Kols had told me the acting monarch could arrange the trials for the successor. This must have been Constantine’s idea ofan ideal test.Sick bastard,I thought, glaring at his smug face through my shield.
Spells continued to bounce off of it, the edges beginning to fray.
Shadow back, Zakkai urged.
I met Ella’s frightened blue eyes on the stage and noted Tray’s lack of a reaction again.I can’t.
She’d become one of my closest friends. She’d accepted me before everyone else had. I couldn’t leave her. I’d already failed Emelyn. I wouldn’t do the same to Ella.
Because there are good Midnight Fae,I realized. I was staring into the eyes of one of them and had four more yelling in my head.
Constantine had enchanted these fae. Or at least some of them, like Tray. Now that I’d removed my fog of fury, I could see that Tray wasn’t relaxed at all but was fighting the essence surrounding him, trying like hell to save his mate.
However, whatever incantation Constantine had woven over him was too powerful for him to counteract.
I longed to help him, to dismantle the spell for him, but I didn’t have time. The others were almost through my protective barrier. Taking him back to the Hell Fae realm wasn’t an option. That spell around him would trigger all sorts of alarms within Lucifer’s borders. They’d either kill Tray or deny him entry.
Either way, he’d suffer.
We’ll return for you, I promised him, then winced as the final vestiges of my shield began to crumble.
There was only one option left for me now.
I tapped into the dark source, allowing it to consume me like I had several times already, and this time, I granted it access to stay. I didn’t expel it. I didn’t push it out of me. Iacceptedit as part of my being.
Something clicked inside, a proverbial crown circling my mind, as I stood up tall and stared Constantine right in the eye. “You will bow,” I promised him.
Then I shadowed to Ella’s side and yanked her away from Dakota before the dark-haired female had a chance to react.
And disappeared back to the paradigm within the Hell Fae realm.
Aflora appeared in our meadow,her cloak billowing in the smoke around her. Ella collapsed beside her on a scream that had Kols running right for her.
I grabbed Aflora, checking her for signs of injury beneath the dark fabric surrounding her smaller frame. “Where did you find this?” I asked, stroking my palm down the cloak along her arm. The foreign material contained an electric current, the magic running through it unlike any I’d ever felt.
“I don’t know,” she whispered, her blue eyes peering up at me from beneath the hood. “He killed Anrika, Shade. And Emelyn.”
I flinched, having heard those details from her mind.
“There were others, too,” she continued. “And they werecheering. Happy. Reveling in the deaths of fellow fae.” Her anger lashed at my senses, but her expression radiated pain. “How can they be so cruel and disrespectful with life?”
“Because they’ve been led to believe it’s the only way,” my grandmother replied from the tree line, her voice soft and carrying through the meadow on a subtle breeze. She stepped into view beneath the rising sun, her dark hair glittering with the light.
No cookies.
A good sign.
But my grandfathers were behind her, which meant they felt the need to protect her.
Not a good sign.
But as Zeph and Zakkai burst into the meadow, I realized why. While my grandmother admired and respected Zakkai, my grandfathers interpreted his abilities as a potential threat.
An apt reaction. Zakkai was fucking powerful. However, I trusted him with Aflora because I felt her faith in him through the bonds.
“Aflora,” he said, his palm finding her face beneath the hood and pulling her to him.
Zeph studied her expression for a beat beside him, pacifying himself with her safety, before switching focus to the shrieking female on the ground.
