‘Ava,’ my father started cautiously, continuously analysing my hardened gaze as if I might try to burn him alive. ‘I regret it.’
‘What is she still doing here, then?’ I demanded, unable to move past the fact that he’d taken the woman’s freedom for such a pathetic cause.
‘Have you ever done something so bad that even if you wanted to fix it, it would just unravel like an avalanche threatening to sweep everything in its path?’
‘I can’t say that I have,’ I barked back, knowing it wasn’t a good enough excuse to let the situation continue for so long.
‘This is my avalanche.’ He looked sad. I’d give him that. But with such selfish tendencies, it was more likely because he’d been caught.
Miriam looked between us, lost.
Alec, in contrast, seemed mentally absent, only present in body. His expression was deliberately blank, avoiding my scrutiny.
He knew.
He allowed it to happen.
Accusation laced with darkness I was yet to command, I hissed at my brother, ‘You allowed him to take the mother of your former friend hostage?’
His cheeks flushed as he took a pause before mumbling, ‘Ava, River and I haven’t been friends for decades now.’
I saw red. My tone dropped, low and dangerous. ‘That’s your excuse? How do you sleep at night knowing a family is mourning a woman who’s still alive?’
The newfound disappointment of a father tried to interrupt, no doubt to justify his horrendous actions, but I wouldn’t allow it. Screaming over him, I demanded, ‘How long has she been here?’
Only silence answered, louder than any scream. But I wouldn’t relent. Not when I wished someone would fight for me too.
‘How. Long. Has. She. Be—’
‘Over a decade.’ Alec’s solemn tone rang in my ears as the words pierced through my recently acquired longing for a normal family.
Ten years. The number echoed until it didn’t sound real anymore.
River’s mother had been held captive for over a decade, and as her relatives learned to live with the loss, she had been trying to survive. I could only imagine the mental agony when she realised they weren’t coming to save her.
River had claimed his parents were fated mates; it meant his father would sense she was still alive, unless… ‘Is her mate bond dulled like my dragon bond in the Isles?’
It was the perpetrator of the crime who answered. ‘Yes.’
‘She’s going home. I don’t car—’
I didn’t finish my threat, laced with the hope that I meant enough to these people that they wouldn’t risk destroying our fragile new relationship. The best card I had to play was their desire to keep me.
All things considered, I thought I was doing a stellar job, judging by their stern faces, until a rift of pure night opened in the room, stealing everyone’s attention.
It took all my resolve to keep calm as the one person I hated most in the world portalled in.
Chapter Forty-Four
Avari
The dining room exploded in shadows before I could blink. The Lord of the Shadow Isles swore, rage twisting his features. ‘What the fuck?’
The one and only Queen of Ortensia had portalled straight into our dinner, using powers that weren’t hers.
She didn’t so much as glance at him; she moved straight for me, determination gleaming in her cold, putrid eyes. She’d come to drag me back into her golden cage.
Despite the darkness I couldn’t believe she wielded, my mother didn’t reach me in time. Alec appeared before her in a burst of shadows, unflinching at her glare.
