Take me with you. Don’t leave me here… alone.
But she deserved this, deserved to face the consequences of her actions.
Like innocent whirls of air, a quietly wicked part of her whispered,They deserve to face this, too. To face what they have forced me to be.
"Luella, you have to listen to me." Tharen’s fingertips were bruising on her cheeks. He all but yanked her face up. She kept her eyes closed, unable to look any longer. His wintry breath fogged before her face, seeping into her slightly parted lips as he said, "Look at me. Open your eyes. Face this."
And she did.
"Face me," Tharen whispered, nose brushing hers intimately. "Find it inside yourself to stop this storm, Luella. Or we’ll all die." His voice was calm, but she knew it was all a show. The rigid line of his body was strong atop hers.
Vale was half-leaning over her, green eyes with slitted pupils, and smoke wafting from his mouth. Onyx scales littered the backs of his hands, glittering on the strong column of his neck. He was a wild thing.
She was bound to five males that were unable to be tamed. Was it truly so bad for her not to conform, either?
Couldn’t she be violent like a storm and fierce like the ocean?
But… she didn’t want them to die.
That was why shetried—not to save herself, but because she couldn’t bear to be the one who ended them.
Her eyelids fluttered, but Tharen tapped her cheek. "Focus on me."
The rain pounded, water filling up the throne room, growing higher with her every shaky exhale. It swept past her wings, pools of it tickling against her cheeks. She tilted her face up, desperate to keep her mouth and nose above the cold water.
Tharen urged her on, uncaring that he was drenched. "Look at me. Only me. Ground yourself.Stop this."
Luella stared deeply into his eyes. Found her pale, drenched form reflected in their icy depths.
The water rose in furious splashes against her face. She gasped, chin rising as she scrambled upward. The movement tugged on her aching back. Tharen’s hands were firm on herface. "I will not let you go. I will not let you drown." His jaw ticked. "Never again," he added so quietly she barely heard it over the storm.
The well of power inside her was too large to cage, too violent to quell.
"I-I can’t." She let out a wet, shaky exhale. As though the very air in her lungs breathed life into the storm, the wind grew fiercer, and the stone cracked around the large thundering echoes that filled the deluged throne room with unmistakable danger.
"Vale," Tharen called, and the King himself replaced the Prima above her, gathering her up into his strong arms. Burning embers enveloped her, and she shivered, water trickling off her skin with reluctance, daring to cling to her.
Water splashed around them as Vale sat back and held her on his lap. Her shaking limbs were stiff with cold. No longer under Tharen, she was able to see the others—and the desolate destruction of the throne room, devoid of revelers.
It was only them now.
Luella and the males she was fated to be with, for better… or for worse.
Az’s brown curls were dark with water, dripping from the points of his horns; his false, white wings were drenched. Fake feathers fell around him, his amber eyes tinged with sorrow behind his silvery white mask. Graves had torn free his hood, deep blue eyes desperate as they flicked between the water-laden wings at her back and her white hair, plastered to her face. He was the only one of them without a mask. Unhidden. Free.
The wind shook through the black feathers at the raven shifter’s back, and she swore, they shivered in reply.
Behind his silk-like mask, Bastian’s eyes flashed deep crimson. He ran his tongue over the sharp, deadly point of afang, blood dripping from the tip, sliding down his chin, stark against his pale skin and black attire.
King Vale forced her face to his. His golden hair stuck to the edges of his golden mask, turning him into a gilded being. She straddled Vale’s thighs, the feathered ends of her white gown ruined. His eyes searched hers. She saw sorrow and possession in his.
Slowly, uncaring of her storm, Vale lifted her soaked, feathered mask from her eyes and tossed it carelessly over his shoulder. It fell into the pool of water with a splash.
"Princess Luella, you will look at me."
She flinched at the title—Princess.
How long had he known?
