Covering his mouth with one hand, I brought my blade across his throat, slitting it clean open. Crimson blood gurgled onto the carpet as the halfling bled out.
I looked down at my hands in horror. What had I done…? I was a murderer.
Liam started to moan softly, and it snapped me out of my stupor. Guilt gnawed at me as I crawled off the guy, hands shaking. Stumbling over to Liam, I fell to my knees and pulled the rag out of his mouth.
He gasped for breath and then winced, holding his side.
“I killed him,” I whispered in shock, almost to myself.
Liam nodded. “Good, because they were about to kill me. Untie me,” he groaned.
My chest lit up blue then, the most inconvenient time in the world for it to signal to me that I’d found my soulmate.
I get it. You don’t need to remind me, I scolded the blue light.
As I cut his bindings, he stared at the blue swirling light arcing off my chest, and then at the mirrored light on his, but thankfully he didn’t say a word. I looked at the dark crystal.
“Is this the only one they have here?” I whispered. Why would the freaking map in Shakespeare’s Garden lead me to a crystal I could not touch? I mean, obviously it wouldn’t know I couldn’t touch it … but something wasn’t right. It showed me all the crystals in Faerie and only this one here. Where the hell were the others?
Were they cloaked somehow?
He sat up grabbing his ribs. “Yes. The others are—” He seemed to realize who he was speaking to. “Elsewhere…”
I groaned, about to tell him that he could trust me, when the door flew open behind me, slamming against the wall with a loud bang. I spun with a shriek as a wall of frosty air smashed into me and I flew up against Liam’s chest. Cold, frigid wind wrapped around me as the air knocked out of me, leaving me gasping. Liam’s hand splayed on my belly, tucking me closer to him while shooting out a wall of ice. It was the most incredible thing I’d ever seen. Water poured from his palm, then froze almost immediately as it quickly erected a sheet of ice.
“I taught you that!” the Winter King roared from the other side of the icy wall.
A thump snacked against the wall and it shattered. Liam eyed the crystal on the ground and then the window to my right as if weighing his options. Me or the crystal. I didn’t have time to warn him that it would burn him if he touched it. Yanking me with him, he flew upward, tightening his grip around my waist as he lifted me up into the air with him. I clung to his arm as he hovered around the window at the front of the house, and kicked his leg right through it, shattering it.
“You were my brightest child!” the king roared as shards of ice rained down on us. Over twenty icicles shot from the king’s palms, causing me to duck and take cover as best I could. A searing pain sliced through my arm and I let out a whimper as a sharp icicle went clean through my upper right arm, poking six inches through the flesh. A wave of dizziness overtook me; agony radiated through my chest, my blood speckling the carpet below us. Liam flapped his wings, carrying me through the window, and set me down on the front porch, before spinning on his father.
“And your biggest disappointment. Well, likewise, old man!” he roared and blasted another sheet of ice at the enraged king, stepping back slowly into the front yard.
“Go, Lily!” he shouted back at me as they traded blow for blow, snow and ice flinging around the front porch so fast I could barely focus. My teeth chattered as the bone-chilling cold seeped into me. I was a spring Fae; this cold would freeze my wings and snap them right off if I wasn’t careful. My arm hurt so badly I had to fight to stay conscious, but there was one thing I was absolutely sure of. Liam and I were on the same side. Twice he’d saved my life, and that meant something. Actions spoke louder than words.
“No. I’m not leaving without you this time.” I pulled my knife with my left, uninjured hand. “We go together,” I told him through gritted teeth. I might not be that useful right now, but I could definitely try to remove his dad’s balls for killing my mom. I just needed to get close enough.
The king burst into laughter from where he stood on the front porch, a flurry of snow at his feet and six-foot icicles growing from his palms. “You fell for a fucking seeker from Faerie!” he boomed at Liam, and the entire house shook with his rage.
Holy shit, that man was terrifying. If not for Liam, I would have been a stabbed-up piece of meat right now. Well, more than I already was.
The blue light had stopped pulsing from our chests, and so thank the gods, he didn’t know we were soulmates. He might have popped a gasket then.
Where the hell was my best friend? I hoped she was safe wherever she was.
Liam looked back at me, still holding an ice wall in front of us. Sweat rolled down his forehead and he looked strained. My eyes fell to his thigh, where I saw a one-inch-thick icicle sticking out of it.
Shit. We were in rough shape. We needed to get the hell out of here.
“The crystal.” He looked at the open, blown-out window and I shook my head.
“No. It’s not worth it. W—"
“Not to you, you have seven!” He cut me off, glaring at me with venom in his gaze.
I reared my head back like I’d been slapped. “I’m sorry … I—”
A cold blast of frigid air burst from the king’s palms and slammed into Liam and I, knocking us backward across the lawn. Jagged pieces of ice cut my skin and wings.
