Chapter 23 #2
I cut her a look. None of this makes any sense. Soraya tried to kill me and allowed Zemira to take the fall for her actions. Every time I’ve seen them, one of them has been trying to murder the other, and yet there’s a connection between them I can’t deny.
Keep her safe for me….
Goddess’ breath, the things I do for this woman.
I cut my wrist with a swift jerk of my knife and then bring her lips to my skin. “Drink.”
Soraya jerks her mouth away. “Thanks, but—”
I shove her face against my wrist. “I wasn’t asking. Drink. I need you on your feet so I can go after your sister.”
Soraya gasps as my blood hits her system. Warmth and color spreads through her skin as if my magic heals her inch by inch. Tugging my hand free, I swiftly seal the cut with a hint of magic.
“You stupid fool.” She laughs under her breath as her head sinks back on the heather. A single tear glints in her eye before she blinks it away. “You love her, don’t you? You still love her, even after everything….”
I haul her to her feet, where she trembles against me.
She’s healed, but that doesn’t mean she’s going to be putting a knife through anyone anytime soon. Even my blood has its limits.
“You can’t have her,” she whispers.
The dragon within me bares its teeth. “Watch me.”
I swing her up into my arms. She’s pathetically weak, but she grabs a fistful of my shirt and if she had a knife, it would be at my throat. It stills the rage. There’s a wariness in her actions that reminds me of Mira.
Tough armored shells.
Careless attitudes.
A yearning neither of them can quite hide.
In that they could be twins.
“No.” Soraya bites her lip. “Father will kill her the second he realizes you want her. He’ll snuff her light, her soul, all so that he can deny you.
He’ll do it to hurt you. He won’t even spare her a thought.
You can’t love her. You can’t have her. Because you will cost her everything.
I know what you are, but you can’t have her. ”
Stillness radiates through me. I know Zemira is bound to her father’s will. It’s my one eternal frustration: that she can never simply cast off the yoke of his demands.
But….
“What do you mean, he will snuff her soul?”
Soraya’s shoulders sink. “He cuts our souls from us the second we’re born and wears them in a soul-trap around his neck.
He has hundreds of them. Thousands. If he thinks she’s betrayed him, then he’ll crush her soul-trap and kill her instantly.
” Those hard black eyes meet mine. “He promised her that if she brought him the Dragon’s Heart, then he would return her soul.
She’d be free of him, free from our court. ”
The words expand within me, leaving me breathless. When Soraya stole the amulet, I thought little of it—just another fae king or prince making a power play.
But Zemira knew the truth.
She knew it was never the amulet.
And all she had to do to save herself was betray my secret.
But she clearly kept it instead.
It changes everything. It all finally makes sense. And even though there’s a heavy weight inside my chest, I can’t help feeling a little breathless.
Zemira never wanted to betray me. She’s warned me a hundred times. Don’t fall in love with me. I will betray you. I will always betray you.
I always wondered what sort of hold he had on her.
And now I know.
Now I know what the transaction will be.
“I didn’t think you would care,” I tell Soraya quietly. “She told me about the final test. She said you betrayed her. You left her behind to die.”
Soraya looks away. “You don’t know my sister.
I was the one holding her back. I knew she’d stay with me physically.
I knew I was slowing her down. And when she slipped and was hanging off that cliff…
. She can punch into shadows. All she had to do was let me go and she would make it to the finish line.
But she had to let me go first. She had to let me go. ”
“So you let her believe you left her to die?”
Soraya’s lashes lift, revealing eyes as bleak and hard as obsidian. “Love is a weakness. Love will get you killed. I finally understood that.”
And now I understand it too. “We would do anything for love. Despite the cost.”
I slowly set her down. Soraya grabs my arm. “What are you planning to do?”
“What makes you think I’m planning anything?”
“You have that look in your eye,” she retorts. “Don’t do it. Whatever you’re planning, don’t do it. You’ll kill her.”
“You’ve got it wrong.” Maybe it’s reckless, but I can’t help smiling at her. “I’m a dragon. We don’t let go once we’ve found something we want. Now I just have to find something he wants.”
I set a finger to her nose, drawing on the enormous well of power that binds me to these lands.
Soraya opens her mouth to argue, leaves swirling around her and lacing in her dark hair—
Freeze. I breathe power into the world.
Everything comes to a standpoint.
The leaves hover in the air.
The wind stops.
Soraya stands mute, frozen in motion.
