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I knelt, tracing along the prince’s jaw until I found his pulse point. Paused. Bent to listen for breath. Held still. Pulled his black shirt up to my teeth—tore it apart until bare skin, ink, and the telltale lacework burn of a lightning strike were exposed. Set my palm over his chest, just to be absolutely fucking sure.

“Gone,” I breathed.

“Good.” Freya’s anxious eyes flicked up to her brother—to the ice water pouring through the slit in the door, to August’s roar of agonized fury, the kind meant to cripple a man.

“Now, ma moitié. It has to be now.”

“Even as Lonan, he was fucking brutal, Cy, he⁠—”

I cut her off. We didn’t have the fucking time. “I’m sure my enemies say the same of us. Do you trust me?”

Jade eyes flashed to mine, haunted with worry. But she spread her palm over his still chest. “With my fucking life.”

Her eyes flashed with her brother’s power a beat before it webbed down her arm—and into the rightful king of Bellpost.

August

“Cyrus!” I roared as Montague and I put everything we had into prying the metal door back. Where was Aren when I fucking needed him?

Static charged the air, and I glanced backward, panic slicing through me as I scanned for Freya⁠—

—and found her kneeling beside our enemy with sparks dancing down her arm. Cyrus lifted his hands off the motherfucker long enough for her to funnel my goddamn magic into his chest with a jolt so powerful his spine bowed.

“Freya!”

Metal screeched, my compromised focus costing us ground.

“Goddamnit, Freya! What the fuck are you doing?”

You’re gonna have to trust us, big brother.

My fingers slipped on wet steel, and I snarled as I threw my power into it, pulling telekinetically with every ounce of strength I had in my fucking body.

Marcus, Alec, Ajax, and Blaz appeared at the end of the hallway, vanishing and materializing just as quickly. Every one of them laid hands on the door barring me from Ally. Shadows, telekinesis, fire—it all flared until the damn thing melted away enough for the water to fall through.

“Freya!” I barked again, catching Alec’s eyes and praying he understood what I needed. Because I was already climbing through the warped metal. I landed in about a foot of frigid water, my pulse suddenly louder than the crumbling palace, louder than the battle outside us. Everything else faded into the background.

Because she was here.

Ally.

Some kind of mask was strapped to her face, attached to a tube. Her eyes…

God, bandages were wrapped around her bruised, swollen face, as if that could conceal the horrors inflicted. Unrecognizable. If it weren’t for the bond in my chest writhing and stretching for her, I would’ve questioned myself.

She wasn’t alone, either.

A man was suspended in the water beside her, every inch of him mottled black and yellow, his arms covered in thick, raised, glossy pink skin—Goes by Killswitch. You’ll know him by the burn scars down his arms.

Kade’s man was in here with her—strapped to the same kind of mask—their limp fingers inches apart, as though they’d clung to each other until their bodies succumbed to the cold.

I was on her in an instant, pulling her freezing body into my arms. Somewhere outside myself, I registered a splash in the water behind me. But I couldn’t turn. Couldn’t move as something guttural lodged in my throat and I pulled her into my chest.

“Ally,” I breathed. “Ally, baby, I’m here. We’ve got you. You’re safe.” My fingers found her neck. No goddamn pulse—but that couldn’t be. Wasn’t possible. “Ally!” I gave her a little shake, panic a rising tide more brutal than the frigid water beneath us. “Come on baby, you can’t do this to me.” Her head lolled in response—but there—faint and slow, too slow—a blue pulse fluttered in her neck. “Come on baby. Come back to me.”

Reyna’s evacuating. Too many casualties. The snake has rotted the ground beneath the palace. Everything is about to go.

Words. I could hear them speaking words, but I couldn’t get my body to move, couldn’t get it to do anything other than cling to her. I pried the mask off her face—her perfect lips miraculously intact beneath that horrible blue pallor.