Page 56 of Blood of Two Crowns

My eyes snapped up to the drakonati’s. My magic writhed, seeping out of my skin in blood-red vapors, condensing into something corporeal. An oddly familiar ice-cold metal slid around my neck, and all at once, the connection to my magic cut off. It felt like losing a limb. The dragon’s clawed foot lashed out to curl his talons around me as a female appeared beside him, pressing a hand to the beast’s leg.

Asterion’s roar was the last thing I heard before the world around me disappeared in a flash of black and returned in the form of icy winds and barren mountaintops. Erius shifted back into his fae form. Something like genuine guilt shuddered his expression as he looked me up and down. The female besidehim, with skin the color of the snow surrounding us and hair the color of blood, laid a hand on his shoulder. Something silent was communicated between them before she flashed me an unreadable look and slipped through a tall, narrow crevice in the stone wall of the mountain.

“Did Azrael hire you to kidnap me?”

Erius quirked a brow, grinning innocently. “Who’s Azrael?”

I fucking knew it!

“If you plan to kill me, you’re welcome to try, but donotlock me in a cage.”

The male had the audacity to pull offnonchalance.

“I plan to do neither.”

Erius turned and squeezed through the stone crevice, leaving me standing in the ice-fucking-cold. My heart squeezed painfully as I tugged in futility at the collar on my neck, taking in my surroundings to find that I had, without my wings, zero hope of escape. Sharp cliffs dropped off in every direction except the staggering mountain wall behind me. I stepped towards the edge to see how far the fall would be. Perhaps if I jumped, I could make a run for it after I healed… but that would still leave me wingless, weaponless, and with a magic-suppressing palladium collar around my throat.

Azrael, you wretched, filthy, conniving, slimy?—

A shadow blotted out the five red suns, and I twisted to look up and find another dragon with scales of darkest green and black circling high above the peak just before it tucked its wings in tight and plummetted towards me. It shifted at the last minute to reveal a towering fae form. My heart stuttered at the sight of him.

Malekai.

The male from my dreams.

But not.

Unlike Malekai’s turquoise and gold, this male’s eyes were a green so dark they were nearly black, like his hair. A scar that looked like melted flesh crept up one side of his neck and jaw. And though I had merely dreamed of the male, I recalled with crystal clarity the elegant flow of his perfectly sculpted features.

Up close, I could see the dark-haired doppelganger’s features had replaced elegance and warmth with cold brutality. His features may as well have been hewn from the very stone of this mountain.

Even so, he was so similar to the male from my dream that simply staring at him knocked the fucking wind out of me. So stunned, I mindlessly stepped backwards—off the fucking cliff edge. His hand shot out, gripping the front of my fighting leathers, and bodily tugged me away from the edge and into the hard, muscled wall of his chest.

My heart seemed to split wide open andbleedat the sound of his voice—one so very similar to the male I’d been pining after in my dream. His dark eyes twinkled with affection and mirth. “Don’t try to die on me when I’ve only just found you.”

At my astounded silence, the male craned his neck towards me. My eyes slipped shut, and I remained still as he took in my scent. I swore I could hear an echo of Malekai’s voice, again whispering Aurealingan words I shouldn’t know the meaning to.‘Katadamna kaza, tessari mú.’

His magic brushed against me as if attempting to introduce itself.

My eyes stung with that broken feeling in my chest increased to haemorrhaging. My hands gently wrapped around the forearm still gripping my fighting leathers.

Gods, what is this?

Not-Malekaipulled back, eyes widening slightly at the sight of my welling emotion. His brows furrowed, and he leaned tokiss away the liquid leaking from each corner of my eyes, licking his lips that tugged at a smile.

“Mmmm… You’re not at all who I was expecting. Truly, the fates must favor us.”

While there weremanyarguments I had to offer in reply to that statement, never in my life had I ever been made so speechless. When I gaped like a fish out of water, stuttering my reply, the male brushed his finger across the collar on my throat. Snow crunched as the metal landed heavily at our feet.

And despite the fact the male had just gifted me my freedom, all thoughts of escaping dove straight off the cliff’s edge behind me.

“Who are you?”

The male’s mouth split into a dazzling grin boasting white teeth, lethal fangs, and a pair of heart-melting dimples.“Ataraxus.”

Chapter

Thirty

---