Chapter 65
P ower, great considerable power, smelling of the first breath of winter, thrummed around them. Crisp, clean air and frost entwined with the earthy scent of woodsmoke and evergreens. Evoking memories of her father’s embrace. Of her mother’s kiss like the winter breeze.
Alora was on her back. Garrik had toppled over her and jumped to his feet.
The impenetrable wall— they were on the other side of it.
Then Thalon was too. Aiden. Jade. Ghost and Storm and Ezander—healed. Completely healed.
Garrik helped Alora to her feet, both surveying the Wall.
A lethal calm swept over Miwa’s face. She stepped inside the opening, brushing her hand along the ice closing behind her. Those amber eyes flashed from Alora to Garrik. Her face fell ashen at the sight of him. “You shouldn’t be here.” That calm snapped, and she snarled like a slap to his face, “ You shouldn’t be here. ”
Alora stepped away when the ground pulsed. When it breathed. Beneath their feet, like lungs expanding and retracting, like ripples in a lake.
Miwa cursed, and then she started shaking.
Garrik had his sword extended. Thalon scanned the hills—bright with melting snow and grass in the distance—while Jade readied her daggers with Aiden by her side.
And Ezander… He was looking at his hands. Flexing them like he’d never seen them before. Confusion arranged with a touch of wonder covered his face when the ground pulsed again. Only that wasn’t a pulse. The earth wasn’t truly alive.
Those weren’t natural-born tremors.
Those were?—
Not one of them didn’t gape. Staring into the beautiful faces of seven white lions.
All monstrous and thickly muscled, with glistening snowy fur and even brighter manes. And as the center one stepped forward, sharp teeth snarling under its curled lip, Alora glimpsed its rider.
Her half-shaved white hair was flipped majestically to one side, disturbed by a chilling wind. Ice-blue eyes burned into Alora, adorned in white-gold armor and a fluttering white cloak.
Scorching breath stood the hair on the back of Alora’s neck on end. Garrik angled his head to her and went wide-eyed.
Behind her …
The wolf … from the Cullings, the Hunt … standing as tall and lethal as those lions, prowled forward.
“Tell your pup to stand down and surrender your weapons,” the leader, she presumed, called across the snow. Her lion’s rumbling growl echoed along with it.
Outnumbered. They were very outnumbered.
“Ezander,” Garrik warned.
The wolf— Ezander —lowered his head, teeth fully bared as fur fluttered off him like leaves in a gentle wind. Golden hair and flaxen-flecked eyes of a High Fae male stared back at them. And Alora decided, when given the chance, she’d question the princeling about this hidden power that now returned him to his born form, wearing the battle leathers that Miwa had provided outside the tunnels.
Ezander inclined his head at Garrik, who turned to the lions, the female, and the riders.
“Your weapons.”
Alora was the first to drop hers but concealed Soulstryker inside her jacket. Reluctantly followed by the rest.
The leader made some sort of signal.
Garrik ground his teeth, his eyes swirled with oblivion as they stomped forward, pulsing the earth. Spears pointed, but with the lions, their weapons were superfluous. Even so, they nudged the sharpened ends near their throats and gestured forward to the hills.
“Where are you taking us?” Garrik demanded, taking Alora’s hand, not sheltering her. Standing as an equal force. Both strong and powerful by each other’s side.
Wintry armor glistened, accentuating the roaring lion at the center of the leader’s chest as she answered with a smirk, “To Their Majesties, the king and queen.”
They secured Garrik in chains.
She couldn’t blame them. With the way her mate released an endless growl, sharper than those of the lions, he was the true threat.
Alora’s back felt like needles stabbed her muscles from sleeping in the cave, but she managed to shove that iron rod in her spine, chin lifted like Garrik’s, as Dellisaerin’s soldiers led them over melting snow and hills to a castle half-carved of whitestone and clear quartz.
In the sky, dancing prisms burst as the morning sunlight reflected off the castle. Something Alora imagined the lower city of round-logged buildings and townhouses certainly enjoyed at the first taste of dawn.
Alora wanted to gape at it all, the sheer splendor mystifying her, its beauty and the scents of pines, the sounds of Dellisaerin’s faeries laughing. But as they crossed a whitestone bridge over a glistening river so blue it shone like the gemstones of her eyes, Alora couldn’t. Not when those ancient tremendous crystal doors opened and they were led into another prison to await the monarchs that no one had seen in half a millennium.
