Page 16 of A Kingdom of Monsters

I shook my head. I’d never been more frustrated by my inability to see Lonnie’s future. My blood pounded in my ears and my adrenaline surged. I wanted to destroy whatever had upset her, or better yet, to have stopped her from encountering whatever it was in the first place.

“Did your mother do something?” Bael demanded, seeming as frustrated as I felt at not knowing how to help her.

She shook her head and sucked in a great rattling breath. “No. Not really–”

“Then what–”

“I did,” she sobbed. “I could have killed her!

“Did you kill her?” I asked sharply.

“No,” she wailed. “But I wanted to. She’s my mother, I can’t believe–” she broke off with a shuddering gasp. “She…she upset me, and I nearly destroyed everything.”

“What the fuck did she say to you?” Scion demanded angrily.

Lonnie shook her head, her words turning practically incoherent. She buried her face in Bael’s shoulder, and I couldn’t make out what she was saying, picking up only disconnected phrases, “Aisling” “Rosey” and “Heir” coming out the clearest.

We all glanced at each other over Lonnie’s head. Scion looked quite like he wouldn’t have minded if Lonnie killed her mother, but Bael looked troubled.

I felt somewhere in the middle.

Unlike Bael and Scion, I’d never had to learn to control destructive combative magic. I had no idea what it was like to get angry and have the ability to level a village in one wave of the hand. I did, however, know far more about killing than any of the others combined. Every decision I’d ever made resulted in someone’s death. Sometimes in thousands of deaths, and it never really got easier.

“Take her upstairs,” I told Bael. “I’ll go check on Rhiannon.”

Bael nodded, and scooped Lonnie into his arms. He carried her down the hallway with little effort, looking far more awake than I’d seen him in recent memory.

“If you’re going down there, I want to go,” Scion demanded.

I glanced at him, and merely nodded. The grand irony of the situation hit me–Lonnie had wanted us to do something together without arguing. Apparently, that was impossible forthe time being, yet we agreed on one thing. The most important person in the world was her.

6

LONNIE

THE OBSIDIAN PALACE, EVERLAST CITY

“What are you thinking, little monster?” Bael asked urgently.

I blinked up at him dazedly, feeling slightly disconnected from myself. As if I were in my body, and not. Intellectually, I suspected I had to be in shock, but in practice… “I don’t know.”

“Talk to me.” Bael growled, seeming unable to keep the anger from bubbling up to the surface. “What the hell did she say to you?”

I sighed. “A lot. I know I need to explain it, but I’m so exhausted…”

“Alright,” Bael said quickly, changing tactics as quickly as the wind. “Then how about a bath?”

“Do I look that bad?” I asked, with little conviction, as he carried me toward the sweeping stone stairs.

“You’re covered in soot,” he replied diplomatically. “If I didn’t know you were under all those black spots, I’d think you contracted the plague.”

“I can’t,” I replied flatly.

“Can’t what?”

“Contract the plague.”

We reached the top of the landing, and Bael marched down the hallway, his expression a cross between concern and determination. His tone was light, almost humoring. “And why is that?”

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