Chapter 52
SAPHIRA
Ineeded to slow. I knew it. Sense screamed it at me.
I couldn’t.
Because I couldn’t stop seeing Everlee staring vacantly into the distance, afraid of everyone except Malachi.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Danica in the hands of these benevolent fae, so far from home, at the mercy of males who would do terrible things to her.
My paws flew over the leaf litter, faster and faster, and I couldn’t slow them, not even when I sensed the distance between myself and Kaeleron growing as he sprinted after me, too drained from whatever he had done to break that barrier and reach Everlee to teleport.
I had to capture this seelie.
I had to save Danica.
I was going to get her back.
I saw a flash of Morden, how his steady facade had shattered upon discovering his sister was already gone, whisked away from the mansion.
I had never seen a male so broken as he had howled, the sound a mixture of sorrow and raw fury, and had butchered a seelie he had forced a confession from—one who had told him she was already on her way to the Summer Court.
I was going to get her back.
There was still time.
This male was going to tell me where the guards had taken her for transport, because the one Morden had killed had mentioned a waygate, and I clung to the hope it wasn’t one like the portal Kaeleron had sensed building within the mansion.
I hoped it would be a physical one, like the waygate outside Falkyr that remained constantly open, waiting for travellers to use it.
I hoped because I was too afraid not to.
I was going to get her back.
And this male was going to pay for what he had done to Everlee.
A savage snarl pealed from between my fangs.
“Saphira,” Kaeleron bellowed and shadows tried to snare me, but even the ones that managed to lash around one of my paws were not strong enough to hold me.
My heart screamed at me to slow, to not do this to him, to see that he was tired, weak, and afraid he would lose me to this seelie. I had promised I would be careful—that I wouldn’t be reckless.
I listened to it this time, the thought of being taken from him, of scaring him when he didn’t have the strength to protect me, wrenching at my soul.
I trotted to a halt.
The seelie stopped.
Turned to face me, his golden eyes bright in the low light.
The white embroidery on his fine gold tunic shone in the moonlight that turned his hair almost silver as he took a step towards me, regarding me with cold eyes, not even out of breath from leading me on this chase.
Leading me away from Kaeleron and the others, I realised too late.
He canted his head and the smile that slowly tilted his lips reeked of victory.
My senses reached for Kaeleron, so far behind me, and I backed in that direction.
Panic lanced me. Fear that I had made a terrible mistake and now I would pay for it.
That I would never see Kaeleron again. That this male would steal me away to the Summer Court as he had Danica, and had intended to do to Everlee.
Placing me beyond the reach of my Shadow King.
I turned tail to run.
Chains of golden light snared my right hind leg.
Gods, it burned!
“Get your filthy hands off her,” Kaeleron snarled as a wave of shadows burst over me and then he was behind me, launching at the seelie on a roar of pure rage.
The fiery chain holding me shattered as they collided.
Kaeleron growled. “Show yourself.”
I turned to find him scanning the glade we had found ourselves in. There was no sign of the seelie.
I shifted back and Kaeleron growled again as he glanced at me.
“Cover yourself.” He grimaced as he swept his hand through the air, his jaw tensing hard before a plain dark dress appeared in his grip and he cast it at me.
I caught it and pulled it on over my head as quickly as I could manage, not wanting my vision obscured for longer than a second.
“Where did he go?” I hissed. “Did he run?”
I couldn’t sense him anywhere in the vicinity.
“Oh, he did not go anywhere, little wolf. He hides like a coward, concealed by Summer Court magic.” Kaeleron waved his hand through the air again, his motions stiffer this time as his face twisted in obvious pain.
Black smoke trailed from his tense fingers as they closed around something.
My dagger.
He held it out to me and I was quick to take it, gripping it tightly as I scoured the area with my senses, on high alert.
Kaeleron stalked around the glade, his skin pale as moonlight as he flexed the blackened tips of his fingers, raking inch-long claws through the air.
Impatient. I felt that way too.
“So, he just went… invisible?” I scanned the trees, seeking any sign of the fae. “Like when you go into your shadows?”
“Different, but similar,” he snarled and I had hit a nerve by comparing him to a seelie. Anger rippled off him in fierce waves and some of it was directed at me.
I stepped away from Kaeleron, compelled to move beyond the sphere of his power that brushed over my skin, dampening my senses and making me aware of only him. I peered into the shadows between the trees, hoping to catch the glint of gold.