Up, up, up, high within the polished pale stones carved like crumpled parchment, they climbed. Over staircases flanked by white lion sculptures and vases of sage, northlight, coleus, and small evergreens. Beams of sunlight from windows painted the stones in an icy-blue hue as the air became crisper, lighter, and the subtle scent of minerals, purity, and peace stood as a stark contrast to any winter Alora had ever suffered through.
Her hands didn’t shake when they stood at the top of the final staircase, looking inside a vast throne room upheld by monstrous white pillars and basking in the tranquility of infinity pools leading out over open-walled balconies touching rotundus clouds. Noting the ripples in the waters from lion cubs lapping and the reflection of glimmering chandeliers of diamonds and sapphires, Alora studied the silver and blue rugs lining the path to the long end of the room.
She brushed her hand along the shackle covering Garrik’s scars before taking his hand. Garrik offered her a strong nod before stepping down into the throne room together with their Shadow Order behind them.
You do not bow. You do not yield. You do not break. No matter what they faced. Alora forced her chin higher as if an obsidian-spiked crown sat upon her head and stared at the twin shimmering crystal thrones on a dais.
Excellent idea.
Alora whirled to Garrik. Where that gentle caress, that voice inside her mind, came from.
Through his locks, his obsidian crown rose. It was only then she noticed a disturbance on her head. A heaviness. Her eyesight narrowed when shadows tendriled in her mind. By Garrik’s gift, seeing not the room in front of her, but her face—her glowing white hair with a feminine likeness of Garrik’s crown raised on her head.
Sometime since the wall, her mate’s power had returned. His heart was safe.
With their family behind them and soldiers by their sides, Alora and Garrik settled at the base of the empty dais. Embers burning in her eyes, darkness gathered down her back, forming the same daunting cape as Garrik’s, and she realized what this meant. Why he draped her in shadows and not starfire.
Why he was the only one in shackles.
The Savage Prince—the powers he held. What he could do with his bare hands without his magic.
And when she looked at Garrik, at the silent ask to keep her power hidden, to allow him to be the focus, to be the target again over them all, Alora sent a flicker of love and starfire down their tether and reluctantly obliged him.
She imagined he would mist the shackles and chains into iron dust, but Garrik tolerated Dellisaerin’s meaningless sense of security and allowed them to remain.
Lethal awareness and caution gripped Thalon as he stood to Alora’s left, Ezander to Garrik’s right. But it was Aiden behind them, refusing to leave Jade’s side, who was the first to speak.
“They look like you,” he whispered, leaning close to Alora, speaking of the guards around them and murals painted on the ceiling and the few solid walls.
Aiden grunted when Jade elbowed his side. “Now is not the time, you fool.”
“He is right,” Garrik agreed, scanning Alora … her hair. “They do.” That look of confusion on his face pinched her nerves, but she didn’t have long to question it.
The soldiers formed a wall behind them, sealing off the only exit other than leaping into the sky.
Parting the sunlight, two startlingly beautiful High Fae ambled from the balcony behind the dais.
A stunning female with honey-brown skin and thick mounds of weaved curls atop her head was delicately led by the palm of a male of Alora’s complexion. With a light of pure affection and adoration in his bright topaz eyes, the male placed a kiss on her forehead before she draped herself elegantly on one throne.
Then he turned to them. A face of honor and fairness stared down. Strands of thick, long, silky white hair tickled his chest, swaying in the wind as he ran a hand through his neck-length, white beard cut perfectly on his strong jawline.
Older. They were much older than her. Perhaps a few years older than her parents would have been.
The king stepped forward. That look of love for his queen fell, scanning the blood and battle leathers, the shadows on her and her mate. His face drew taut; the topaz blue of his eyes darkened.
“Night Stalker,” the king’s ethereal voice flatly greeted, but it was in no way welcoming.
Alora felt Garrik stiffen. Stars, so did she.
He continued, “It is unlike you to betray the sanctuary of the Wall.”
Disbelief cracked through each of their faces as Miwa stepped forward from that barricade of soldiers. Her wings drawn tight as she bowed. “Your Majesty. I didn’t open the gate.” The female failed at keeping her nerves. Sweat lined her hairline, dripping beneath the dark cloak she wore. “We had no choice but to hide in the caves. Kadamar … Galdheir is rumored to be on its way.”
The king’s face remained viciously calm and regarded the obsidian crowns. “It would seem Galdheir is already here,” he said with enough bite that Alora imagined one of those lions devouring a kill.
“If I wished to harm anyone here, Nikolouse, I would have done so already.” Garrik lifted his hands. The shackles and chains clanked in the movement. Smokeshadows coiled around his arms. He cocked his head at the king, offering him a wicked smirk before those shackles misted into iron dust and the chains pooled on the whitestone.
