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CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
LUCA
My boots pounded across the palace grounds, crunching through fresh snow and icy mud as I tracked the scent of ice wolves.
“Vento,” I roared into the midnight sky. I knew he was here - his scent was all over the garden.
A few seconds later, dozens of howls answered me from the woods to the west, and from every direction in the city streets that spread around the palace like a necklace.
The ice wolves had all come down from the mountains while I’d been trapped in the labyrinth, and I needed to know what had broken their generations-long refusal to set foot in vampire territory.
What had changed their stance so drastically that they were now willing to involve themselves in vampire business? I couldn’t quite believe it was only the threat of the gobbelins in Saori Sang.
“Hello, Luca,” Vento called, stepping out from behind a tree and into the smudgy moonlight.
He was half-shifted, with fur still covering most of his lower body and lower claws, but his arms and torso in person form. He smelled of gobbelin blood, and there was a dark streak of something wet along his arm.
“Why are you here?” I blurted, desperately trying to ignore the instinctual pull he had over me. He shouldn’t be my alpha. My grandfather...
“I am here for Khione,” Vento said, his eyes flashing dangerously in the moonlight. “I will protect her with all I have. It is the covenant of the ice wolf.”
A low growl rose in my throat. Khione was Kana, and this fucker wasn’t getting anywhere near my girl.
It was bad enough that I had to share her with the fucking thief and now the fae. If Vento tried to muscle into her life, I would rip his throat out, alpha or not.
“I’m her weapon, wolf. Protecting her ismyjob, as prophesied by the ancients,” I snarled, but Vento didn’t move a muscle for a long moment. Then he laughed, low and menacing.
“You have your prophets, and we have ours. Be aware that I have no desire to bed her, young one. I scent your claim, and I will honor it. But you should know, ice wolves do not share well. She has other claims on her body and her heart.”
“I fucking know that,” I managed, still struggling with the desire to rip his throat out for even mentioning her body or her bed. I didn’t want him anywhere near her, even in his thoughts.
“The Queen is fleeing,” Vento said, changing the topic suddenly as he turned up his nose and sniffed the wind. “Now is the best time for attack. Khione should-”
“Khionemight not know about the rules of the mist,” I snarled. “If Merden is killed outside of the Trials, the Ancient Magic is locked away from the vampires for another generation, maybe longer. Kana will never allow that to happen.”
Vento shook his head, swiping away the blood on his arm and wiping it on the fur of his haunches. “Would it be so bad? Vampires who aren’t immortal? Who cannot level a shifter village with their ice magic?” he asked, and I faltered.
I didn’t know much at all about the Ancient Magic or what regaining it might mean for Saori Sang.
I didn’t know why the Ancient Magic had been locked away in the first place - I’d always assumed it was because of Merden’s actions alone, but suddenly I was wondering if that timeline matched up. The vampire hadn’t been immortal in generations.
“Kana will never let that sort of stuff happen,” I repeated stubbornly. And I didn’t think the mist would, either.
After all, the mist wanted balance. That’s why the Trials had been created in the first place - to restore the balance of power if a coup happened in the Queendom.
And besides, the vampires needed the Ancient Magic to destroy the gobbelins.
“Travel with us?” Vento suggested, spreading his arms to the trees beyond, where I could see the glinting eyes of more ice wolves. “Get to know your people - your family - while we hunt the gobbelins. Our way.”
I hesitated. Part of me desperately wanted that. To know my father’s family. To know my own people, whom I’d only recently learned still existed.
But I shook my head. “Kana needs me here. I have to help her protect the city.”
“We are leaving a strong contingency here for that. She will have all the help and protection she needs from us. But to truly protect, we must find the source and destroy it. Travel with us to find the Gobbelin Cave,” he requested again, and that same part of my heart yearned for it harder.
But before I could answer him a second time, a blur of speed rushed through the garden and raced behind me. There was a brush against my throat, and a bite of pain that pulled a roar from me.
