herding them forward. They run, and their frightened faces pull at my heart.
“Let me run with them,” I call up to my mate.
He shakes his head firmly, and his grip tightens.
“They can have you tomorrow.”
I see the tightness of the muscles around his unbound face, and he looks ahead, terrifying power leaking off of him.
“Tonight, we leave this place for good.”
You are safe.Teo’s voice also speaks into my mind as the Fuegorra sings to me with mind-cracking joy.Finally safe.
Then he raises something to his mouth—a stone, I realize—and speaks into it as it starts to glow.
“Lady Estela is with me. We’re coming home.”
My heart soars.
Part Two
Chapter 20
Rholker
“Where the fuck is my personal log?” Rholker demands as he shifts books and papers around his large, mahogany desk.
“My King, please. This is serious. There were seventeen deaths and more than a hundred casualties,” Regent Uvog says from the other side of the table.
He is still wearing the ceremonial garb from the coronation, though his hair is now unbound, and there are bloodstains over his blue doublet. Displeasure radiates off him in waves.
“Fine.” Rholker sits back and rubs his left eyebrow, pressing into his eye socket. “How many giants?”
