Page 50 of Three Dark Kings and the Gilded Serpent

He sounds terrified. And angry. In the way of a man who will fight to the death before he loses what matters to him most.

The clear emotion in his voice startles me most of all.

He nudges open the white cloak, exposing first more of Thyra’s head, nestled in the crook of his shoulder, and then her face, as bloodied as his.

Her eyes are open the barest of slits, but the amber color of her irises hits me hard. The deepest flame. The color of quiet fire. A gentle warmth I will never achieve.

The fact that her countenance is not her own alarms me greatly.

“Blade vision.” I snarl.

“You recognize it,” the Frost King says, a hint of relief in his voice now. “I wasn’t sure if you would.”

“We’re all affected by her blade visions,” I snap.

In different ways, but all significant.

But I’m shaking my head, speaking without guarding my words. “No, it can’t be. I’m still conscious. My heart isn’t tearing apart like it has every night for the past week.”

“Something changed this morning,” the Frost King says. “The nature of her blade visions altered. I don’t know why. But that isn’t why I’m here.”

Stellen tugs the cloak further down Thyra’s side.

My chest squeezes at the way she’s leaning into him, an unwanted strike of envy cutting through my heart, the same dark emotion I experienced the last time I saw her in a blade vision. She was lying next to Stellen, nestled naked in his arms, both of them sleeping peacefully, a closeness between them that I can never have with another fae.

All self-pity vanishes when the Frost King draws the cloak further down to expose Thyra’s right hand resting against his chest.

Her fist is covered in blood. Thick and seeping into Stellen’s gray robes.

Within the mess, I make out the shape of some kind of band, a strip of material wound around her hand and crisscrossing her wrist.

Faint, golden energy pulses slowly back and forth through the gore.

I catch my breath. “What the fuck is that?”

The look on Stellen’s face is indecipherable. His ghostly eyes are whiter than white, his cheeks gray and gaunt, and the blood in his hair is gruesomely dark against his white strands.

“She’s hurting,” he rasps. “But I can’t make it stop.”

With that startling admission, he grinds his teeth again, his left hand flying back up, a fresh layer of frost snapping across his palm.

“You’re going to help her.” He snarls. “Or I will fucking end you.”

Chapter Eighteen

Stellen

Ican’t control my anger.

Gone is strategy. I have no more cold calculations. No defenses against the tumult of fear driving my actions.

“Help her?” The Ember King has frozen, muscles tensed, not more than ten paces away while the icy storm continues to churn around us. “I burn things. I don’t save them. I shouldn’t even be standing this close to her.”

I didn’t expect this level of honesty from him, but I don’t give a fucking shit what he thinks he can’t do.

“Reach her,” I snap. “Use her vision. She said she saw you. You can speak with her.”

“I can’t,” he says, more quietly than I was expecting. “She only saw me one time and we didn’t speak. I couldn’t touch her. I don’t know if she could hear me.”