This is something I could probably do. But I’m not sure how to just reach the people who are physically here in Sturmfrost—and if I reached out too far, would Killian hear me?
There’s a beat of silence, and then Anassa responds, “It’s done.”
My gaze lingers on Saela’s sleeping, bloodied form. She looks so small and helpless, even with the truth of her existence splattered around the cell. Leaving her for even a moment is a dagger into my gut. It’swrong.
And for the second time, Stark seems to read my mind. “Helene and Grigore will watch over her while you’re gone. Nothing will happen to her. I promise you.”
His voice is curt and businesslike, but his words are so gentle. All I can do is give him a tense nod.
It hurts to leave Saela’s side, but if I don’t go, Killian is going to corrupt the rest of my world, too.
The arena is quiet, but my heart ispounding. I swear the reverberations are rattling the walls with each pump of my blood.
Stark is to my left, standing resolutely as though the hundreds of eyes looking up at us don’t bother him in the slightest. Anassa and Cratos flank us, surveying the people gathered below.
Bonded are filing in, and I have to blink away the image of the final culling that King Cyril ordered. Ordered from the very platform where I stand now.The blood running from bite wounds, as Rawbonds turned on one another. Angry and red and wrong.
My stomach flips. “I want to end any unnecessary killing,” I think half to myself, half to Anassa. Her acknowledgment is a steadying hum in the back of my head.
It’s mostly newly graduated Rawbonds here, though some Bonded who had come in for the graduation have joined the crowd. Those seasoned soldiers stand in formation, but the young warriors mill about in groups, packs largely standing together.
From the corner of my eye, I spot Jonah’s red-streaked dark hair from where he stands with some of his weasel-faced friends, clustered together and speaking to one another in low voices. Every one of them has a hand rested on a sword hilt or the handle of a dagger.
He looks up, and there’s a sharp-edged glint to his gaze that makes me uneasy. We’ve been at odds ever since the morning of the Ascent, when he attacked Izabel, and he’s never turned down a chance to try to hurt me.
Anassa’s noticed his group, too, and her sides start to buzz with a low growl, but none of them makes a move toward us.
Around the perimeter of the arena, castle servants stand nervously, fidgeting. Stark ordered every servant in the castle to gather—ensuring maximum witnesses for whatever is about to happen—but some are still wandering in through the arena doors.
It’s difficult to wait here on the dais. I feel like an impostor. How could I not?
I thought I was a commoner only months ago. I stillama commoner in so many ways. My dress is filthy from the dungeons, my hair is a tangle of silver-white, my eyes are probably red-rimmed from sleep deprivation and endless crying.
Part commoner, part Bonded, part queen, but amessthe whole way through.
But I’m here. I have to be here. I have to bemorethan I am.
“You must, so you will,” Anassa tells me, reminding me of what she said on the day I unexpectedly became Alpha of the Strategos pack.
“I must, so I will,” I agree.
Stark steps forward and hands me a cone-shaped amplifier, and I take it with an only slightly shaking hand.
In the half hour since I left the dungeons, Anassa has been coaching me on how to reach all the Bonded. I need to send a complex message—including memories—tothousandsall across Nocturna. I’m prepared for it to be taxing, but I know I can do it.
Because if Killian could reach everyone with my magic, then so can I.
Bitterness is a potent fuel, it turns out.
After several slow breaths, I shut my eyes and push my consciousness outward. My mind flows along familiar streams first. Anassa. My pack. My people. Stark, confusingly.
The channels I’ve used before are open, clear. I can sense more minds beyond them, though, as if through a low fog that hangs over water. I squeeze my eyes tighter and push. Then, after a brief moment of resistance, I burst forward.
I flow into the minds of the other Bonded below me, then spill beyond the walls of the arena. If Killian is somewhere here in this connection… I can’t sense him.
It’s almost too easy. There’s a vast sea of magic inside me, and each Bonded mind is a river flowing from its source. I need only to focus on my magic and follow the natural current to them.
Easy to make the connection, that is—but incredibly overwhelming to hold on to it, especially when it all starts to flow back to me, drowning me in connection. It’s dizzying, and as when I sent my memories to Aldrich, sweat starts to bead on my forehead.
