Chapter 30
I screamed as darkness clouded my vision and an unbearable weight crushed me from all sides.
I was being ripped through the earth itself. Buried alive under Mount Dorthus.
Dirt and ash coated my mouth, and jagged rocks tore at my skin.
I choked as more debris clogged my throat. There wasn’t enough air.
I couldn’t breathe.
Couldn’t breathe .
I thrashed and kicked, trying to reach the surface, but Adriel’s strong arms pulled me back down.
This was it. He was going to kill me — bury me alive for what I’d cost him.
I couldn’t scream. Couldn’t yell for help. And so I clawed at his arms, his face, his neck. Anything I could reach.
The ache in my chest was becoming unbearable. I was going to suffocate under this mound of earth .
Then my head broke the surface, and delicious cool air rushed into my lungs.
Bits of sand and grit hit the ground as I retched, the scent of salt and decay tickling my nose.
Still heaving for air, I blinked in the wan silver light.
I was sprawled on a rocky beach, wet sand coating my palms. Black waves thrashed at the jagged coastline, and a cold mist peppered my face.
I was kneeling in a crater just a few feet from the water. My glamour was gone, as was the apokropos stone, though I still wore the skimpy gold costume Kaden had conjured. Goosebumps covered my exposed flesh, and I mourned the loss of my fur-lined leathers.
Adriel stood a few paces away with his back to me, dark wings sagging in the sand.
“What the fuck was that?” I croaked, my throat scratchy and hoarse.
“Earthwielding,” he rumbled. “We traveled through the earth itself.”
“Earthwielding?” I repeated. “ That’s your power?”
His shoulders twitched.
All this time, I’d wondered what the Morkahlf could do, but now that I did, I found I didn’t care.
Kaden was still in Dorthus. He was the Dark King’s prisoner, and it was all my fault. If I’d only remembered about the hands sooner, we would not have gone to Dorthus at all.
Semphrys would kill Kaden for his betrayal, but not before he’d made him suffer.
“We have to go back,” I rasped, clambering to my feet.
“And do what?” he murmured, his voice low and ragged. “Semphrys has too many demons at his command, and he cannot be killed. Not until we cut the threads of the souls that are bound to his existence.”
“We have to try.”
“You’d get yourself killed trying, and in doing so, destroy the one real chance we’ve had of killing the Dark King in centuries.”
Fury rose in my throat, hot and acrid. Adriel was the prince’s royal guard. He’d told me he owed his very existence to Kaden. How could he just accept that his best friend was now the demon king’s prisoner?
“We can’t leave him,” I growled.
“We didn’t have a choice.”
“Yes, we did. Or at least you did.” My voice shook with the force of my ire. “And you — chose — to leave.”
“I was following orders.”
“Following orders?” I cried. “You abandoned him!”
Adriel whipped around so fast that I took an automatic step back.
His hazel eyes were a riot of flaming gold and green, and I realized I’d been foolish to fear the royal guard before.
His wrath had been nothing compared to what it was now.
The tendons in his neck bulged, and his muscles strained against his leathers, as if struggling to contain the tumultuous rage he was about to unleash.
“Don’t you understand?” he bellowed. “This is bigger than you. Bigger than him . The future of Anvalyn — hell — the future of our realm and the mortal realm is at stake. He wouldn’t want us to lose sight of that.”
“Of course not,” I seethed, angry tears burning my throat. “We just might lose him in the process.”
“You think I wanted to leave him there?” he yelled, voice cracking as he thrust one shaking finger toward the sea behind him.
“He is my brother. My future king.” Adriel’s other hand curled into a fist, which he slammed against his own chest. “I am honor bound to protect him at all costs. I would gladly lay down my life in an instant if it meant sparing his. But, somewhat inconveniently, all he cares about is protecting you .”
Adriel hurled the last word like an accusation, and my shoulders tensed.
“And not just because you are our one hope of killing his father, but because you are his mate.”
Adriel’s lip curled as he looked down at me, disgust written all over his features. “You spent so much time hating him for what he was, and all the while he was trying and failing not to fall in love with you.”
I blinked, taken aback by the bald honesty in his words. My throat burned with terror and fury and all the accusations I longed to throw at him. But the words dried up on my tongue.
A blur of movement drew my attention, and I turned to see a female with golden hair sprinting down the embankment from the fortress.
My heart sank to my knees. It was Sorsha.
The princess practically threw herself down the rocky slope in her haste to reach us, her brows knitted with worry.
“What happened?” she cried once she was within earshot. “Where is he?”
My stomach twisted, and my gaze flicked to Adriel. But the royal guard simply turned his back on Sorsha, glaring out at the raging sea. His wings fanned out behind him like a wall, and I could practically feel Sorsha’s fury at being ignored .
She looked to me, and that knot of dread in my stomach wound tighter. It took me several tries to unstick my throat, but the way her face fell told me she already knew.
When I finally spoke, my voice sounded as though it had been dragged over broken glass. “He’s in Dorthus,” I managed. “Semphrys knows.”
You’ve reached the end of A Prince of Death and Night , but you can now preorder book three, A King of Souls and Flame .