Nikolouse seemed unaffected by Garrik’s display of superiority. He simply gestured to his soldiers, but Thalon stepped forward, balling his fists and teeth bared, eliciting a low growl from the king.
“Mind yourself, Guardian. Or strain alliances with Dellisaerin and the Keep.” Then the king spoke to Miwa. “Who opened the Wall?”
Alora didn’t give her the chance to speak and answered, “I did.” Though wasn’t certain how .
Thalon fell back in line, shoulder to shoulder with her.
The leader of the soldiers at the Wall slid between the dais and them. And Alora’s palms threatened to ignite with starflames the moment the female lifted a syringe to Garrik.
Garrik scoffed at the sight of it.
Alora didn’t harbor such amusement.
“You seem to lack sense, Nikolouse.” Smokeshadows curled around the female’s hand and burst the crystal, dripping the contents inside to the stones. “Though few are granted the courtesy, I shall reiterate. No harm is intended upon your kingdom. I simply wished to spend a moment worshiping my mate.” Aiden released a sound of disgust, but Garrik ignored it. “Only by Destiny did we find ourselves on your side of the ice.”
Nikolouse considered, then movement behind him stole his attention.
His queen leaned forward and sweetly said, “Nik.”
The king’s strong shoulders dropped a fraction. He deepened a breath, finding her glowing lime-green eyes. They didn’t part for long minutes. Alora wondered if they spoke to one another as she did down the silver tether when Nikolouse said, “Young lioness. I know all in my kingdom. Yet your face is unknown to me. You look to be three centuries old?”
Alora blinked.
Perhaps his queen spoke like she and Garrik did. Perhaps she convinced him to relent and abandon nulling her mate.
When she didn’t answer, the queen stood. Her gentle eyes scanned the battle leathers, the blood and dirt remaining where they hadn’t washed each other, and nodded as if to encourage Alora to speak.
“Somewhat passed three. Yes, Your Majesties.”
The queen glided down a step. “What is your name, lioness? Who is your family?”
“Alora,” she breathed. Her fingers began to ache.
Before she could pull at her fingertips, Garrik’s cold hand was in hers, as calming as it had ever been.
Sapphires swept beside her to Thalon, over her shoulder to Aiden and Jade, to Ezander beside Garrik before she met the green of the queens, and she proudly admitted, “They are my family.”
“A lioness claims a family of Ravens?” Nikolouse growled. His face contorted in disgust.
Jade snapped, “We are not Ravens.”
“No.” Thalon raised his head and smiled, baring his canines with pride. “We are Dragons.”
“Led by the High King’s wolf,” Nikolouse added flatly. He was still looking at Garrik with revulsion and hatred when he turned to Alora. Those roaring emotions simmered to disfavor when he surveyed her hair.
“School your face, king . The next time you look at my wife with displeasure and contempt, you will find the true beast I can be.” As if in emphasis, darkness gathered around Garrik’s shoulders. His veins marbled, skin tightened and paled, revealing razor-tipped teeth and sharp bones.
Garrik, Alora called to him, calmly.
By her soothing voice, that tender brush of her hand in his, he retracted those teeth and settled.
The king offered no apology but made the wise decision to forge his face anew. With caution, he stepped below his queen, inquiring, “Only Dellisaerin’s subjects can open the Wall. I called all white-haireds home when Magnelis usurped the realm. Did you not enjoy sanctuary here? Was life unburdened by his father not enough? Why did you leave?”
Subject? Alora shook her head, confused. “I’ve never lived here. I was born on the other side.”
That didn’t seem to please him. “Why did you not cross the Wall? Who is your family?”
Alora had the good sense to not repeat herself as last time. Instead, she responded, “My parents died when I was young. They never mentioned Dellisaerin.” A cold leather-covered arm slipped around her waist. She leaned into Garrik and added, “My mother was Nadeliene. I never knew my father’s name—they never spoke it. But he … he was an honorable male.” Tears lined her eyes. Her lips quivered. “The best father.”
Silence filled the throne room.
Nothing but wind and the yawns of stretching lion cubs filled the space.
Nikolouse accompanied his queen on the floor, cupping his hand in hers before they shared a critical glance. “He must have been if my sister renounced her claim to our father’s throne for the male.”
Alora backed away—until she hit Garrik’s freezing chest, until his arms were around her, holding her from crashing to the stones.
Not silence. Not echoing. But roaring filled her head.
Then heat. So much heat. Burning her palms, her face, everywhere her leathers touched.
