Page 160 of A Reign of Roses
Mari chewed her lip and my blood ran cold. “We haven’t seenher. Maybe she went back into the castle. For Leigh and Ryder? It was getting close out there…”
It had been. The walls had all but fallen.
But I knew Arwen like I knew the fabric of my own soul. She would never have retreated. “No. She’s around here somewhere.”
I canvassed the destruction. The overturned wheelbarrows, tents glowing a soft blaze in the darkness of the woods. Creatures had begun to prowl through the wreckage, drawn to the smoke and scent of blood and fear. Wolves and vultures sniffing at the carcasses, pawing through the dirty snow…Far more vile beasts would be arriving soon. The remaining soldiers didn’t even move to shoo the creatures. There were so few of them now…
“They’re fleeing,” I realized. “He’s likely run with his men.”
“He has no witch to portal him back,” Griffin said. “They’ll head for the channel.”
We took off north through the woods. Evendell’s side of the channel was accessed in the Blade Moors, which was days and days from here, but we could track them long before they got too far. We knew these woods. We knew this land.
The sky shifted from violet to blue to black. Wind battered us as we ran. Branches whistled. Snow fell.
Until there, twined in the heavy, snow-laden woods, away from the pillaged encampment of Fae and hidden from the Hemolichs that hunted them and the scavengers that would follow, was my father and a small convoy of his men, hurrying for the channel.
One trembling moment of utter stillness as they saw us discover them—a moment of total silence before—
“I should have known you’d fight alongside thefilth.”
The promise of violence curled my lips from my teeth. I raisedmy hands to unleash daggers of my roiling power into him and his weakened men.
When lighte, sudden and blinding in the night-dark forest, cut through my vision and slammed into my father. Lazarus was thrown—no,blasted—back into the shedding trunk of a tree.
His soldiers aimed their own power and weapons at the unseen assailant, but Mari was way ahead of them. She froze the remaining men in place with a single uttered spell. I’d hardly noticed the spinning, magic-tinged wind.
Arwen emerged from the tree line.
Black onyx leathers. Loose braid down her back.
A beautiful goddess of fury, bathed in moonlight and poised to kill.
No sooner did my father move to stand, to ready his palms wide with his own power, than another blow of her lighte smashed into him. Lazarus thrashed as it cut into his chest, his neck, his arms.
Mari sucked in a ragged breath. And Griffin shot me a look. Her spell on the Fae soldiers wouldn’t last much longer. We rushed the frozen convoy and made quick work of them—heads sheathed in red visors toppled to the frozen ground.
My gaze found Arwen’s steadfast eyes.
Lazarus beheld us, outnumbered four to one. He stumbled backward in the snow. “You’ll regret this, son,” he swore, inching away from us and toward the tree line. “Just like your last rebellion.”
“No.” With the back of my hand I wiped Fae blood from my chin. The Blade of the Sun crested in my grip. “I don’t think I will.”
And then—I charged.
I didn’t even see Arwen coming.
Griffin roared for her to stop, but—too late. Just as Arwenslammed into me, Griffin struck Lazarus in the knees with his emerald lighte.
Arwen and I both went down, sailing into thick snow. Pine and orange blossom filled my nostrils. Ice in my mouth. Ringing in my ears—
“It’s not your fate,” she pleaded. “You need to live.”
“That’s,” I barked out, heart pounding in my ears, “bullshit.”
It dawned on me—perhaps well before this moment—that I might have to subdue my ownwifeif I had any hope of saving her.
I love you, I thought as I swung my blade.The breath in your lungs is all that matters to me, as I slammed my sword into hers.Now let me end this.
