77. RE
The moment the queen barged into my war tent with Folquin, I knew something was terribly wrong.
Auren was nowhere to be seen.
The sun had yet to crest the mountains. Shadows still slunk through the camp.
And my mate was missing.
Corinne moved with urgency, striding toward me, her robes billowing behind her.
“Where is she?” I growled, taking the queen by the arms the moment she stepped within reach.
“She is safe,” Corinne breathed, flinching under my stern grip. “She is with my Dionach and two others.”
I surveyed her. Not a scratch, not a blemish. She was unscathed. “Why isn’t she with you? What the fuck happened? Your message said you found the king!”
Corinne’s brows pinched. “What?! I never sent a message. I had a vision. I saw Auren being pulled across The Veil by someone who wasn’t what he seemed, and then I saw a woman in black waiting in the trees.
By the time I found Auren, Skadi was already there.
She . . . she had the king . . . and Auren’s brother. ”
Oh gods . . .
I searched her eyes, watched them line with tears as she said, “The king is dead.” Her jaw quivered. “And . . . Auren’s brother was killed in front of her.”
Anger and devastation cascaded through me. My blood boiled in my veins. Shadows spun out from behind my shoulders, snapping at the air around me. A few of the guards nearby jumped back to avoid an unintentional lashing.
“Who was it?” I asked, my voice lethally low. “Who killed her brother?”
“He said his name was Killian. He was a shifter.”
“Was?”
She lifted her chin. “Auren drove an iron dagger into his heart.”
I couldn’t tell if the words brought me relief or added to my fear. What had this done to Auren? Seeing her brother murdered before her eyes after her parents had been slain in a similar way . . .
An experience like that can drive someone in one of two directions. It can lead to cold, calculated revenge, or it can trigger blind rage—effective, but dangerous because it overrides one’s ability to anticipate what comes next.
If she’d descended into blind rage . . .
Fuck. Fuck!
“Why isn’t she here?”
“Skadi got a hold of her. I offered the amulet in her stead, but the goddess wasn’t going to follow through with the trade, so one of the Dionachs stabbed her with a poisoned dagger.
We got Auren, but Skadi brought forth one of her shadow creatures, and we were taken by surprise.
It was immune to the Dionach’s weapons. I-I’ve never seen a creature like it.
Then, a shaggy-haired, black thing that looked like a giant wolf came out of the forest. It fought the shadow being, and killed it, but . . .”
That word “but” . . . It made my heart drop to my feet.
“Auren was wounded, and so was the wolf—who was actually a fae—”
I stopped hearing the rest of her words. The breath vacated my lungs. For a moment, I was skin and bone and nothing more. I was hollowed out.
My vision tunneled.
Auren was wounded. Wounded.
And I was here, in my fucking war tent. Doing nothing.
“She is safe, Niall,” the queen continued. “She took herself and the others to a place here in the mountains. Some place she claimed could heal her. I came here to deliver the news as quickly as I could.”
The wraith’s cave. She was at the wraith’s cave—
“Um, do you mind . . .” Corinne glanced down at her arms, where my hands were still squeezing them with a painfully tight grip.
I released her and tried to find my breath and collect my thoughts.
I knew better than to trust that message. I shouldn’t have let Auren go. I should have foreseen this happening. She was hurt. She could have died. I needed to get to the cave. I needed to know she was all right—
Auren? I yelled down the bond. Auren, talk to me, are you—
Niall!? her voice echoed back.
Relief washed over me, so potent and overwhelming that I doubled over, catching myself with my hands on my knees.
Niall, I’m here! I’m all right!
Are you hurt? Where are you?
I’m fine. Stronger than ever, actually. We’re on our way to you.
Hurry, I said.
I closed my eyes, willing myself to calm down, calling my shadows back to me. When I felt my heartbeat settle enough to allow me to speak in a more respectful manner, I lifted my head. “Who did you say was with her?”
Before the queen could answer, there was a commotion behind me. I whirled just as Auren’s arms flew around my neck and her body crashed into mine.
I wrapped her in my embrace, and my hand slid into her hair, cradling her head to my chest. “Fucking hell,” I whispered. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.”
Gods, if I had lost this woman, this looming war would be the last of the world’s worries.
She hugged me tighter, with what I swore was more physical strength than she’d ever possessed before. When she pulled away, I noticed that even her skin seemed brighter.
“Are you—”
“Killian’s dead,” she blurted out. “And Skadi—she—she has the amulet! Well, the queen had it, and then gave it to Skadi, and—”
“It’s all right.”