She spun in Garrik’s embrace. Her knees almost buckled. “Is it—is it true?”
Something blisteringly wet slipped down her cheek. She couldn’t contain it.
Garrik’s eyes narrowed, and she knew he understood. Mere seconds passed. She barely heard him when he began speaking. “I see her.” He looked at Alora, eyes soft, broken with sorrow and grief. “Your mother. I see his memories of the female in your dreams.” His next words had her nearly falling to her knees. “What he says is true.”
In Garrik’s eyes, she saw the reflection of starflames growing. Saw Nikolouse pull his queen behind him.
Something was touching her face. Pulling her embered eyes to look into silver. Twisting them, turning his back to the king, Garrik pleaded, Clever girl, breathe. Please, breathe. Then his lips were moving.
She focused on them, on the way he was showing her how to breathe.
“That’s it. Another one. Again.”
Her lungs choked in life. Burning, cruel life.
“How didn’t we see … You … my stars. You resemble her. I see her in your face,” Nikolouse admitted, seemingly in shock as Garrik leveled him a glare.
Alora was still focusing on breathing. Doubting the words she’d heard.
The king and queen were wide-eyed, searching each other’s faces before Nikolouse spoke. “We have preserved her memory, her belongings, in the hope she would return. Come, niece, allow us to?—”
“Give her a fucking minute,” Garrik growled, thumbs rubbing her cheeks as she blinked and blinked and blinked. “She will go nowhere with you.” Alora, focus on me. My voice. On the way the air feels in your lungs.
Garrik , she sobbed. Calling his name as the only anchor. The only thing keeping her from bursting into flames.
I am here. Right here. Look at me—that’s it. Garrik deepened a breath. She did too.
“Alora is a white-haired,” the king barked. “She belongs with us.”
Starfire exploded from her shoulders. Alora pushed from Garrik’s embrace and surged forward, orbs of star-kissed flames as her fists. “I belong with him. Not in a kingdom that hides behind walls while Magnelis burns down cities and kills mothers and fathers ? — ”
“You will see we do much more than hide behind?—”
“I was speaking ,” Alora roared. And continued, “I don’t belong with a family who abandoned their princess because she fell in love and locked themselves in paradise while the entire realm suffers and starves.”
“At the hands of him,” Nikolouse pointed a damning finger at Garrik, and her blood heated. “You would remain with Magnelis’s savage beast instead of your family?”
“ He is my family ,” she reminded Nikolouse, snarling. “I would die for him. All of them. That should prove well enough he isn’t the savage you think him to be.” Alora inhaled slowly as starflames receded.
There wasn’t one face in the throne room that wasn’t radiating with shock besides their friends—family. Aiden’s smirk was cheerfully menacing. Jade appeared terrifyingly mesmerized by the flames, and Alora reminded herself to create her a new ring.
Sharing a pointed stare with her mate, Alora lifted her chin, her obsidian crown glinting from the chandeliers. “If you wish for me to remain, then as High Monarchs of Elysian, you will grant us the courtesy of an audience. Otherwise, open your Wall and we’ll tend to the needs of the realm while you bask in paradise and us in blood.” Shadow raged inside her mind, along with Garrik’s heated growl of approval.
She stood taller from it, like the Dragon she was.
Nikolouse said nothing.
It only boiled her blood more. “You believe His Highness to be Magnelis’s willing beast, yet do not truly understand the full extent of the High King’s cruelty and power. I commend you for protecting your kingdom, but you must understand, like your own example, it is our High Prince who shoulders the same burden for the entire realm.”
The king flicked a dismissive hand and retorted, “The High Prince. The gray-haired demon of Elysian. We may have a wall, but the rumors have bled through. How do slaughtering cities and turning the realm into mindless slaves prove he is anything but a monster for his father? When he deals in powers of shadow and darkness, laying waste with magic at a whim?—”
“He has infinite power yet remains docile at your feet. Show His Highness some starsdamned respect,” Thalon boomed. Eyes alit with holy flames. “If you are in allegiance with Tarrent-Garren Keep, then you know the gravity of when I say, by my Earned , if our High Prince is anything but what we say, I will lose my honor and be damned for eternity, never to resurrect in Glory.”
It was as if thunder cracked. A heavy pressure coated the room, enough to slice it with blades.
Revelation brightened those topaz eyes.
