Page 112 of Shadow's Heart

Mina gazed from one face to the next. She should feel lucky that so many loved her enough to care about her future. Yet they all treated her like she was the same princess—theoldMina—who would welcome their guidance, squeak her compliance, and surrender her will.

Surrender my will.The fuck?

Yes, her shyness should have rebounded in the fertile ground of this court. But she refused it. In its place bloomed something different, something like a desert rose boldly spreading her stalks across the dunes and winking at the sun.

ThenewMina yelled,“Everyone, enough!”Her outburst startled them into silence, all except for Lothaire.

With a sigh, he muttered, “Finally.”

“I amnotinnocent. I havenotbeen duped.”Blooming, blooming. “And when I tell you Adham’s my mate and that he loves me—I mean it.” She addressed Mirceo: “Is it soridiculous to believe the sorcerer lost his heart to me? Do I have no merits that might have earned his love?”

Eyes wide, Mirceo hastily said, “Of course you do, my precious sister! He just might not have had the sense to appreciate them.”

Clapping her hands after each word, she snapped, “My—merits—are—undeniable.”

Double takes all around.

As Mina said these words, she knew them to be true. Herránaburned not at all. “No one’s going to kill my mate. I’m going to save him. Somehow . . .” She trailed off as her mind fired with logic at last, and that third alternative hit her with the force of a geyser:Beware the Sorceri.She turned to Caspion. “When your sources reported back on Adham’s movements, did they mention anything unusual about his appearance?”

The demon frowned. “Yeah. Actually they did.”

She cast her mind back to that night when Adham had told her he didn’t have to kill her brother. She’d been so overjoyed that she’d barely registered all his words—or hisothervow. He hadn’t been bound by it then, but he was now. So what had changed?

Mina’s fatigue disappeared, her thoughts sharpening as another mission took hold of her mind. She told the court, “I know what happened to Adham. And I know how to get him back.”

Fifty-Three

All the worlds should fear me. Now it’s Poly’s turn.

“You two ready?” Caspion reached for her and Mirceo, taking their hands to teleport them. Balery’s rolled bones had indicated that if they left now, they would arrive in the Plane of Lost Years on the night of the Cold Moon.

Mina gave Caspion a firm nod. “Ready.”

Mirceo answered, “I was born ready, sweetheart.”

Caspion was still shaking his head ruefully when they landed in Poly, just beyond the dunes bordering Adham’s valley.

As a sandstorm raged in the freezing night, Mirceo created a bank of mist to conceal them. He gazed around with disgust as they floated up one of the dunes. “Poly is a place you don’t have totryin order toknock.”

Every grain of these shifting sands reminded Mina of how formidable Adham would be in this dimension, and by all accounts, his power already brimmed.

Her first instinct had been to bring an army with her on tonight’s mission—her family had certainly wanted that—but too many people crowding Mina’s trap might put Adham at risk. Yet then, too few might put Mirceo at risk.

So she’d decided on this trio, and for once, her decisions were binding. She’d refused to tell anyone what she’d figured out until they’d each agreed that she would oversee Adham’s recovery.

Now she gazed at her brother’s barely healed neck. What a danger this was! She would have liked to spring her trap on a more advantageous battleground, but one of the components she needed now lived here. . . .

As they neared the top, Caspion said, “The storm will dwindle up there, and you’ll be able to see the stronghold. From that very spot, I watched hundreds of hunters attempt to claim the bounty on Harea. They all fell to his traps in gruesome ways.”

“What would make you two try for that job in the first place?” Would she ever have met Adham if they hadn’t?

“Yes, Mirceo”—Caspion raised his brows—“tell her what could possibly have moved us to such folly.”

Straightening his shoulders, Mirceo said, “Well. It’s like this . . . I wanted to show support for my mate’s line of work, and I was angling to spend more time with him to win him over with my irresistible wit and charm. So I took Harea’s bounty notice off the wall in a hunter’s den, thinkingdate night. I didn’t know that taking the notice meant I would be forced to capture the notorious King of Sand, or I’d be slain by other hunters.”

“Oh, Mirceo.” He wasn’t perfect, but Caspion was very patient with him. Mina told her brother-by-fate, “You must love him very much.”

Helpless grunt.

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