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I’d only kill him if she allowed it.

She nodded once at me before helping the man I didn’t know to his feet, free of the creature behind her that now lay decapitated. Charles tossed the beast’s head, sending it rolling across the floor.

A ball of flame appeared in my hands, whirling with ribbons of night.

I brought the fireball down toward Leo’s face, planning to make him wear it like a mask, and watch while his skin melted from his bones.

But his rushed words stopped me.

“What did you just say?” I yelled, seeing red tinged with black in the corners of my narrowed vision.

“I said—” Leo cleared his throat, spitting a wad of blood to the side, his head resting back against the floor. “If you kill me . . . you kill her.”

Leo looked in Bryn’s direction, blood stained between his teeth as he smiled.

I stood, staggering back.

Leo laughed, fluid rasping through his lungs as blood sputtered from his mouth. “I gave her life, Adrian. Her soul is directly connected to mine. Kill me if you must, but if I die, she dies, too.”

I felt Bryn touch my arms, her hands sliding down to my hands, squeezing me three times. “It’s okay, my love,” she murmured to me, looking up at me with wet eyes.

She hit me then, hard, through the chest, hot light bringing me to my knees.

Her daylight wrapped around me, anchoring me to the floor.

I watched in horror as she turned toward Leo, picking up the blades I had discarded, and lifted them high above her head. A warrior’s cry escaping her lips as she brought the blades down.

She was going to kill him.

Kill herself in the process.

No!

There had to be another way, one where I didn’t lose her again. That was all I thought as I shot ribbons of black toward her right before her blades cut through his throat, and she disappeared through the portal I created.

Leo laughed hysterically, rolling over to push himself onto his knees. His eyes swimming with darkness. “The princess has more courage than you do, brother.”

I slid my ribbons around him and swallowed him into my portal, too.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

BRYN

Islapped him across the face the second he entered his bedroom. My anger greater than it had ever been before.

“Ouch,” Adrian cursed, his demeanor calm against the storm brewing inside me. “I guess I deserved that . . .”

“How dare you,” my voice shook with resentment. “How dare you portal me here when we were so close to ending all this violence.”

Adrian’s eyes narrowed at me, but his voice remained calm. “You’ve mistaken the man I am if you think I’m going to sacrifice my wife for a psychotic king who wants to play a god.”

“It isn’t your choice to make!”

He scoffed. “Perhaps you’re right. But I won’t accept the only solution to stopping Leo includes the loss of your life. We’ll find another way.”

“There is no other way!” I screamed, my voice carrying through his room, vibrating off the oak bed and burgundy sheets.

“Incarceration is a good start,” he said nonchalantly, unfastening his empty scabbard and tossing it onto the floor, his daggers nowhere to be found.