Chapter 54 #3
Oberon was there beside me, grinning coldly at Elduin as he protected me with his own power, shielding my mind and those of our allies, rendering us immune to Elduin’s power.
Freeing me to deliver my final blow to the high king.
I advanced a step towards him, my tone cold and hard, edged with the strength of my intent and resolve.
“You asked me to decide what I shall call Saphira.”
I took another step in his direction.
“I have decided upon the word I shall use for her.”
Another step and this time my shadows rose, clinging to my shoulders like a black cloak.
“Queen.”
Those shadows swirled around her too, forming a crown atop her head as she came to face me and Elduin.
“I name her Queen of the Shadow Court.”
Elduin battered my mind and then hers, the way she flinched as he attempted to pass the barrier Oberon had raised around our minds to protect us telling me he had chosen to attack her.
When he failed to breach that barrier, he barked, “The word you have chosen is war.”
“War?” I chuckled and regally waved towards his side and then mine. “I think you overestimate your position, Elduin.”
Rhyn stepped forwards. “If Ereborne goes to war with the Shadow Court, they will face the Winter Court too. I suggest you think very carefully about whether you could fight a war against all the courts.”
“All the courts?” Elduin scoffed and looked over his shoulder.
At where Kalyn had been.
“Your staunchest ally left soon after he heard you sent a seelie assassin into an unseelie court.” I grinned at him as horror danced across his features, as he turned a panic look on his guards who refused to look at him, and then his daughter who stood defiant, darkness painted across her face.
“No court will side with you, not once they are shown the evidence of your betrayal and misdeeds. It is over, Elduin.”
He turned wild eyes on me. “Good luck to you and your seelie queen. The Shadow Court will not accept the enemy sitting upon their throne, not when so many in Belkarthen lost their lives to her kind—to her bloodline.”
Saphira tensed and I glanced at her to check on her, driven to reassure her that my court would accept her as their queen and that many among them loved her already.
The dark claws digging into that barrier around my mind disappeared.
A feral snarl pealed from my lips as I turned back towards Elduin.
The bastard was gone.
His warriors disappeared with him.
I looked at the fleet, preparing to teleport after him, consumed with a need to make him pay for attempting to sow doubt into Saphira’s mind and heart with his words when he had failed to breach them with his power to manipulate the path of her thoughts that way.
Oberon appeared before me, one hand pressed to my chest, his expression as dark as night. “This is my fight—my vengeance—and I will not let you take it from me.”
He was gone before I could stop him.
Vaeleryn crossed the patio to Saphira and laid her right hand on her chest, startling my little wolf who tried to break contact with her. Only the onyx-haired female seized her arm with her other hand, holding her in place as she spoke.
“The fires of your fae heart are small, but strong, and the tale goes that while all of Lucia were born of one heart—her heart—that only the unseelie were fed the Sacred Milk.” She looked over her shoulder at me.
“Take her to that place and ask the Great Mother which heart the wolf who spilled seelie blood to be with her unseelie mate should have.”
I knew Vaeleryn could sense things through touch, one of the reasons I had always been careful to avoid contact with her, and one of the reasons she had led a lonely existence, many in her court afraid to touch her.
And I knew what Neve had seen for Saphira, and what Arianell had witnessed in her own visions for me and my little wolf.
And what Saphira herself had seen in her dreams.
I had heard from her own lips that she felt a strong connection to the land, and that she had been shown things that led her towards the place Vaeleryn had mentioned.
Lucia was guiding Saphira.
Everything told me her journey was not yet done, that what Vaeleryn asked me to do had to come to pass for Saphira to become all the Great Mother believed she could be.
But I found I could not risk her.
I found I was too afraid to lose her.
I did not get a chance to refuse that plea in Saphira’s eyes as they shifted to me or check on my sister to comfort her, because bells rang out across Falkyr.
For a dreadful moment, I feared Elduin was attacking, but the ships had not moved position and the cannons had not been fired.
A messenger ran towards me from the direction of the town, his chest heaving and his face drawn, stained with blood.
“Arran.” Jenavyr moved past me, her silver eyes widening as she raked them over him, and then narrowing, and I sensed the unease in her before she even looked at me. She knew this male. Which meant he served under her. She turned back to him, her tone soft but commanding. “What happened?”
His panicked, stricken gaze darted from her to me, and he lifted a hand slick with blood and pressed it to his chest as he bowed his head.
“Seelie have breached the western border.”