The queen lifted her head to her king. Then met Garrik, eyes soft as her gaze drifted to the leather scales covering his abdomen, then to his wrists. Garrik shifted uncomfortably under her examination before she extended a hand, but she hesitated to touch him. “I believe them, Nik. I can feel a great deal has happened to you, my nephew. Things that were not of your doing or will.” The green of her eyes raked to his hair, at the blood Alora couldn’t entirely wash clean. She turned to her king and said, “Quite recently, too. This is … his blood.”
Garrik didn’t speak.
The queen sweetly said, “MiraBelle was my dear cousin.”
Ezander shifted as the queen spoke of his mother, Kadamar’s late queen.
She continued, “I remember her letters, speaking of your mother. Of how much my cousin loved you as well as her own faelings.”
A muscle feathered in Garrik’s jaw.
Carefully, the queen hovered her hand in front of Garrik’s abdomen. “My gift whispers the truth in their words, Nik, as it senses terrible pain here.” And without seeking out the king’s permission, decided, “We will hear what you have to speak.” Then turned to her king. “But tomorrow. I can also sense he is moments from collapsing. No family of mine will endure another second without rest.”
The king’s unnerving scowl sobered. He hadn’t moved to silence his queen, only regarded her with reverence and respect. Not only allowing her to speak, but captivated by her. “Ah, Zemira, my mate. Your tender heart will be my undoing.”
Garrik’s mouth ghosted into a smile.
Alora caught it. What?
It seems the king and I have something in common. Only, I am already undone by my mate.
Velvety shadows brushed the inside of her mind, placing a tender kiss there for only them to see. And she decided, when given a moment, she would see just how undone she could make him.
Alora tightened her thighs.
This time, Garrik caught it and sent her an image of the last moment they were joined together, threatening her sanity—apparently, his too as he subtly adjusted his belt.
“High Prince.” Nikolouse snapped their attention to him. “My queen’s decision stands. We will grant you this small rarity and allow, along with our niece, you, and your outsiders to remain within the castle walls until Alora can prove with undeniable certainty your intentions.”
“Thank you, Nikolouse,” Alora said, eyes glimmering.
“Do not thank me yet, lioness. If he will not take the needle, he will be under guard.”
Garrik smirked. “I would not expect anything less, Your Majesty.”
Nikolouse frowned but gestured to his soldiers. “My sister’s wing has been vacant for centuries. Allow me the pleasure of her daughter bringing light there once again.” Then scanned their Shadow Order. “Guest quarters will be provided for your soldiers, under guard as well.”
But Alora hesitated. After the last kingdom, the last king… What if— Can we trust him?
His mind is sincere. He harbors no malice or dishonesty, Garrik answered.
That small part of her still reeling from Kadamar wanted to doubt him but didn’t. Alora acknowledged the female leader from the Wall when she stepped forward to escort them from the throne room when Thalon moved beside Garrik, his fingertips crackling with lightning.
Thalon murmured, “The legion, sire.” Home. Their Dragons. Eldacar and Deimon and Draven. Their Mystics and soldiers protected behind Garrik’s shield that Silas had secured. They were still out there waiting for their High Prince to return with orders and a new book for Eldacar to read.
Garrik brushed a hand over his tired eyes, deepening a breath. “Is there room at the Keep?”
Their Guardian shook his head. “No, but we can settle throughout the mountains until we know what Galdheir knows.”
Zemira arched a brow at Nikolouse. It didn’t take long for him to sigh defeatedly and her to grin, catching the chandelier light on her flawless cheeks. “It appears my queen would move to offer grounds for your legion.” Nikolouse’s whine could’ve competed with one of Aiden’s. Alora smirked as he added, “Let me inform you that my armies are ten thousand times in capacity than the Ravens. And my lions a race of their own.” He spoke to Thalon, “By your Earned, Guardian, if they cause any trouble…”
“By my Earned, king,” Thalon vowed, his eyes brightening like sunshine.
Wholly satisfied, the king turned his attention to Miwa, who had remained silent before the wall of soldiers until now. Addressing her, “Night Stalker. Show their Highnesses to Nadeliene’s chambers, then return to speak with me.” Nikolouse beckoned to the female leader. “Loan. You and their soldiers?—”
“Shadow Order,” Alora corrected with a smile.
Nikolouse nodded. “You and their Shadow Order can discuss the retrieval of … Dragons.”
It was Garrik who nodded at the correct title, then advised, “General Realmpiercer has gifts to portal them through the Wall if it suits you. He holds the authority of conducting decisions on our behalf. In all respected rights, he is Her Highness and I’s voice, unless we say otherwise.”
“Very well,” Nikolouse remarked, and after arranging a meeting and time for tomorrow, permitted them leave.