Page 120 of King of Storms and Feathers

What an idiot I was.

The knot of guilt tightened in my gut, and I told it to unravel and fuck off. Because I knew I would do it all over again—rip Leaf from that slaver’s cage and keep her forever if I could… There was no doubt in my mind.

Helplessly, I laughed again as I thought about what she would do when I flew into her hidden capitol and demanded she return with me to Coridon. It would not go well. What could I offer? How would I frame the idea of her coming home as an attractive proposition?

As I wracked my brain, composing muddled arguments and speeches, the potion dragged me under before I could draft a convincing one.

Someone shook my shoulder and said, “Arrow, wake up.”

I lurched into a squat, lightning magic buzzing like armor around my body, my wings lifted for takeoff as I squinted at… Ari.

“Oh, it’s you,” I said, padding to the edge of the pavilion and sitting down. “Give me a moment to get oriented.”

What I meant by that was I needed to get control of the rage and panic that had nearly made me rip Ari’s head from her shoulders when I woke and remembered Leaf was gone.

Rubbing sleep from my eyes, I gazed out over the darkened city in the direction I would soon be flying. I couldn’t wait to leave, but it felt like I had only closed my eyes a few minutes ago.

“Has it been two hours already?”

“No, My King. Only one.” Ari settled beside me and placed her palm over the feather glyph on my arm. “I have news of Leaf.”

My boot heels stopped kicking against the stone walls of the pavilion, every muscle freezing. “Tell me.”

“First, losing your temper will not improve the situation in any way. It never does. So promise me you will—”

I wrapped my hands around her golden neck, my thumbs pressing into the soft meat under her chin. “I said, tell me.”

“A scout has just returned from the Port of Tears,” she choked out. “He reported that last night, a human girl matching Leaf’s description was sold from the deck of Captain Loligos’s ship.”

Lightning sheeted the sky, and thunder crashed as my wings slashed above me, the feathers trembling. But rage and terror silenced me as my mouth opened and closed. I couldn’t make a sound.

The Sayeeda’s expression softened. “Five Earth Realm soldiers took her away on a guarded carriage. According to the rumors, the man who purchased her goes by the title of the King Regent.”

“King Regent of what?”

“I’m assuming Mydorian.”

“Fuck. So a male relative of Leaf’s?”

Ari nodded. “Yes. To claim such a title, he would need to be related to her. Six months ago, our resident reavers reported that the heir and her twin brother survived a Sun Realm attack. Unfortunately, both parents were killed and a younger son went missing not long after, now assumed dead.”

“Twin?” A cold shiver lashed my spine. “Damn, there are fucking two of her.”

But no wonder I felt so connected to Leaf. We were so similar in many ways. Stubborn, determined. Both rulers, wounded by grief and betrayal. Perhaps the gods had given us to each other.

Yes. Leaf was a gift, wrapped in the dual traits of understanding and compassion, who contained the inner fire to withstand my stormy nature and still thrive.

“Reavers believed she disappeared not long after the attack. That’s why she was known as the Lost Princess. We doubted she’d survived. The Zareen had little to say on her fate, only that the Earth Realm would have its queen restored after much time and trouble had passed, and that we elves simply had to wait.”

I shook my head. “But you knew Leaf was this princess early on?”

“Yes, as soon as I noticed the gold had no effect on her. Loligos’s sailor told your soldier that, after the accident, the Earth princess had been imprisoned by her brother as a traitor to the realm but somehow escaped, which is how you found her at the Gilt Market. Slavers captured her.”

“Traitor? Leaf may have betrayed me—the man who held her against her will—a thousand times over, but she would never betray her people. Beneath a hard shell, her heart was good and pure. And why would this male yearn to rule over a land in ruins? Mydorian is only rubble and dust.”

“You’re still not listening, Arrowyn. In the forest, there are ruins, yes. But the city within it still stands, as it has done for centuries.”

Abhorrent pictures formed in my mind as I stared past the blinking torchlights of Coridon. A nauseous horror story of the indignities my human might be suffering at this very moment. And I couldn’t fucking bear it.

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