Page 3 of Joined By Magic

He stared for a moment as though he couldn’t make me out, his eyes unfocused until he blinked and shook his head. Then his expression hardened, and his mouth set into a hard line.

“Garron. The bastard betrayed me.”

Icy horror chilled me from the inside. Garron. The captain of the prince’s private guards. He knew far too many of the prince’s secrets.

“He sided with the Lord Commander? Why?”

“I don’t know!” He threw his hands up and stepped out of my grip. “There’s no time.”

He surged past me toward his laboratory, the shielded room which housed all his new inventions. “We need to go.”

“What about Pia? Garron knows about her. We have to go get her.”

I couldn’t abandon my sister. We’d grown closer recently than we’d been in years. Tight, nauseous panic gripped me at the thought of leaving her behind.

Without pause, the prince opened the laboratory door. Once inside, he picked up a large bag and thrust it at me. I took it automatically, my fingers numb. Grabbing a matching bag of his own, he held out his hand. I gaped at him, then backed away. “My sister, Your Highness. Please. She’ll be in her room.”

He stepped toward me, eyes flashing dark. “I can’t take two of you. Come.”

“Please.”

The prince advanced, and I shrank back another step. Emotion flashed across his face. Regret? It disappeared so fast I couldn’t tell.

Magic shot from his fingers and curled around me, locking me in place. I yelled out, struggling as he gripped my arm and the world darkened to black.

Chapter Three

Talia

Thechillhitmeas the world righted itself, swirling into view with a stomach-twisting lurch. I kept my feet planted and closed my eyes, breathing hard as I waited for the nausea to subside. The prince’s hand still gripped my arm, and I shook him off with an angry twist of my shoulder.

Pia. He’d abandoned her to fuck knew what, after all she’d been through already, thanks to me. Guilt sluiced into me, mingling with anger in a toxic flood. My hands balled into fists as I fought for self-control. I opened my eyes and took in my surroundings.

Blackness. The sky stretched out in front of us, sprayed with stars made more spectacular by the absolute nothingness in every direction. Sand scrunched beneath my bare feet, and a strong breeze whipped it into my eyes. A desert.

The prince turned away from me, staring up into the night with an odd vacant expression on his face, as if he couldn’t understand what he was seeing or where he was. I forced down my frustration and tried one more attempt at persuasion.

“My sister. We have to go back for her. If Garron’s working for the king, they could hurt her. Use her to spite me. You could—”

The prince whipped round to face me. A bolt of deep, primal terror lanced me in the gut at his expression. Wide-eyed, vacant fury—an animal about to go for my throat. I stumbled back a step.

His chest heaved as he stared at me, then he raised a hand and shot a tight bolt of magic out into the night. It hit the ground with a crack, and heat seared me as sand fountained up from the blast. I flung my arm over my eyes as the detritus whipped over us.

Shock spiraled through me. His anger usually ran cold, not hot. Even when I’d betrayed him, he’d taken a measured, logical approach to my punishment. But now, he’d lost everything.

I lowered my arm to find him breathing hard, his eyes locked on mine.

“Be grateful I brought you. You can’t comprehend the distance we’ve traveled, the power it took. How dare you make demands of me?”

The haughty snap of his tone grated on me as his words sunk in. He’d made his escape more difficult by bringing me along as a passenger, reducing the distance he could travel. Even if he wanted to help Pia, he couldn’t in this moment, and though I risked his anger, I couldn’t let the topic drop completely. I moderated my voice to calm submission.

“I’m sorry, Your Highness. I’m just worried about her. Do you think they’ll use her somehow? Hurt her?” Bile rose in my throat at the words.

He paused as if giving it serious thought. “I doubt it. She’d be beneath my father’s notice, and Garron”—his body tensed on the name, as if saying it caused him pain—“is protective toward women.”

I gained little comfort from the assertion. The prince had also thought Garron was loyal to him. I couldn’t hold back the question. “Why do you think he did it? Betrayed you?”

“I don’t fucking know!”

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