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This was the price I’d paid for power. How could my princess look upon me and not flinch?
“Well, shit. That backfired,” Beryl grumbled behind us.
Cerri’s laughter echoed through the halls. I spun, put myself between Beryl and Cerri, and lowered my head with a growl ripping from my muzzle. Cerri buried a hand in my fur.
“That’s not enough to save you,” Beryl warned with a smile slapped on her face. “Even if you were to escape, you still don’t have what you need to save everyone back in the mortal realm. You’ll return empty handed to a Pack of feral wolves that can’t trust you anymore.”
“Oh, shut your mouth,” Cerri said. “I’m tired of your grandstanding. You never had what I needed, and even if you did, you had no intention of giving it to me.”
Beryl’s laughter confirmed Cerri’s suspicion. However, the castle had led us to the books in the top of the tower. They had to hold an answer. We already had what we needed. Now, I had to get my princess out of here.
So long as Beryl was distracted with her mind games, we had a chance to slip past her.
I felt him a split second before he struck. Faust dove out of the shadows with his blade at the ready. His magic grabbed at me. It tried to leash the uncaged beast, but the arcana slid off me. Faust’s eyes went wide and his attack fumbled. I, too, stared in shock.
The pookah and I held each other’s gaze in a highly unexpected moment of confusion.
“He belongs to me,” Cerri said in a husky voice that made my monstrous heart skip a beat.
I hadn’t even told her about my connection to Faust. How had she known to place a barrier between us? She hadn’t. The connection between Cerri and I was stronger now that she’d looked my beast in the eye.
She had become my queen once and for all.
Now, I just had to keep her from taking my heart, too.
30
CERRI
The silver haired fae assassin seemed taken aback.
“Well?” Beryl shouted at him. “Do your job! I don’t pay you to stand there.”
Rhoan pulled back his paw and smacked the thin fae assassin across the room. He crumpled into a heap in the heart of my twisting trees. I quickly bound him with thick roots and tugged him into the stone floor so that he had little room to escape.
“I underestimated you, little mutt princess,” Beryl said with a shake of her head as she pulled her gaze away from the trapped assassin.
Beryl rolled her eyes and lifted a hand in our direction. I gasped. The wilted blot in my power spread across the garden. Beryl bit her lip and grinned, her eyes wide and manic. She cocked her head as the darkness spread across my body.
“You forget that I’m your aunt. We share blood, Cerridwen. You are two steps away from being Unseelie. What will you do when I take you over and turn you into an evil creature like myself? Will you be able to look yourself in the mirror? Will you come to kneel at my side once and for all?”
To Beryl, there was a fine line between good and evil. It depended on where someone stood between the light and dark, but that was a jaded way of thinking. I was friends with the antichrist. I’d broken curses with a necromancer’s help.
Good and evil wasn’t about ability. It was all about what one chose to do with their abilities.
I lifted a middle finger to Beryl.
This was my domain. The seed of my power still pulsed in the heart of this small realm.
Rhoan said that Beryl controlled everything here, even the exits. I refused to accept that. This was my home. I’d given it my heart’s blood. It didn’t matter if I was Seelie, Unseelie, or just a fool.
If I wanted to step in-between, Iwould.
I buried my hand in Rhoan’s fur as Beryl approached us. With a cocky smile on my face, I clutched my knight and my books and threw myself backwards. Magic wrapped around me. While it wasn’t as bright as the sun anymore, it was still all mine, and it would take me anywhere I wanted.
* * *
We landedin a heap in the middle of Ness and Ryder’s living room. They yelped and leapt out of their seats. Ryder swept his mate up from the floor and whisked her to the opposite side of the room. When Ryder turned on Rhoan, who was still full-beast-mode, I dropped my books and threw up my hands.
