Chapter 40 Meryn
MERYN
The shocked silence in the library makes my ears ring.
Then comes mournful howling from a distance. It’s Anassa, Cratos, Skaia, and Ephyse. They’re far outside, but their pained wails are loud enough that I suspect everyone in the city of Brightbane can hear them.
I shakily pull myself up to my knees, bracing myself against the table, then sink into a chair. Anassa’s voice is instantly in my mind.
“I am conferring with the wolves and will let you know more information as soon as I have it.” Her heartbreak comes through the bond, fierce and aching, a wretched mirror of my own.
“They’re really gone?” I ask, even though I know the answer. That was too horrifically vibrant to have been anything other than real.
“They are gone, Meryn.”
I lean heavily against the armrests on the chair and gulp in a few more breaths of air to steel myself.
“What do you mean Nocturna has fallen?” Lucien asks quietly, his voice serious and deadly.
“Killian has broken through our defenses. He overtook our camp. My Sovereign Alpha, the leader of our military, is dead. He has control of the front on our side.”
Venna lets out a pained noise. She stumbles, losing her balance, and ends up sitting down on the floor with her head in her hands.
Lucien sinks slowly back into his own chair as Saela wraps her arms around my neck, hugging her face into my shoulder. She crawls onto my lap, and I hold her tight against me.
My shirt grows damp, and I realize she’s crying. Am I crying, too? My hand goes up to my face and finds tears there.
I’m so shaken that it didn’t even register.
“Meryn—” Lucien starts, but I hold up a hand to cut him off.
I need to get in contact with the Alphas at the front. I need to know what’s happening. Who’s still alive.
Goddess, why didn’t I see this coming? Why wasn’t I using foresight constantly to protect our troops? Why did I let myself get so distracted with Astreona that I lost focus?
Closing my eyes, I seek out Egith’s unique mental signature, paring down my thoughts until I’m narrowed in on just her. The bonds are in chaos after the death of the Sovereign Alpha, and I have to mentally push through the turmoil.
When my thoughts finally touch hers, there’s a strain in her mind, the crisis still unfolding all around her.
“My queen,” Egith says, her thoughts tense and distracted and laden with pain.
“Are you safe?”
“I am,” Egith confirms. She shares glimpses of the scene around her—packmates racing ahead through woods and trees, several carrying wounded foot soldiers with them on their wolves.
“The battle is lost. I’m in retreat with a group of survivors, but the situation here is still tenuous, Your Highness.
I’ll reach out again soon once I have more to report. ”
Before I can respond, our connection is cut off. Just a result of the extraordinary stress Egith is under, I hope, and not something new going wrong.
Either way, I need to let her focus on her surroundings, shouldn’t distract her further until she’s in a safe place.
I open my eyes. Lucien stares at me over my sister’s head, his expression unreadable.
Venna glances up from the floor. “Are they okay?”
“No.” Shifting Saela around on my lap—she’s really too big to be here these days—I say, “It appears I no longer have a country to offer you in our alliance, Lucien. My remaining troops are in retreat. If you would like to work together, I need your help more than ever, but Astreona will have to be the driving force.”
Lucien rises from his chair to pace back and forth behind the table.
“What is he playing at? Why take the border from you? It’s been centuries of war, and my bastard of a brother hasn’t been able to successfully take any significant ground in Astreona, and that’s with a full army at his disposal.
Surely he won’t try to accomplish that now, not with even fewer Bonded at his back. ”
“I suspect this is more Killian’s doing than Alistair’s,” I tell him. “I don’t think he’ll press into Astreona. He wants to make me feel culpable for the loss of life so that I return to him.”
“Is it working?” Venna asks, a sharp edge to her voice.
Right now, it’s hard to feel anything beyond sorrow. But I refuse to let the blood that Killian caused stain my hands.
I lift my chin. “No. Lucien, are you on our side, or are you not?” I hope desperation doesn’t color my voice, but without his support, there will be no recovering.
Lucien studies my face carefully before speaking. There’s something in his cunning eyes that I do not like.
