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She’d always been a little cold with her emotions, but this... this was more like looking at a blank mask of Kana’s face, painted with occasional flashes of labored effort to appear normal.
A rapid knock cracked on the door, and it flew open to reveal Blaise, face panicked.
“Get your asses out of bed! Shit’s going down,” she cried, not even stepping one foot into the room before she turned and sprinted away.
Rush - Declan? Saint Laurent? Whatever the fuck he was... he stepped into the room and flicked his dark eyes over the three of us. He was in full vampire glamor again, with a white-knuckle grip on his signature calm control.
“The city is under siege. The ice wolves have arrived and are hunting the gobbelins. The people are panicking. And that fuckingcunt queenis fleeing,” he said, spitting the words out rapidly and ending on a snarl.
Kana blinked one long slow blink, then sprang into action, speeding out of the room so fast I barely saw which direction she’d gone.
Without even a glance back at the wolf, I shoved past the fae and sprinted after her.
I was never letting that woman out of my sight again.
––––––––
KANA
I ran, my mind feeling like it had been split in two.
Kana was on one half, and Khione was on the other, like sisters forced to share a bedroom. It fucking hurt, but I didn’t have time to figure any of it out. Both of us wanted to save the city.
Both of usreallywanted to kill Merden, or at least stop her from abandoning the people she’d pledged to protect. So that’s what we were going to focus on first. At least my body remembered what to do. I was a warrior.
I skidded into the banquet hall, which was in complete chaos. Guards and servants were running in all directions, gathering unconscious blood slaves and helping drunken nobles out of the hall.
Merden and Girard were nowhere to be seen.
Kas zoomed in behind me, doing a quick scan of the hall, and I sensed Luca and Rush not far behind.
Thank the Goddess, I had all my men. Khione might not care or remember much about love, but Kana sure as shit did.
“Figure out what’s happening,” I told Kas, and he sped away to interrogate a guard.
Luca growled something about ice wolves and bolted out the glass doors into the palace gardens. I grabbed Rush by the hand.
“Help me find Merden,” I ordered, pulling him along without waiting for a reply.
Kas caught up with us a few seconds later as we sprinted down the hallway. Using his mindspeak instead of his breath, he told me the jumbled news.Merden announced a fucking vacation in the mountains for her nobles. They’re fleeing to the Vault, K. She’s claiming the mist won’t start the next Trial until the full moon, but they’re going to fucking hide from the gobbelins, I fucking know it!
My lips pressed together in a grim line.
I had to stop her. This was fucking ridiculous, even for her. She wanted to be Queen, but only for the parties. She didn’t get to cop out when things got tough. The gobbelins would slaughter the city.
Bursting into the Queen’s chambers, I slung ice magic at the guards who tried to stop us, freezing their minds as they crumpled to the floor, moaning in pain.
I didn’t have the magical strength to freeze their bodies solid like I had with the gobbelins - that had been Khione.
“Don’t you fucking dare leave,” I hissed at Merden, stalking toward her and trusting Rush and Kas to watch my back. I tried to lock her into the same mindspeak as the guards, but she had a much stronger mental wall up. I palmed a knife, and her lip curled.
“Every Queen deserves a vacation, Kana dear. You’re such a serious little worker bee,” Merden said, sniffing in disdain as she pointed to a handful of dresses and a terrified servant scrambled to pack them, cowering when she had to pass by me.
“Queens are supposed to take care of their people in times of war, you shit-stain excuse for a-”
“Kana,” my father’s voice boomed from the door behind me. “You will not speak to your Queen in such a way.”
Uncoiling my whip and cracking it along the carpet, I seethed like a teenage girl, caught between the idea of letting Khione out to shatter both of them, or maintaining what the mist and the Trials had told me was necessary.
