Page 151 of A Reign of Roses
“Four kingdoms’ worth of men, women, and children moving into your lands? You’ll be overrun. Worse than Lumera, the overpopulation, lack of resources, the bloodshed…” His grin was mirthless. Joyless. Revolting.
“We’ll make do.”
“You would, I’d imagine. Until they overthrew you.” My father paced once more, his eyes on his feet as he thought. “Might be a fitting punishment, actually…”
Out of the corner of my vision I saw Griffin’s eyes widen and then shutter as quickly as they’d opened. I knew better than to let my thoughts dwell on whatever he’d seen or felt, lest Lazarus catch onto something shared between us. I cut my gaze back to my father before Griffin could notice that I’d seen something concern him.
The soldiers that shared the tent with us, the ones lining the back wall and flanking the entrance, monitored like hawks. Not a single blink among them. It reminded me how human I’d become in my years here in Onyx. How often I blinked and fidgeted. I stilled my tensing muscles.
“Not interested, I’m afraid,” my father said in the end. “Men do not succeed as vastly as I have, rule with as much uncompromising will, make the sacrifices I have made, only to share their conquests with foolhardy, insubordinate sons.”
He drew close. So close I could smell the wind and ice on him. Could hear his power rippling beneath his bones.
I grasped my hands behind my back to hide their shaking.
“Perhaps once, long ago, we could have conquered this new world together. The last two dragons in existence. Wings and ice and flame. But you, Kane”—he shook his head, though his silver eyes held mine so firmly my lungs freed themselves of all air—“have only ever disappointed me. And I have grown very tired of you.”
One moment my father and I held each other’s gazes with such unbearable, raw hatred I feared it might consume all of us—flesh and canvas and wood alike—into a whirlpool of cruelty and carnage. The next, the Blade of the Sun materialized behind my back, the hilt gripped between my closed fists. And—
A flash of metallic lighte shrieked across the room. Spears of ice barreling, not for me, or Arwen—
But for Briar. Whose skirts had not even fluttered with her hard-trained magic. The spell she’d used to conceal the Blade of the Sun nearly imperceptible. Briar, who’s face had remained stoic on my father as we spoke. As she’d sent the blade into my hands—
But her mind…
It was the only way he could have known.
I didn’t have time to strike before chaos split the room. Before Arwen’s lighte snapped out—that magnificent, deadly sunfire ripping across the tent for my father, melting the flesh of two soldiers that dove before him. Some Fae soldier’s shimmering red lighte, the crests of Griffin’s malachite aura all flaming and clashing—
I conjured barrier after barrier, shield after shield of black, rippling shadow. The lighte of ten soldiers shrieking against it as I swung the weighty blade for my father. Ruthless fury and pure darkpowersurging through my bones.
“Kane!” Arwen’s voice.
But I was so close now, my father within reach as he pressed back toward the now-toppled table, wooden pieces bearing both Onyx and Lumerian sigils scattering across the floor—
“KANE!”
I spun, my shield of undulating shadow with me, just narrowly knocking out a Fae soldier and his raised sword.
Briar was crumpled on the ground, leaking blood, groaning in agony. And Arwen, holding her within a tight bubble of soft, glimmering lighte.
“It’s not working…My healing, my lighte—”
But there was no way out—Eardley, dodging blow after blow of lighte that would smoke him instantly if it made contact. Griffin, barely punching and blasting through six men his size. And those mercenaries, pulling open the canvas of the tent, Fae that would shift any moment, smiles curling at their lips as they beheld the tumult…
Without Briar…we had no witch—
“No,” I breathed as the mercenaries began to shift, and I hurtled for Arwen, knowing it was over, that my father’s men had too much power. Would obliterate us—
The blow exploded the tent.
No, disintegrated it.
Gone.
And half his soldiers, too. And Lazarus, thrown onto his back, hacking from some kind of wound.
“What the…” Griffin heaved, squinting into the blinding white all around us, eyes adjusting now that the darkness of the canvas had disappeared with its blown-off roof.
