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It didn’t sit right with me. Oberon and I had been enemies for most of my life. He must have known we’d come here to kill him, and yet he’d chosen mercy when he had the upper hand. It didn’t make any sense. And it did not mesh with everything I knew about him. He was brutal and cruel. And he’d—
Realization rushed through me.
A muscle in my jaw ticked. “My mother.”
Understanding lifted Alastair’s eyebrows. “Ah.”
“Even as twisted as this power has made her, she must not want me dead. And Oberon would never go against her wishes, based on what Tessa saw in that vision.” My voice rang hollow. It didn’t feel right, speaking of her like this. It had been centuries. All this time, I’d thought she was dead.
I wanted to see her alive again, but not like this. There was no happiness when I thought of her now. Just dread. She was just as involved in this as Oberon, even if he’d started it. Would killing the King of Light be enough to fulfill my vow? Or would I be forced to go after her too?
Was my vow really about her, just as I’d begun to suspect?
“Morgan lied. Again. He’s going to make the transfer into Tessa’s body, isn’t he?” Fenella asked.
I ground my teeth. The thought disgusted me.
Niamh shot me a look of pity. “All signs point to yes.”
Churning anger boiled within me. I gripped the chains and rattled them as hard as I could, knocking the painful steel against my body. There had to be a way out of this. I couldn’t justsit here, useless, while Tessa faced her last moments in this world. I couldn’t let Oberon take her from me. He’d already taken so fucking much.
The iron bit my skin, even through my armor. I hissed against the pain, but I did not let go. I would not stop trying, not while Oberon had his hands on Tessa.
“Kal,” Niamh said gently. “Those chains won’t break without a key or a magic-infused axe, no matter what you do. Save your energy.”
“I have to get to Tessa.”
“You have the ability to get to her any time you want to,” Alastair pointed out. “You always have.”
“The dreams,” I said, understanding at once.
The mists surrounding us were thick, and an orange haze was all I could see of the sun. Even then, I didn’t know how to use its path in the sky to tell how much time had passed. It could be an hour or a day. Tessa might not be sleeping right now, but it was worth a try.
I closed my eyes and tilted my head, listening for any sign of her. Black nothingness was my only answer.
“Damn iron chains. Even if she’s asleep and calling out for me, I won’t be able to hear her. We have to break them.”
“That’s impossible,” Fenella said with a weary sigh. “We don’t have a key, and we definitely don’t have an axe.”
“Lucky for you,Ihave an axe.” Toryn strode from the mists with Boudica perched on his shoulder. His lopsided smile and scarred hands were the best things I’d seen in weeks. He held up a small axe with a glittering sapphire gemstone in the center. “Does someone need help from little old Toryn?”
“Thank the fucking moon,” I said, hope swelling in my chest. “Get over here and get us out of these things.”
“My pleasure, Kal.”
He got to work on my bonds first. It took a good five minutes for him to cut through the chains around my ankles, and then he moved on to my hands. When I was finally free, I rubbed my wrists while he slammed the axe against Alastair’s shackles. The ring of steel was as loud as thunder.
“How did you get here so fast?” I asked.
He shot me a grim smile. “It’s been longer than you think. Boudica saw what happened and came to get me, and I rode flat-out to get here, but that valerian fog really knocked you out.”
My heart stopped. “Oberon has Tessa. He wants to transfer my mother’s soul into her body.” Such a weird fucking thought.
“I know,” he said, turning back to Alastair’s chains. “Boudica tracked them while I rode here. He’s going the long way around—to avoid the army, I think. It looks like he’s taking her to Albyria, albeit very slowly. He keeps stopping. I don’t think he’s well.”
I narrowed my gaze. “Then we have a chance of catching up to them. We can stop him from doing this.”
And kill him, once and for all.
