Page 43 of Omission: Part 2

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I’ve felteyes on me all afternoon as the children of the Moore coven show me the new spell learned today. The young ones have been out playing in the fields all morning, learning how to plant blooms of every kind—something I did with my mother at that age—which they help grow with a small incantation and the nurturing of each seedling.

They’re so adorable.

Jumping and chasing each other while little tendrils of magic fill the air. Each ribbon of color surrounds me; their excitement is so palpable I can almost touch it. They make me giggle. I’m laughing and down on my knees, hands covered in dirt as I cover each new flower so it can grow wild and free.

This is what a childhood should be. Full of wonder.

So bright and happy, full of excitement as each performs for me, except a little girl who blushes. She’s the smallest of the group, her voice like a timid chime whenever she speaks.

“Are you not ready, Alice?” I ask, keeping my voice soft so as to not draw attention her way. The other children are busy commanding a small grouping of lilies they’re growing as a gift to me. Next, they want to add sunflowers. “You don’t have to?—”

“Queen Anaya, who’s that?” She points to the left of us and toward a giant tree where a man watches. He’s leaning against the trunk casually, unbothered, and every muscle in my body tenses when his smirk widens.

Brice stands without a shirt and his wings are spread, scraping against the forest floor. He’s angry at me, the malice in his eyes and aura almost making me cower back, but I stand my ground.I’m not alone anymore.

A clear challenge he accepts by crooking a single finger at me before taking off into the sky, and what’s worse, he’s wearing my father’s ring.

The one given to our new king.

How did he get that?

That piece of jewelry has been lost since my father’s death, left behind within the mess of his massacred body, and I’m certain there were no survivors to claim it, either.

That compound inside the Canadian territory was isolated; Larue was not one for neighbors and he would’ve bought off every landowner within a fifteen-mile radius to avoid trespassers.

My father was an egomaniac: a narcissistic and paranoid man afraid of his own shadow. He didn’t trust guards or keep them on rotation long enough to build a rapport; to him, all were dispensable unless you belonged to his closed-off inner circle.

His son is dead.

Brice was arrested at the time.

All bodyguards are ripped apart.

Yet it’s the general that remains, and he has a hidden card up his sleeve.

“Chiara.”Leonardo, bring patrols and get the children out of the forest. Brice ambushed me, and he’s flying us up.

“What did you say, ma princesse?” Brice asks as a roar fills the mental link between my male and me, and Leonardo is angry.Don’t go up. Wait for me.

Brice hovers a few feet above me again, watching me, and I can’t make the mistake of being distracted again. He’s too close for comfort, and I didn’t even hear him descend; I have the children to protect.

Alice whimpers, and I make a huge mistake when my eyes shift in her direction. One he takes advantage of, because before I can place myself in front of the huddled children, he swoops down and grabs the little girl before disappearing within the clouds, and the only map I have to find him is her frightened screams.

“Gods!” I hiss out, ignoring Leo’s demand that I wait for him. These few minutes could be the difference between saving Alice, and Brice taking an innocent’s life to get to me.

I can’t allow that.

Yelling comes through our link as he tells Augusto to lock the cell doors and gather guards, to bring them to the panting fields near the house, but then it hits me. My king was interrogating our prisoners today, and one is more important than the other.

The way Brice tilted his head and his eyes narrowed when I said her name proved as much.

Bring Chiara, Leonardo. Her mate should see her one last time before she stands trial.

17

LEONARDO

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