Time is a held breath, pressure building and building, like a set of lungs forced to endure. I have minutes at best before the structure of the world starts to strain at its bindings. Once I walked through time with the ease of a master, but now, all I have left is this…. Stolen minutes.
I sense half a dozen others turning toward me from wherever they stand, curious to know who has wrought such a working of power. Even the fae will sense it when I restart time. They will sense it, and they will wonder.
“I am done hiding,” I whisper into the world, and my power carries those words across courts and kingdoms. “I have found my true mate. Don’t interfere.”
Their minds brush against me, curious and distant, and then, one by one, all six of them turn away.
They will not interfere.
But Asmeroth leaves me one last parting note. “You risk us all with this decision. They will sense the truth.”
I risk nothing I’m not willing to pay.
I am Enkeirammon.
King of kings.
Heir to a throne that no longer exists.
And I have finally found the treasure I’ve spent my entire lifetime searching for.
Nothing is going to stop me from having it.
Tearing apart time and space, I step Between, and then I’m standing in front of a polished mahogany box bound in gold.
Zemira thought she’d secured the horn.
And maybe she did, because I can still hear it singing her sweet tune.
But now I’m going to take it.
I’m going to take it all.
But first, I have to let her go.
* * *
ZEMIRA
“Who I am?” Of all the things I expected, it wasn’t this. I spread my hands wide. “I’m Merisel of Greenslieves, the beloved betrothed of Prince K—”
“You’re wraithenborn,” Falion says, his lip curling.
“With fae magic in your veins. You’re an impossibility.
You should never have been bred. And I’m fairly certain that plump little fae woman that’s currently devouring her way through the platters in your sitting room is the real Lady Merisel.
But you….” He takes a dangerous step toward me, making me regret the impulse to sheathe the knife. “You are an abomination.”
The words strike me where they hadn’t been able to hit earlier. “Like I had any choice in the matter. I was born into this body. I didn’t choose it.”
“Who is your father?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“It’s Raesh, isn’t it?” Every step he takes is tight with menace, but it’s the unsettling intensity in his eyes that unnerves me.
I don’t know what he wants.
I don’t know why he’s looking at me like that—like he’s one step short of violence—but this is personal for him, somehow.
He’s a Shadow Walker.
A gift granted to me by my mother.
And she was…. She was…. The heat bleeds out of my face. It’s impossible, but then fae magic tends to run through family bloodlines.
“Answer me,” he snaps. “Your father is Raesh Ghul, the King Beyond the Shadowfangs, isn’t he?”
“What do I get if I say yes?” I drown my sudden terror in a smirk. “A sweetmeat?”
His thumb rasps over the hilt sheathed at his hip. “Maybe I don’t kill you.”
“Maybe you can’t,” I taunt. “You seem to be having some difficulty killing wraithenborn today, considering my sister is walking free.”
Oh, yes, he’s definitely still feeling the weight of losing to Soraya.
We circle each other, and he chokes down the emotion lighting bonfires in his eyes. “Who was your mother?”
It’s an old hurt, but it lances through me like an arrow to the chest. “I don’t know.”
“I overheard Keir call you Zemira,” he says, sauntering toward me nonchalantly despite the wraith blood dripping from his knife. “What’s your real name?”
“You want my name?” I blurt. He’s got to be joking. My father’s the only one who knows my three names, and the giving of such a gift is merely another manacle to shackle myself with.
“Did your mother name you?” Falion demands.
“That’s none of your business.”
“No?” He gives me an evil smile as he spreads his hands. “You walk the shadows. There’s only one fae bloodline that can do that.”
“Two,” I point out. “The Court of Shadows and the Court of the Moon and Stars.”
“One,” he says coldly. “The Court of Shadows took one of our Shadow Walker’s as queen long ago, but her bloodline has long-since died out. I would know. My people kept immaculate records. You shouldn’t exist.”
And then he disappears.
I’m so used to being the only one who can do that, that I hesitate a fraction of a moment too long. Idiot. I spin, driving my knife toward where I expect him to appear, but it merely cuts through the air harmlessly.
Instead, something swipes across the back of my calf.
I scream as I fall, my shadow bleeding across the floor in some amorphous shape. He didn’t cut me. He cut through my shadow, and now it’s untethered and leaves me feeling dizzy.
“You wraithblighted asshole,” I growl.
Falion suddenly reappears, flipping his dagger from hilt to blade and back again as he circles me. “You’re a Shadow Walker,” he confirms, “but you barely know the basics. You’re barely a baby.”