“Let. Me.Go!” I raged, already reaching for my dagger. He didn’t release his hold, but he didn’t stop me from fisting the hilt, from drawing my weapon and pressing the tip to the soft flesh beneath his chin. A tiny drop of blood beaded on the end, but if he felt the sting, he didn’t show it.
His grip finally loosened. Then, in a voice so tender and sad it almost unraveled me, he said, “You cannot leave Midnight. Your sisters are beyond your help. Either they’re safe, and we’ve nothing to worry about. Or they’re already in danger and you’d merely be walking into the same trap.”
“Or worse—I’d be walking into a graveyard, because they’re already—”
“Shh.” He pressed a fingertip to my lips, his eyes blazing with a sudden fiery resolve. “Don’t speak it. Don’t eventhinkit.”
With a resigned sigh, I finally lowered my blade. Killing him wouldn’t do any good.
Besides, I didn’t want to hurt him. Not really. Maybe that was crazy, but…
No. Scratch that. It wasdefinitelycrazy.
Still. Crazy didn’t mean false. Keradoc had gotten to me. The mystery, the darkness, the magick… I was drawn to him, and I suspected he felt the same way, our strange connection growing stronger every time we crossed paths.
Every time we touched.
“I will do everything in my power to look after your sisters,” he said. “But I cannot allow you to return to your realm. Not until your task is done and this war is—”
“No.” I sheathed my dagger. “Youwon’tallow it. There’s a difference.”
“Oh, is that so?” He let out a dark chuckle, that fire crackling back to life inside him. “If not for my forbidding it, you’d leave this place without so much as a backward glance? Right this instant? I very much doubt it.”
“What part of the wordprisonerdon’t you get? You threatened to torture and kill us if we tried to escape. I have no other reason to stay otherwise.”
“No?” He stepped closer—impossibly close—and hooked a finger under my chin, forcing me to meet his mesmerizing gaze. “Tell me something, Daughter of Darkwinter. If I were to grant your freedom, no strings attached, would you accept it? Would you truly leave Midnight?”
I opened my mouth. Hesitated.
And in that tiny space of nothingness, Keradoc saw the truth.
One I hadn’t even accepted for myself—not until that very moment.
No, I wouldn’t leave Midnight. Not when the realm was under threat and I might be able to defend it.
To protect it, this place I was all too quickly—all too strangely—coming to think of as home.
Wordlessly Keradoc released me, turning back to look out across the wall. To look out at the hazy light still flickering in the distance, a warning of what was coming our way.
A warning of what I’d somehow—despite the dangerous impossibility of it all—decided to stand by his side and fight.
11
HALEY
Melantha and her army will be here in a matter of weeks,” Keradoc said. “Perhaps even sooner than that.”
“Do you still think we have a chance? Against Darkwinter and Melantha and her army?”
His eyebrow arched at the mention of “we,” but he still didn’t call me out. Didn’t need to. He’d baited the trap, and I’d leaped right into it.
We both knew I was in this for the long haul now, come what may.
Oddly, as much as I’d hated the fact that he’d seen through my facade, it was almost a relief that he knew. ThatIknew.
Yes, I was a prisoner. An unwilling hostage.
But I was also a fighter. A defender. A witch who wouldn’t turn her back on the people she cared for, even if one of themwasa vicious warlord.
