“Did you really think I would let you escape, brother?”
Ice runs up and down my spine. Slowly, I drop the rope and stand, meeting the metallic gaze of Kairyn.
“I knew you were here,” he says softly and touches his chest. “It feels you, you know. Sometimes, at night, the magic seems to cry out. It still grieves for my disappointing predecessor.”
I can’t speak. A suffocating storm of fury and fear rages within my chest. He nearly killed me. He has an entire army at his disposal. He’s got the damned Blessing of Spring.
He took my mate.
“What did you do to her?” I growl. “What did you do to my mate?”
Kairyn laughs, the sound reverberating between us. “My men talk about you. The Prince of Blood, that’s your new name. Too stately for the ragged vagabond you’ve become. You’ve left a wake of corpses across the realm.”
A low growl ebbs from my throat. “Where is my mate?”
“When will you realize that you’re not the hero?” Sunlight glints off his mask. “Rosalina didn’t need you. The lives you took were for nothing. How does it feel, brother?” His voice grows breathier, more frantic. “How does it feel to be the villain?”
“No!” I draw my sword, but I’m too late.
Kairyn heaves his arms up. Great strings of seaweed erupt from the deck, wrapping around my arms, my legs, my torso.
“Fool!” Kairyn cries. “When will you learn? Youcannotoverpower me. I am stronger than you ever were. You havenothing!”
Nothing but thousands of reasons to kill him. I tear against the binds, but as soon as one breaks, another takes its place. It can’t all have been useless. All the deaths, the blood I spilled, the men I broke.
“Stop fighting,” Kairyn growls.
“Never.”
The seaweed tightens around my wrists and ankles and pulls, tearing me in four different directions. I wince against the pain. “Then I will end this for both of us,” Kairyn says.
Heat explodes in my joints. I lash against the bindings, but nothing breaks.
A cold breeze caresses my skin. A breeze far too cold for the Summer Realm.
Kairyn and I both turn to the open sea.
Waves freeze into floats of ice before cracking again. But there’s someone leaping from ice floe to ice floe. Even from this distance, I can see the wrath held in his body, the piercing blue gaze.
“I would run if I were you,” I say to Kairyn.
The High Prince of Winter is here.
CHAPTER 12
Keldarion
Saltwater transforms to ice beneath my feet as I surge toward the floating prison. My mate bond riots in my chest, the reawakened tether like a lifeline. She’s no longer here, but I feel her across the horizon. Another tie calls me to this place.
Mate of my mate.
Kairyn stands on a skiff bobbing in the water, tied to the dock of the prison barge. Wrapped in sea plants is Ezryn, that unfamiliar face trapped in a pained grimace.
I haven’t seen him in three months, since he stormed out of Castletree. No one has had word of him. For all I knew, he could have been dead.
Despite the animosity between us—and the fact he’s tied up by Kairyn’s magic—I feel relieved to see him.He’s alive.
And I’ll be damned sure to keep it that way.
