Page 163 of The Forbidden Fae King

“No!” I take a step toward Keira. “Never!”

How do I tell her that when Lorrella saw the beautiful woman that would fight at my side, curvaceous and with fire-red hair, we all believed she had found my mate. That her visions were tricky, sometimes set in the past or distant future, but often they told tales only weeks or months before they transpired.

We thought the lord protector’s daughter was a woman grown when I enquired about her, not a fragment of the future that hadn’t been conceived yet. Edmund had been childless at the time.

It is not uncommon in my realm to seal a diplomatic agreement by suggesting a marriage. The choice always would have been hers to make in the end.

When I found her in my realm, stepping out of the portal into that battle with the spriggan and Cyprien, I didn’t know she was the same person. The one whose world was fated to collide with mine. I have no doubt her pull on me is the reason I had unwittingly made my way to the portal that day.

I am not a crazed fae.

I didn’t enter this realm to kidnap or harm her, but from the look she gives me, she isn’t so sure anymore.

“This fae has marked you as his Keira, and he will not stop hunting you. It is what his kind does.” Her father bellows.

The high priestess fights her way out of the line of soldiers and faces Keira from across the field. “I once loved a high fae as well, child. Do not forget what he did to me.”

It is like a spell is broken. Tears run freely down Keira’s face, twisted with utter betrayal.

I reach out an arm to her. “Youknowme, Keira. You know the oath I made to you. Let me explain.”

She takes another step backward, away from me, and it breaks my fucking heart. It shatters the entirely of my soul to pieces.

My hands shake, because I cannot lose her. Not again. Not over this. There is an entire army threatening me, but all I can focus on is her.

“I would never have—” Something hits me hard in the chest, making me stagger backward a step.

My eyes dart to my airshield. It shatters before me like a pane of glass, the shards falling and dissipating.

I dropped the threads of magic for a heartbeat when Keira looked at me like I was her enemy. The powerful blow of magic that destroyed it links all the way back to the lord protector himself.

He is more fae than he realizes.

In the same instant of time, two closely followed impacts slam into my chest. Time slows. Each second drags out for a lifetime. My body is thrown backward and my feet collapse from beneath me. Searing pain explodes within my chest right before my shoulders hit the ground.

Keira screams my name, but I can’t see her. Her hysteria turns incoherent, becoming muffled and quieter, as though someone drags her away.

My hand flies to the two arrow shafts protruding from my chest and comes away sticky with hot blood. I cough and it drizzles out of my mouth. Agony ripples through me with each shallow breath, threatening to plunge me into unconsciousness, but I have to stay awake and make sure Keira is safe. For a moment, I forget why she is wailing.

The arrows. There are two of them, laced with poison.

I can feel the toxin’s bite, burning at the wound where it enters my blood, slowing my heart rate and muddling my thoughts until they move so sluggishly I am hardly aware of what is happening.

Keira doesn’t come to me.

I crave her gentle touch more now than I ever have in my life. I don’t know if it is because she no longer wants to or if she is being held back. Perhaps both.

The panels of the temple roof slide across my vision. I am being dragged, roughly. Pain rips through me anew with each tug, as the arrowheads protruding from my back catch on the floorboards. I cry out. Klara’s face hovers above mine and she says something as she frantically works over me, but it is all so far away and none of it matters anymore.

I lost Keira.

She will never forgive me and I will never have an opportunity to show her I am not the monster they believe me to be. Everything, absolutely everything, has been taken away from me.

The sounds of battle fill my ears and the static of magic crackles all around me. I recognize familiar voices in the fray, yelling orders at each other, but I can’t remember why we are fighting. Where we are.

A blackness tugs at my consciousness, pulling me down and down into a peaceful numbness where there is no pain. Claws of nothingness close over my mind and as they take me, the agony lessens until it is a distant memory.

I swim in that complete oblivion for the longest time, floating on the tide of a dark ocean.

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