“No! No, it’s not all right! If she has it, that means—”
“Auren!” I took her face in my hands. “The amulet was a fake. It wasn’t real.”
“W-What?”
“It was a decoy, in case things went wrong. I gave it to the queen for safekeeping after Fallon had a vision.”
“A decoy? But . . . I felt it. I felt your power attached to it.”
“That’s because it was originally a locket. I tucked a sliver of shadow inside it before we closed it up and resurfaced the exterior to look like the stone.”
Her jaw opened in disbelief. “So, Skadi would sense your power—the same power as her father’s—and think it was the real thing . . .”
“Precisely.” I scanned her body, noting her shredded vest and shirt. My hands immediately went to it, lifting the fabric and searching for wounds that . . . weren’t there. “Tell me what happened.”
“I barely escaped her shadows. They were like knives. I—I thought I was going to bleed out. But the water healed me.”
“So it really can heal?”
“Yes. Even if you’re on the brink of death.”
I stiffened.
Sensing my panic, she grabbed my hand. “I wasn’t referring to myself. I was referring to him.” She stepped aside, giving me a clear view of who stood in the center of the room.
There, shirtless, with soaked hair and pants, and . . . newly shrouded, stood Breck, with two Dionach’s at his side. If he had been on the brink of death, as Auren said, he sure didn’t look like it. But the freshly-inked marks on his chest confirmed that he’d nearly given everything.
“It wasn’t Breck that brought us that message,” she explained. “It was Killian. He poisoned Breck and became him in order to trick us. But Breck survived and tracked Killian, which led him to me. He shifted into a cù-sìth and saved us.”
I held Breck’s stare and let Auren’s words sink in.
It hadn’t been him in the tent.
And he was a shifter . . . apparently.
Most importantly, he had been willing to sacrifice himself for my mate.
I crossed the space to him and clasped him on the arm before pulling him into an embrace. “Thank you, Brother.” The words were muffled against his shoulder, but I repeated them in earnest. “Thank you.”
He tensed, taken aback by the gesture. But he embraced me as well. “I would do it over again, without question.”
I clapped a firm hand against his back. “And now you have the marks to show it. I bet Syros was wondering what the hell he’d walked into.”
“Those were almost his exact words,” Auren said, grinning.
“What was that place anyway?” Breck asked.
“That is a story for another time,” I replied as I stepped back and turned my focus to the two winged beings standing on either side of us.
“Oh!” Auren gripped the arm of the Dionach with the black wings and brown hair. “Niall, this is Weston.”
Weston. The male who had been assigned to Auren at the castle during her stay. The male who’d gotten her out when everything had gone wrong.
I extended an arm to him. “I’ve heard a lot about you, Weston. And you have my thanks as well. Not only for today, but for getting Auren out of the castle.”
“It was my honor,” he said, clasping my forearm the way Vanir and I greeted each other.
“And this . . .” Auren moved to the other side of Breck. “Is—” She halted her words as she looked back at me.
I felt the blood drain from my face. My stomach hollowed out at the sight of the Dionach.
“Niall? What’s wrong?”
“It . . . can’t be . . .” I whispered.
I didn’t understand it, but the Dionach’s face . . . the same long, auburn hair . . . I’d seen him before. Always in my nightmares. Always on the battlefield. Always in pain.
In my nightmares, he didn’t have wings. And he was never this calm or quiet.
Each time, he was charging into battle, twin swords in his hands, roaring at the top of his lungs.
Then, he would fall to his knees, asking my forgiveness, succumbing to his wound—a hole in his chest, a spear straight through the heart.
To see him standing in front of me in a different context was strange.
He was real. Whole.
The way he was staring at me was eerily similar to how Remic and Silas regarded Auren. Like there was a duty to uphold. A reverence . . .
I was . . . his charge.
No. It couldn’t be. I couldn’t be.
I didn’t want to believe it, nor did I want to come to terms with the fact that I’d dreamt of his death.
But in my heart, I somehow knew that he was here for me.
There was a link there, a gods-forged bond that I suddenly recognized.
It was an intuitive knowing, a feeling of clarity.
And it was becoming more prominent by the minute.
“What’s wrong?” Auren repeated as she looked back and forth between the newest Dionach and me. A moment later, she gasped, undoubtedly realizing what I was silently grappling with.
She turned to the Dionach. “Niall is your Dionam . . .” It was more of a statement than a question.
Regardless of its delivery, he didn’t answer her. He simply stared in shock for a moment longer, then dipped his chin in my direction and introduced himself. “My name is Saxon.”