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Kill the beast.Vori trapped her tongue behind clenched teeth.Too late.
Artanya stretched her mouth into a hateful grin.“A blood vow.Such an extreme measure.Sounds like motive for murder.”She glanced at Mykata.“Seize her and the witch.Kill him first.”
Stars exploded across Vori’s vision.“No.”The castle’s magical glow flickered and failed.The electrical lights blinked out with a pop and a sizzle.Darkness blinded her.“Don’t touch him.”She couldn’t think past the tangled wreck of thoughts.
A humming generator brought the emergency lights back on.
“You kill Vori, and the castle dies,” Perry said.“You’ve seen how the realm is dying.Your world is sustained by the lifeblood of living royals.Isn’t her blood and yours the foundation of the divine right belief?”
“Then we’ll follow her father’s philosophy and feed her blood to the earth.A princess’s should be enough to restore Kradnovtl.”The queen consort was determined to condemn her.
“Or to destroy it.The last living golden-born.”This brilliant man.Perry had taken their own lore and spun it to defend her.“The mad king spilled the blood of hundreds trying to fix the world, and he tore it apart.”He pointed to Lenneck’s corpse.“Look how the magic reacted to your king’s death.The castle shook, pieces of it crumbled.This realm lives because royals live.”
Vori had never believed in the legend because it linked too much power to birth, a mountain that would come crashing down on her if she thought too much about the responsibility her birthright might carry.
The queen consort lifted her chin.“Then it will rise on the rule of the silver.”
“But what if the realm requires the gold?Like the original queen.”Perry said it so plainly with such conviction that it seemed the only logical answer.
“Kradnovtl got so much worse after the crown princess left us,” Mykata said.
“After the princess escaped because her mother sacrificed herself.”Each word of Perry’s correction of the captain stabbed at Vori, but he wasn’t finished.“The realm probably suffered again after her golden-born father died.”
The mad king.The man she’d feared as much as any other royal had.Vori couldn’t risk the anger that had made her father into the tyrant he had become.
“He’s right,” Mykata said.“We can’t risk killing her.”
“Then we’ll keep her here for the rest of her life in chains, bleed her slowly if necessary.”Artanya motioned to the other guards.“Take her to a cell.Check it first.We don’t need her fleeing through some secret passage.”
Vori didn’t argue, didn’t fight.It wouldn’t do any good.The queen consort had to know her little sister, Phaedra, had killed the king.This was all a ploy to lock away the only other threat standing between Artanya and the throne—a crown princess.
Except locks wouldn’t hold Vori.
They never had.
“No.”Perry stepped in front of her.“You can’t do this.”
“I can, and I will,” Artanya told him.“Your princess murdered the king instead of killing him in a royal challenge.That makes me the next in line to the crown.I’m now queen.Isay what can and can’t be done.You?You, we can kill.”
Vori’s heart pounded, her breath burning and broken.“You can’t.Not unless I command it.”It was the truth she hadn’t wanted to face.No one in Kradnovtl could’ve killed her mother…except her father.“Not under goblin law.”
“She’s right.”Mykata sounded as though she knew trying to reason with her sister was a lost cause.
“So we use him to control her,” Artanya said.“She’ll be a good little prisoner.”
“No.”Perry curled his fingers into fists.
Vori recognized the motion.It was what he did before invoking his powers.“Don’t,” she whispered.If he fired on the queen consort, they would kill him.
Artanya ignored them, focusing on her sister.“For now, we keep them apart.We can’t have them breeding more golden-borns.Put him in her suite.Take her to the dungeon.”
A guard grabbed Vori’s upper arm.
Perry lost his mind, attacking the goblin guards in a fight he couldn’t possibly win.Without magic, he might’ve taken down a human, but he couldn’t match goblin strength.Three guards dragged him away from her.
His eyes lit with a desperation that tore at her.Anyone would’ve believed them to be true mates, forever mates.She almost did.She couldn’t watch him suffer.
“Stop.”Daring the guards to attack a royal, Vori reached for him.His powers crackled beneath his skin.
“I won’t let them take you.”His violent whisper shot through her.
This man.
He would fight for her despite impossible odds, despite knowing her goblin side, despite their very temporary marriage.Emotion overwhelmed her, stealing any response.
What was this?Trust?Gratitude?Love?
Time seemed to slow.The others faded into the background.No one mattered but Perry.She stopped thinking, stopped questioning, and did the only thing that felt so right—like a lock catching on her tools, those tricky tumblers clicking into place.
She kissed him, drinking in all that deadly power.
