Chapter 69
U ntil his sacred duty was complete, Thalon would remain by her side. Her Guardian’s star-gilded shadow drifted over her as he stepped beside her. The night reflected glimmering starlight over Kadamar’s Blackstone Mountains as she gripped a folded parchment in her hand, standing behind the frigid cold ice railing atop Dellisaerin’s Wall, brushing her thumb along the coarse surface.
“He’s alive, Thalon. I know it.” Alora looked out over the ice, clutching her mate mark with Smokeshadows tendriling around her ring, and vowed to the wind, “I will find you, Garrik.” Starfire burned inside the other palm and dawned the note that she had read a thousand times to her bedchamber. Then embers blew away until only a pearlsea rested there.
The rubbery stem snapped.
Starflames ignited along her shoulders, cascading down her arms.
Footsteps approached.
But she didn’t need to turn to know who. She summoned them long before she and Thalon made the journey across the kingdom to stand amongst the stars.
Jade. Aiden. Eldacar. Ezander.
Her Shadow Order.
Alora slipped her fingers from her mate mark and traced a chain dangling around her neck. The chain holding the starfire ring she had made for Garrik. The ring that held claim to all of her power—for only him, as he had offered her.
The ring she had meant to slip on his finger in his tent.
Gripping it, Alora turned to Jade as she stepped forward. Her green eyes reflected the roaring embers in Alora’s like polished glass.
She lifted her gaze to the stars and promised, “I am coming for every-starsdamned-one of them. And everyone who betrayed him— touched him—will find out …”
Aiden shifted beside Eldacar. Jade stabbed her dagger in the ice.
Ezander gripped the pommel of his sword as Thalon asked, wings flaring, “Find out?”
Slowly, menacingly, Alora’s head pivoted until her embers speared his glowing golden eyes. “Just how hot their world will burn when I find him.”
Because she would find him.
She would incinerate Elysian, every last part of it, until Garrik was safely in her arms.She was coming for them. For every scar they had ever laid upon his skin. For every nightmare that stalked his nights.
They had turned him into a demon but didn’t realize … by stealing him … they’d formed another.
“They wanted to make a monster?” Alora angled her head to Galdheir. “I’ll give them one.”