He smiles without kindness. A predator enjoying how its prey flinches.
But I don’t flinch, I simply breathe and commit their answers to memory.
Torryn, shapeshifter. Sylvin, fae. Riven, vampire.
I turn slowly toward the only one who hasn’t spoken.
He watches the treeline still, shadows coiling around him like tendrils of smoke.
“What about you?” I ask softly.
When he finally speaks, his voice is quieter than the others. Less eager to be known. “Wraith,” he says. “Born of flesh. Molded by shadow. We learn to slip between.”
I don’t understand the complexities of what each man is, but I know what they say is true.
The words–fae, vampire, shifter, wraith–feel correct in my bones, even if I don’t know why.
Yet something still doesn’t sit right. They call themselves kings, andthatdoesn’t settle the same way within me.
The feel of my brows furrowing with my confusion pauses me for only a moment. I force my next question out before I can second guess it. “How long have you…been kings of this world?”
Torryn’s eyes flash gold. When he speaks, his voice is a low, rumbling growl. “Today marks the first day we claim this world as ours again.”
His words echo through me.
Today marks the first day we claim this world as ours again.
The ground beneath my feet shudders at that. None of them seem to react, but I feel it.
A low pulse, thrumming up through the soles of my feet, through my bones, through something deeper than flesh.
The tremor makes me feel like the ground itself doesn’t welcome those words. It resists them.
A warning.
I glance down, my toes curling against the ash-dusted soil.
I trust the earth more than their mouths, and I think it’s telling me they are not the kings of this world.
My gaze lifts and lingers on each of them, watching their stances. The cold calculation in Azyric’s eyes, the amusement fading from Sylvin’s, the way Riven stands too close, and Torryn’s quiet stillness.
I pull the coat tighter around my body and find my voice again.
“Why?” I ask quietly. “Why are you coming together to fight the humans?”
Once more the earth hums gently, like it approves of my question.
No one answers at first.
Riven steps forward, his voice sharper and more lethal than I’d heard it before. “Because they hunt what is superior to them.”
Sylvin hums, tilting his chin up. “Because they forgot their place. We existed first.”
Torryn’s jaw clenches. “Because the land we gave them in a thousand year-old treaty apparently wasn’t enough for them.”
A pause follows before Azyric turns to face me fully, seeming to float across the ground as all of his shadows retract to swirl at his feet.
“Because they started a war,” he says, the coldness in his tone settling over my heart like ice. “And for once…we intend to finish it.”