At. All.
“We can keep our alliance,” he says.
The pause that comes afterward drags on for eternity. There are strings attached to that statement, but he’s not leaping to define them.
“If?” I finally relent.
His smile gives me chills. “If you marry me.”
I stand so quickly that Saela doesn’t have time to right herself, and she goes tumbling to the floor with a squeak. “Mer!”
“Sorry,” I mutter at her, and then turn on him. “Fuck. Off.”
Venna scoffs. “Insane.”
Lucien’s feline smile only grows. He’s clearly not deterred by my reaction.
Once again, another game. And this time, my people’s lives are on the line.
I can’t. I just can’t.
He’s absolutely serious, isn’t he? Yet another man trying to control me—and my kingdom—by claiming ownership.
Stark might have been right; maybe taking control over Nocturna once Alistair was out of the way was his plan all along.
The library darkens. My fingers curl into fists, and the darkest shadows at the edges of the room start to distort and reach for him. Lucien’s eyes move over the creeping black. He assesses for a moment.
Then he steps out of the way of one of them as if it were a dirty puddle.
“You don’t like my proposal,” he drawls.
A scream gathers in my throat. He’s three seconds away from being torn apart by shadow magic, and he’s not even slightly afraid. Nothing this man does makes sense.
“Perhaps I should elaborate. Make my case,” he says, stepping away from another slithering shadow. “I have something you need—my army. You have something I want—your Tears.”
Saela’s hand flies to her necklace. “You can’t have them!”
Bravo. “What she said,” I respond coolly.
“You misunderstand. I want assurance that the four Tears will always be evenly kept between our two countries. If we are united in marriage, you cannot conspire to take mine from me. Nor would I be able to take yours.”
There’s a hint of a threat there.
“Plus, if we are bound, the common people in both our countries will be more willing to accept and understand this ceasefire. We would rule both countries together,” he adds, as if that makes his proposal more palatable.
My stomach twists at the mere thought of this. I could never accept him.
He must read the distaste on my face, because he continues, “I would advise you to seriously consider this opportunity. Weigh your options. Think about how eager you really are for my help.” He smirks at me from across the table. “Besides, am I really so bad to look at?”
“Yes,” Venna and I say at the same time.
Lucien chuckles. “Harsh.”
Fucker.
As much as I would like to wrap shadows around him and throw him out of the library’s window, I can’t risk truly offending Lucien by declining him immediately.
“I will take your offer into consideration,” I say tightly.
In my heart, though, I know I could never accept him. Not when every part of me screams out for Stark.
Stark.
Fuck, I need to find him, need to tell him about Siegrid. Does he know already? Have the powers of the Sovereign Alpha passed along to him?
I bow my head to Lucien and then gesture to Saela and Venna that it’s time to leave. “We’ll discuss this more later,” I tell Lucien. “I need to find my people.”
My person.
My thoughts are so tangled up: There’s Lucien’s proposal, which felt too much like an ultimatum. The nightmarish fact that Nocturna is back under Alistair Brightbane’s control. The loss of my top general…
Whom I admittedly fucking loathed.
Still, Siegrid was one of my most experienced and trusted commanders.
I open a connection with Stark, but keep things simple, not wanting extra thoughts to leak over and not trusting myself in this turbulent state to be precise. “Where are you?”
“I’m on my way.”
Almost immediately, I can feel Stark’s presence barreling toward me through the castle halls. Hurriedly, I shore up the barriers between my mind and Anassa, Cratos, and Stark, not wanting news of the proposal from Lucien to slip through before I’m ready.
It’s no surprise that things are leaking through the mate bond again; both of us, and our wolves, are reeling after Siegrid’s death.
Even if Stark’s relationship with his mother was strained, weighted down with years of hurt and abuse, this must be a terrible shock for him.
Saela, Venna, and I are halfway back to our guest rooms when he catches up to us. Our bodies pull toward each other like magnets, each seeking the other. Venna gives me a knowing look and keeps Saela moving toward the guest suite.
