Chapter 47
KAELERON
“Would you keep still?” Arianell muttered as she wove patterns in the air while paddling her feet in the stream.
“You might as well ask me to stop breathing,” I snapped and her head rose, turning towards me, her silvery eyebrows lifting high on her forehead.
“Is that something I can request?”
I bared fangs at her and paced back towards the trees, battling the dark and crushing need to go to Saphira.
My little wolf would be mad at me if I did, just as I was mad at her for running off like that, slipping my grasp to leave me here alone with the dragon and tormenting thoughts of what might be happening to her.
“I need to go to her,” I muttered.
And once again, Arianell said, “You cannot go to her. If you do, you will die.”
She had had a vision when I had come hurtling back from the glade, clutching Saphira’s holster of throwing knives, the only thing I had manage to grab in my desperate lunge to keep hold of her.
“I cannot stay here.” I paced back towards the stream, the restless and fearful feeling that beat within me hammering at my soul, demanding I go to her.
Arianell huffed and pushed onto her feet, and dusted her backside down, and her frost blue eyes glowed with pale fire as she looked at me, going deathly still.
“Arianell?” I shifted course, striding towards her, because I knew that look. “Another vision?”
She blinked and her eyes were normal again.
“Do not resist,” she whispered.
“Do not resist what? My need to go to her?” I reached for her.
She stumbled backwards and twisted away from me. “I need to fly.”
“No. Answer my question. Do not resist what?” I kicked off, lunging for her, but it was useless.
She shifted into a great silver dragon and beat her wings, sending a powerful wave of wind at me that knocked me back as she launched into the sky.
Slipping beyond my reach.
“Do not resist what?” I muttered to her retreating form.
It could not be my need to go to Saphira, because she had told me time and again I had to remain where I was or I would die and Saphira would die too.
I stalked to the letters that taunted me, hastily sifting through them, reading one after the other, growling as they refused to tell me anything new. I stuffed them back into the satchel and cast it towards the tree, where it landed in a hollow near the roots.
Had Saphira had better luck? Had she found the information she had gone looking for?
Or had something happened to her?
It had been hours since she had left me. Hours.
It was a miracle of the Great Mother I had managed to remain here so long, but I could not remain here any longer.
I needed to go to her.
The air shifted.
Magic being used.
Saphira.
I pivoted on my heel.
But it was not Saphira standing where Arianell had been just moments ago.
It was a snivelling young fae male and a group of three dozen guards.
A cold grin stretched my lips.
“Well, well, well,” I purred as I let my claws out. “Come to die, little prince?”
He laughed, throwing his head back, so brazen in the face of me as he rested his hand on the hilt of his golden sword.
As if I was no threat to him.
I reached for my shadows.
And found nothing.
Lorien grinned right back at me. “Something the matter, Wrathful King?”
A ward.
Someone had cast a powerful ward and I had been too swept up in my worry for Saphira that I had failed to notice it happening.
No matter.
I kicked off, grinning as I crossed the small distance between us, and Lorien was quick to react, seizing hold of a guard and thrusting him between us, buying himself time to draw his sword as I cut the male down, slashing his throat with my claws.
The rest of the males swarmed me at the same time as Lorien lunged towards me, and I sprang backwards as he leaped over the fallen male bleeding out on the grass, staining the green blades crimson.
I blocked each blow they swung at me, knocking their arms with my hand or forearm, slashing at them when I saw an opening.
I could not block them all. As I grabbed hold of one of the males, sinking my claws deep into his arm to haul him closer to me, Lorien’s blade sliced down my back.
I arched towards the male at the first sting, ensuring the cut was shallow and would heal quickly without hampering me, and spun towards Lorien, hurling the guard at him.
They fell in a heap of tangled limbs on the ground.
Several guards hurried to help Lorien as I stalked towards him, punching and kicking anyone who dared get too close to me, and viciously cutting down any fool who thought to block my path.
“Lift this ward and let us find out who is stronger, little prince.” I rolled my shoulders, grinning at him. “Or are you afraid to face me without hampering my power because you know you are no match for me?”
His cheeks mottled and he shoved the guards who had been helping him away. “Get off me. I can pick myself up.”
“So easy to provoke.” My grin stretched wider, turning mocking. “So easy for that steward to pull on your strings like the puppet you are.”
“I am not a puppet!” Lorien snapped and was before me in a flash, but not quick enough that my trained eye failed to track him.
I sidestepped as he reached me, his sword punching forwards into the gut of the soldier who had been coming up behind me, and brought my elbow down hard as his momentum carried him forwards, sending him careening past me into the guard.
It slammed into his spine, ripping a delicious yelp from him as he went down, taking the guard he had skewered with him.
