Thane cleared his throat. “Were we not already at war?”
Princess Iona sighed, twisting back toward him. “In name only, Thane. We ah…” She trailed off and glanced at her father, who nodded. “We knew Imogen planned to redistribute the power inside the Air Court.”
She meant that his mother had planned to steal the throne from his father. A polite way of putting it, but that did not change the truth of it. A coup it had always been. Treason and truth. If she had gotten away with it, an alliance with the Sea Court would have no doubt soon followed. She would have never gone to war against her own family.
Thane raised a brow. “So, that was why you went silent. You were biding your time.”
“Well…that’s the truth of it, Thane. I am sorry for how it was handled. He was your father, but—”
“He was a terrible male and an even worse king,” Thane admitted. “I do not blame my mother for what she did. Unfortunately, she trusted the wrong fae with her plans, and he has made her pay dearly for her mistake. And we must make Aengus repay much more dearly in return.”
Princess Iona stood. “Does that mean…?”
Thane nodded. “Aengus will never allow me to return to that castle without blood being spilled. He means to become the High King of the Air Court. But the only king he’ll ever be is the king of his own grave.”
30
Reyna
“How’s your shoulder?” Lorcan leaned against the doorframe of Reyna’s bedchambers, his hair tousled as if he’d just been roused from sleep. But his eyes, ringed by shadows, said otherwise, and his dark gaze was steeped in concern.
“I’m fine, Lorcan. It’s just a small break.”
“Is it painful?”
“Not really.” She shrugged with one shoulder, the one thathadn’tbeen broken. “In fact, I think I might be fully healed.”
He considered her for a moment. “It should take weeks for that kind of wound to heal. You broke a bone. That doesn’t mend overnight.”
She smiled. “One might think you’d rather I be hogtied to this bed.”
But he didn’t banter right back, as he usually would. Instead, his eyebrows pulled together as he frowned.
“What happened out there, Reyna?” he asked, taking a step into the room.
“The shadow fae army was decimated.” She pressed her lips together. “That’s what happened.”
“You know that isn’t what I mean.” Another step. And then another. Soon, he stood at the side of her bed, his body pulsing with tension. “In the forest with the dagger and the ice. How did we survive that? Why didn’t we get ripped into the wind along with everything else?”
The forest had been left as decimated as the army. The trees had been yanked from the ground for miles, along with every shrub and every flower that had filled the twisted, thorny maze. The destruction had not gone as far as Oxgrove or Craobhan, but the storm must have wiped out every part of the forest between here and there that hadn’t been ravaged in the fires. Still, that would do little to stop the wood king from advancing on Findius. His enemy was all but vanquished. There would be no war now, at least not one that would end in anything but the destruction of the entire shadow kingdom.
The camp was nothing more than ash and the remnants of tents that had been reduced to ribbons. Some fae had escaped to the safety of the caverns, including Nollaig and Tarrah. Segonax had survived as well, having taken several companies of warriors through the tunnels. In total, around two thousand had lived. Which meant many more thousands had died.
“It was magic. It was ice,” she said frankly.
Despite the Fall, it seemed magic was not dead. It had come to her when she’d needed it the most, in the form of ice. What that meant she did not know.
“It was shadows, too,” he said quietly.
“What do you mean?”
He gazed down at her and traced a finger along her jaw. She shuddered beneath his touch, heat coiling in her core. “You’ve seen my shadows before. They came to me when your ice came to you. I think they hid us from the Ruin. It’s why it finally went away.”
Her heart pounded as she reached up to wrap her hand around his waist. “We have magic. Both of us. Is that why the ash couldn’t harm us?”
“It might be,” he said. “Which means the rest of the realm needs their magic, too. This just might be it, Reyna. The answer your sister has been searching for.”
She nodded, though she couldn’t help but frown. Something about it still didn’t feel right. Magic had protected them but only because they’d done the right thing at the right time in order to ride out the storm. The ice had held them in place as the winds had battered them, and Lorcan’s shadows had hid them from view. They could have just as easily died. When Reyna’s shoulder had hit the ground, it could have been her head.