Nothing.
I huffed, losing patience, and bit back a grin as I said loudly, “You’re right. He’s a coward. I thought all fae were noble and brave, but apparently some of them are just spineless pussies.”
Kaeleron arched a brow at me. “He did run from me that night of the auction.”
“That just confirms it. Whoever he is, he’s a spineless pussy.”
Golden chains shot from the ground near me.
I leaped backwards but they kept coming at me, twisting in the air and changing course, blinding in the low light. I swiped at them with my dagger, but every attempt to sever them ended in failure.
Kaeleron severed them with a wave of shadows that formed a wall before me.
“Not just a pussy, but weak,” he said, and gods it was weird hearing him use that word. It sounded so wrong in his noble voice. I wasn’t sure I should be teaching him such mortal slang. He chuckled low. “What a pathetic attempt to capture my little wolf. You will need to try harder than that.”
The seelie did.
Six chains shot up around me, faster than I could track, all reaching for a point above my head where they curved to meet and melded together.
Forming a cage.
Trapping me.
Kaeleron turned furious crimson eyes on the cage.
I slashed at the bars with my dagger, growling as the blade passed straight through the beams of solar light, leaving them unscathed rather than severing them as Kaeleron’s shadows had.
I reached for the bars instead and hissed as the heat of them scalded my hand before I could even make contact with them.
The seelie appeared next to me, a smirk on his smug face. “Thank you for delivering her to me.”
“Wait,” I snapped at Kaeleron when he readied his shadows, the dark look in his eyes speaking to me of what he intended. He was going to cut this seelie down in order to protect me. I looked at the male beside me. “Where is Danica?”
“The girl?” He slowly stepped around me, forcing me to turn my back on Kaeleron and placing me between them, using me as a barrier Kaeleron would have to go through to reach him. “Gone. To the Summer Court. From this very spot.”
I heard Kaeleron move and glanced over my shoulder to find him crouching with his palm against the dirt.
He glared at it, obsidian-tipped fingers tensing against the ground, and then looked at me, the flicker of sorrow in his crimson gaze telling me without words that the seelie spoke the truth.
My strength tried to leach from me at the knowledge I was too late.
Danica was already gone.
“You will never get her back, Shadow King. You cannot cross into seelie lands.”
I frowned and then whipped to face the fae as it hit me. “But I can. I can go into the Summer Court.”
“No, Saphira,” Kaeleron barked and shadows blanketed the ground around me but halted a few feet from the cage and the seelie. They clawed at the air there, and I realised more than a cage kept him from me. The seelie had cast another barrier. “I will not let you do that. You would be a prisoner.”
“She would be a guest. Sylvan wishes to meet her.”
I wasn’t sure who this Sylvan was, but the way Kaeleron snarled said he was someone he wanted dead.
Had this Sylvan been part of the attack that had taken his parents and brother from him?
If he was, I could do what Neve had seen.
I could get close to him and I could end him, giving Kaeleron his vengeance.
Vengeance that might take him from me, triggering the agreement between him and the high king.
I would figure out a way to get him out of that particular problem if and when it happened.
Right now, all that mattered was saving Danica and delivering Kaeleron his vengeance, as I had promised him.
He deserved the closure and he deserved to know what had happened to his brother.
I couldn’t let him give up on his family. Not for my sake.
“I’ll go with you,” I blurted to the seelie, who turned curious golden eyes on me, as if he was surprised to hear I was really willing to do this.
I was.
“No!” Kaeleron’s shadows grew jagged and sharp, becoming like blades, and shot towards that invisible barrier as the ground beneath me quaked and made me fall to my knees. “I will not let you take her from me!”
My eyes flew wide as the ground beneath me fractured, my left hand slipping into it, and I scrambled to keep from falling.
The air vibrated, shuddering in my lungs, the weight of it growing, doubling and then tripling, until my bones creaked under the pressure.
The stars winked out.
The moon hid.
Plunging the world into darkness.
Into shadows.
And then a scream.
A bellow.
The scent of blood.
I instinctively lunged for the bars that separated me from the seelie, from the one male who could help me reach Danica and save her, reaching between them towards him, uncaring as they singed my arms.
Too late.
He toppled, collapsing to the ground, a hundred shards of shadow protruding from his chest.