Blood burst from the wound he had inflicted on the male, spraying across Lorien’s gold tunic jacket.
I swiftly calculated the positions of every male around me, charting them so I could take them down one by one, starting with this prick in front of me.
None would be left standing.
I could not afford it. If I left one of them alive, word would reach the castle that I was in the Summer Court, and my own court would pay for it.
If this male had not already alerted the steward.
He teleported this time, revealing he still had access to his magic, and I was ready for him.
But three guards attacked me at the same time.
It was impossible to block all of them as they came at me from different angles, but I managed to avoid Lorien’s blade as it cut downwards through the air, leaning out of its path as I elbowed the guard behind me with enough force to break his nose and reached my other hand forwards.
I curled it around the cross-guard of Lorien’s sword and yanked the male closer as I brought my head forwards, cracking my forehead off his.
We both grunted as we collided, pain splintering across my skull.
Lorien gripped his head and growled, “By the goddess, someone seize him!”
Seize me?
The male meant to capture me.
Another male swung at me, and I had not killed enough of them to even things out, but I would.
I would not let them take me.
Arianell’s words rang in my mind.
Do not resist.
I growled as it dawned on me that this was what she had seen and why she had been so quick to depart.
It went against every instinct, against every fibre of my being, but I pulled my punches, making a show of fighting off the guards, cutting instead of killing, and when victory shone in Lorien’s eyes, I let the little prick deal a blow to me, his fist slamming into my face when I failed to block him.
The force of it toppling me.
He grinned down at me as he loomed over me while his guards poured on top of me, weighing me down and pinning me as I struggled, and I silently vowed I would kill him one day. He would die for touching my little wolf.
The guards flipped me onto my front and cold, heavy steel shackles bit into my wrists, fastening them behind my back before they hauled me up by them, forcing me to stand.
I stared Lorien down.
“Not so tough, are you?” He shoved the tip of his sword beneath my chin, making me tilt it up or risk being cut, a show of power he would regret when I was slowly carving him into pieces with my own blade.
“If it were up to me, I would gut you where you stand. But law dictates you must be publicly tried for your crime of breaking the accord before I execute you… and that little bitch of yours.”
Saphira.
I snarled and lunged forwards, snapping fangs right in his face.
He jerked backwards, his sword falling from his trembling grip, and when the guards saw his weakness, how afraid he was of me despite the fact I was chained with steel and bound by a ward, he backhanded the nearest one, sneering at him.
“How dare you knock my sword from my hand? Pick it up.”
The guard followed the order without question, without rebuke, and none of the others looked inclined to disagree with him or call him on his lie.
They feared him.
Or perhaps they feared his master.
He sheathed the sword as soon as it was handed to him and took hold of my arm, marching me from the forest, across the fields and through the town, shoving me at times, whenever people stopped to stare.
“It was so easy to use my invisibility to track your little bitch and spy on her,” he gloated as he pushed me in front of him, under the arched gatehouse of the castle, and I bared my fangs at him in a warning he did not heed.
“I saw you with her, and I arranged a little treat for you… a ward that would weaken you. I had hoped to catch you together, but when Sylvan sees what I have done, when he knows that she is nothing but a whore for the Wrathful King, he will reward me just the same.”
Saphira.
Goddess, I hoped she was safe.
The guards at the steps that led downwards into the bowels of the castle moved aside, opening the ancient wooden doors for us as we approached.
Lorien shoved me forwards and I almost lost my footing on the slippery stone steps.
I reached for my shadows again as the light gave way to darkness, grinning as I thought about using them to tear Lorien to shreds, but they were still blocked to me.
The musty damp air held a familiar note to it.
My eyes widened as I recognised it, as I reached the stone floor of the dungeon and saw her.
“Saphira,” I whispered.
Lorien laughed, the mocking sound of it ringing through the chilly room as he spotted her huddled in the corner of a cell, holding her knees to her chest, her bare skin littered with dirt and cuts as she lifted bleak blue eyes to me.
He shoved me into the cell next to hers, the shackles I had not noticed him unlocking falling from my wrists as she shot to her feet, uncaring of her nudity, and raced towards us, a feral snarl pealing from her lips as she shifted into a white wolf.
She attacked the bars near Lorien, a wild thing as she bit and bashed against them, trying to wriggle through the narrow gap to get at him.
Lorien calmly closed the door of my cell, his eyes moving between me and her.
And then he crouched before her, his grin as mocking as his laughter had been as she desperately tried to reach him and sink her fangs into him.
“I tell you what… because you are my sister, I shall do you one small favour. I shall make sure you live long enough to see him die by my hand, knowing it will be you next.”