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Perry wished he hadn’t read property rights in a land where nongoblins were considered property except for consorts.He nodded.There was only one way to save Jura, only one person who could.
Vori jerked, and the shackles around her wrists went tight.“I didn’t come home to rule.I can’t.”Her voice was small.Her hands shook, and the chains rattled.“The prophecies are horrific.I will destroy this world.”
“Only if you leave it.Omens and visions be damned.You were meant to be their queen.”
The guards unlocked Jura’s collar and forced the woman’s head down.Mykata clutched the discarded iron, staring at her sister as if pleading.
The hair on the back of Perry’s neck stood straight, and his stomach flip-flopped.This wasn’t an execution.It was a murder.An assassination of the last link to the old court.He and Vori would be next.Regardless of blood vows.
“There has to be another way,” Vori pleaded with him.“Something in the law that can save her.Without me being stuck here forever in a role I’m not fit for.I’ve done everything to stop it.I can’t become like the mad kings before me.I can’t lose you.”
“You won’t.I’ll be right here.You’re not your father.There is only one way.”
“Fae.”Artanya’s voice was loud, rabid.“You conspired to have my late husband, the king, killed.For that, you pay with your life.”She waved a hand at her guards.“Do it.”
“No.”Jura struggled, but too many held her.They dragged her forward on her knees with a rip of her uniform’s threadbare cloth on the stone floor.“My queen,” she implored Vori.“Save me.Save us all.Don’t let your mother’s murder have been for nothing.”
“Kill her.”Artanya practically seethed the order.
Vori met his gaze.“I declare my right as first in line to the throne.”Her voice was shaky but loud enough that everyone would hear it.“I challenge you as the rightful ruler of Kradnovtl.By the blood.”She slipped skins, her gold crown stark against the green.The chains clanked, stretching against her goblin form.“Bymyblood.”
Shocked gasps and whispers spread through the crowd.Artanya shed her own human skin in a process that took a full five seconds longer than his princess’s.Seconds that felt like minutes.The change looked painful, odd joints popping and reforming in a transformation that seemed so fluid for Vori.
There on the pretender queen’s brow was the smallest curl of silver near one of the scars.No wonder she’d hidden her form in front of the true princess.She barely had any royal markings.There was no way she could compete with Vori in a realm that prized divine right.
“A challenge to the throne?”Artanya’s voice was almost a growl.“To the death.”
The guards stared from one self-declared ruler to another, as if unsure what to do.
“Unchain the princess.”Perry gestured to the keys on a guard’s belt.He leaned close enough only Vori could hear his next words.“Be sure to qualify that she can’t name a champion on her behalf.Or you might be fighting Mykata.”
Her startled gaze flew to his.She was scared.Good.Powers knew he was.He would rather light this place up like a sparkler than have her enter a death match, but it wouldn’t do her or Jura or her people any good.This was her fight.Hers alone.They needed to keep it that way.
She clenched her jaw and nodded.“Stay clear.No matter what.Promise me.”
“I promise.”
Pushing past him, she moved to face Artanya.He couldn’t follow, could only watch her go.
Scanning the crowd, near the back and almost hidden by a column, he glimpsed a human face he’d seen before.In the Los Angeles park only minutes before he and Vori had crossed through the goblin glass.He did a double take, and the redhead laughed the same lyrical sound she’d made that night.Except now it made his skin crawl.It was too much like Artanya’s laugh.
What was Vori’s sex dungeon friend from his realm doing in Kradnovtl?The one who hated him?A chill stabbed at him like a bolt of ice ripping down his spine.Mykata’s description of her baby sister—red curls, a giggle like a bell—flew through his mind.
Petra was Phaedra.The killer.And she was here.
