Page 156 of Fate Breaker

Meliz gave a shake of her head. “Calidon is a small kingdom. All but useless to her. She’ll march across half the realm to claim little more than rock and snow.”

Calidon.

The word was a bell in Domacridhan’s mind, tolling endlessly, over and over. It echoed with five hundred years of memory. Black yew trees veining through the mist. A brutal wind striping a mountain valley between golden sun and bitter shadow. Deathless snow on the highest peaks. And a high ridge of gray stone, crowned by a fortress city most would never see.

Calidon is what the mortals call it.

He knew it as Iona.

Home.

Sweat broke across his brow and he staggered only one step, but that was enough. His stomach lurched, as if he were still on the deck of a ship.

Sorasa whirled from the table, her copper eyes meeting his own with rare concern. Her brow twitched, her lips parted in confusion. He willed her to see, to read him as she so easily could.

“Corayne,” Dom managed to hiss, barely more than a breath.

At the table, Meliz went cold, her charming manner forgotten.

She is in Iona. She is with my kin, safe, whole. Still alive.He swallowed against the wave of revulsion.And Erida knows it. Her armies are already moving to her.

His heart nearly stopped, the world tilting beneath him.

Taristan knows it.

But for Sorasa, he would have toppled sideways. Instead, she held Dom steady, both arms around him.

“Steady,” she muttered. “Steady.”

He heaved a breath, gasping against the suddenly close air of the courtyard.In through the nose, out through the mouth.Sorasa told him that once, after they first encountered shades of the Spindle army. She did it now, eyes fierce, her chest rising and falling with exaggerated motion as she mimicked the technique for him again. He matched her rhythm as best he could, using her body to set his own breathing.

“We know where she is now,” Sorasa murmured, so close he could feel her voice vibrating in her throat. “We can do something now.”

“You know where my daughter is.”

Meliz’s harsh tone brought him crashing back. She pushed away from the table, jumping up to glare across the courtyard.

“I do,” he ground out.

Dom nodded and Sorasa stepped away, leaving him to stand on his own two feet. He still leaned against the wall, half-slumped, but under his own power.

Thank you, he wanted to stay.

Even unspoken, Sorasa heard the words anyway. She gave him a curt nod.

He felt the sudden attention of the room, every eye following his face. All but Sorasa, who looked back to the fountain, her eyes out of focus. She knew as he did. She understood the burden he suddenly carried, his body threatening to collapse under the weight of it.

“Queen Erida and Taristan are marching to Iona, the Elder enclave in Calidon,” Dom said, willing his voice to remain steady. Even as he spoke, his mind was consumed by horrifying images of his home burned and broken, his people slaughtered. “My enclave.”

With blistering speed, Meliz closed the distance between them. She took Dom by the arm, her grip hard and desperate.

“What can we do?” she demanded.

Dom heard the meaning beneath her words as plain as daylight.

How can I help her?

Hissing to herself, Sorasa began to pace as the Prince had. “The full force of the legions will march with them,” she muttered. “Their entire army crashing down in one place.”

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