“Are you well?” Stark pulls back and grips my shoulders, studying my face. “You’re still new to your powers as queen, and this is such a disturbance.”
Bemused, I grab his hand and pull him to the side of the hall, where a small windowed alcove with a half-circle window seat overlooks rooftops of the west wing of the castle.
A disturbance? Who the fuck calls their mother’s death a disturbance?
“Stark,” I say, searching his eyes. “How are you? What can I do? I’m so sorry.”
He stiffens almost imperceptibly, and his voice is controlled when he answers. “Don’t worry about it, princess. We’re Bonded. A violent death is our inevitable end.”
I almost recoil from him. He sounds so removed. But maybe that’s how he needs to deal with this. If he’s able to grieve Siegrid… I have to think it’s tangled up in a lot of other complicated emotions he may not be ready to face.
“You’re the Sovereign Alpha now,” I say lightly. “Is that… are you ready for it? Do you know how to use your powers?”
Stark’s gaze darkens. “I’ll master them swiftly enough.”
He stares past me, as if fascinated by the rooftops outside. That’s strange enough right there for me to know he’s not as stoic about this as he’s pretending to be. It’s definitely bothering him.
But when he looks back to me, there’s steel in his gaze. “You saw what’s happened, I assume? We need to return to Nocturna immediately. Every moment that we waste here is a moment that bastard is consolidating his power. Let’s get back there, face him, break him before his hold is complete.”
Typical Daemos, always ready to rush into battle. But this doesn’t seem like a reasonable solution.
“Give me a moment,” I tell Stark. “I need to check my foresight in case it offers us clues about what to do.”
He nods, and I close my eyes, dipping into the deep reserve of power that lives inside me.
What would happen if we returned to Nocturna immediately?
Images swim before my eyelids. Flashes of battle: direwolf tearing down direwolf as Bonded kill Bonded. Noemi, pierced by an arrow, lying in the dirt. Venna, bleeding from multiple wounds, dragging herself toward me. Shadow magic clashing, rebounding. Countless dead.
Stark falling. Cratos, howling a long note—and then cut off. Killian turning his gaze to me.
I pull myself away from the vision, nausea bubbling inside me at the gruesome sight.
And… what if I accepted Lucien’s aid? And his marriage proposal alongside it?
I see myself in a wedding dress, decked with jewels and gold. Lucien’s fangs glinting as he smiles, taking my hand. Beautiful Siphons press close to me wearing false smiles, congratulating me, kissing my hand, my cheek.
Blood drenches my vision. Blood spilling from Lucien’s mouth as a silver sword runs him through from behind, piercing his neck.
His crown clatters to the floor, where rivers of blood flow from the dying Siphons all around us.
Blood coating Stark’s face—he lies motionless at my feet, eyes unseeing.
Killian, hands drenched in red, laughing as he turns to face me, sword raised high.
NO.
I pull at my magic, stretching and forcing it. What else? There has to be another path. I push past the visions of death, straining toward what’s beyond.
Salt water fills my nose, my mouth. I blink and shudder. My eyes open, and the water is gone: A rocky shoreline takes its place—and a tower, dark and ominous, stretching up and up. A flash and I’m inside the tower, walls moving in on me, crushing, crushing.
A female body—whose? Mine, Noemi’s? I can’t tell, but it’s unmoving.
Stark bent over it, shouting. Then: an empty chamber, with a shining jewel sparkling at the center of a spiraling mosaic.
The vision ends, and I gasp back into my body. Stark’s hands are on me at once, grounding me, helping me come back to myself. My throat is parched, my head pounding.
Placing my forehead against his chest, I breathe in his deep, male scent.
“I need to tell you something,” I croak out. “Lucien asked me to marry him in exchange for his support against Killian. He says he’s worried that I’ll try to take his Tears from him for power and wants to ensure that there remains a balance.”
Stark stiffens underneath me.
His gaze turns shuttered and closed off, and there’s an instant lump in my throat.
Is he about to tell me I should do it?