Page 97 of Dark Prince's Mate

Chapter22

Aruan

I’m leaving another abandoned Phaelix settlement after one more fruitless search when it happens.

My connection with Elsie goes dead.

Like a crater tearing a hole in the ground, the place where I felt her in my chest becomes a gaping void.

I stop, the nothingness slamming reversely into me just as her presence had pumped through my veins when the Phaelix had brought her to Zerra.

Impossible.

I refuse to believe it.

But the bond doesn’t lie.

It’s gone.

She’s dead.

A howl tears from my chest as impossible, scorching heat explodes from me, radiating far and wide before forming a mushroom shape far above me.Shockwaves ripple through the air, killing trees and shrubs all around me, as far as the eye can see.

It should kill me too—I wish it would—but it doesn’t.Somehow, I’m protected from the destruction around me.A destruction that will linger for eons to come—because I know what this is, what will happen if any Alit, Phaelix, or animal crosses the area.

They’ll die.

It’s the terrible, poisonous explosion from my childhood all over again, but this time, I can’t bring myself to care.

As I stand among the death and destruction I’ve caused, all I feel is rage.It consumes me, devours me.My vision unravels.I clench my hands, needing to kill.Wanting to kill.Everyone and everything, but especially whoever killed Elsie.The person who’s been after her since the day she arrived at the palace.Maybe Tarix.Maybe not.I’m going to torture every Alit and Phaelix until I know the truth.

I hold on to that thought to maintain sanity, clinging to it like a drowning man to a piece of driftwood until it carries me back to lucidity.

When my sight clears, I’m on my knees.I don’t know how I got to this position or when I hit the ground.I only know I’m on a path of annihilation, more dead than alive.It’s worse than when she disappeared the first time, when I was just a child.Because this round?I had time to get to know her.To fall for her.To claim her and make her mine.To love her.

Now she’s gone, ripped from me again, and the agony is unbearable.The pain makes me blind.The ache is a flame scorching my soul.Yet everything continues as normal when I walk through a portal into the Great Hall, everyone going about their day as if nothing is wrong.

The sound that leaves my lips rips the palace right down the middle, the cracks running like lightning down the walls.That’s when they start running.The bridge collapses, preventing them from escaping.Windows explode, and the sky turns dark.

Somewhere on the horizon, a volcano burns red.The ground shakes beneath my feet.An earthquake uproots trees.The sea rolls closer in giant waves, washing through the lower levels of the palace.

I’m not aware of walking to my quarters.I simply find myself standing there, taking in the emptiness.Like a masochist, I let the cold claws of that suffocating notion strangle my heart.Like a stone sinking to the bottom of a lake, the emptiness settles inside me.

She’s not here.

An ear-splitting cry pierces the sky.Betty.Even the dragon knows.Animals sense these terrible things.

“Aruan!”Something shakes me.“Aruan, please!”

I swat it away like a fly.It thumps against the wall.

“Aruan, stop!”

I can’t.I can’t control the rage eating me alive from the inside out.

“Think about Elsie!”

The name twists like a blade into my gut.It burns cold and hot.“Elsie.”

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