Ryker’s eyes met mine in the mirror. “Always.”
“I will reclaim my throne.”
Epilogue
ALLIE
“It looks good on you,” Ryker murmured, staring at the top of my head as if the sun had descended upon it.
“Thank you.” I patted the crown, still amazed that I not only got to wear it, but the symbols shone so hard, they cast a glow I could almost see on the tip of my nose. “Isn’t it a bit pompous to wear it when I’m greeting them for the first time?”
“It’s just the right amount of pomp,” he said in my mind. I didn’t think I’d ever get used to the sensation of having him so intimately entangled with me. Each time we spoke like this, my heart did a little happy flip, enthusiastic and amazed. “Plus, Dax is beside himself.”
My cousin had been glancing at my crown every chance he got for the past two days, since we’d left the city and headed for the crater’s exit. Each time, his smile widened.
When he caught me looking, he just shrugged. “Told you.”
“Told me what?” I asked.
“That you were raised for this.” He patted the wolves' heads and hoisted his travel pack from the sled.
It looked suspiciously large.
“Please tell me you didn’t take the wings with you.” I sighed.
“It’s not like either of you were using them.” He groaned as he settled the heavy pack on his back. “My friend in the Fair Isles might be able to improve the initial model and make them less deadly.”
My breath hitched once more, as it always did when I heard he was going to that dreaded place. Only he, Ryker, and I knew his destination.
Dax had filled out an entire library of ledgers with the information he’d stolen from the Protectorate vaults. With Lioran clueless about who Silas was protecting, Bia Marino was still our likeliest suspect, but she could have been dust and bones by now, murdered at the wedding.
Or she could have been plotting with that mysterious heir to assassinate us all.
While it was the likeliest theory, something still didn’t quite add up.
If my father had noticed the discrepancies, why hadn’t he said anything? Bia, while Clara’s best friend and respected within the Clan, hadn’t exactly been one of its leaders.
If Silas didn’t bother to protect his own family, why would he care about this woman?
Those were answers the ledgers couldn’t discover for us–and Dax had no more information trapped in that big brain of his.
But he now had a purpose–finding where the poison had come from.
Nobody could convince him this mission was too dangerous.
He was like all of us Veghearas.
Too stubborn for our own good.
And I couldn’t blame or stop him.
We needed the cure.
So I had to let him go and find it.
“Are you absolutely sure you don’t want us to come along?” I asked for the tenth time.
“I appreciate the offer, dear cousin, but–and don’t take this the wrong way–you and your ominous partner here will scare people away, which would only make my mission harder,” Dax said. “I work better alone.”
