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“It’ll be all right, my girl,” I said. It was a promise, yet one I wasn’t certain I could keep. Not when I didn’t bleeding know what the hells was happening beyond our walls.
Mira lifted her eyes, holding mine for a few breaths, but soon they widened. “Maj! Maj, behind you.”
I wheeled around and screamed, shielding Mira with my body. The back doorway to the cooking room was flung open. In the frame billowed shadows, like a satin cloak, and in the center was Davorin.
The Davorin who’d stood arrogant in the Court of Stars before we’d backed him into the sea. His hair was glossy and thick again. His pale face sharp and youthful. His eyes glimmered in malice as he looked at me.
“Hello, little raven.”
In half a breath I had a dagger unsheathed from my belt, blade outstretched. “Come near me, and I carve out your heart.”
“I do love this new strength you think you have,” he said, laughing. “It will be a joy to rid you of it soon enough.” Davorin tilted his head. “Hmm. What a lovely little girl.”
My heart bruised my chest, but stronger than fear was rage. Horrid, desperate rage for even the mere glance at my daughter. To imagine Davorin close to Mira sickened me. It brought a wildness to my mind I couldn’t tame.
I rushed for the door in the same moment the main hall doors clanged open.
“Shit!” Ari’s rough curse struck me from behind. “Seal the bleeding gates, get this bastard’s head in my hands now! Saga, stop.”
Davorin’s grin widened at the sight of Ari. “I look forward to our reunion, Golden King. How sweet it will be. Enjoy memories of me.”
Ari cursed, barked orders at the blood fae and forest fae at his back; he sprinted for us, snagging Mira out of the doorway. I screamed my anger and threw the blade when I was close enough. By the time the point made it through the door, Davorin’s likeness was gone.
The shadows. Those horrid, unfeeling eyes. He was just . . . gone.
I doubled over, screaming my anger, my fear.
Ari’s hand snatched me away from the door. He filled the space, the heirloom blade in place. “Where the hells is he!”
“It was an illusion,” Magus said, touching the wood around the door. “A spell cast of some kind. You can see remnants. He’s not here, My King. I don’t know if he truly was.”
Ari raged and stabbed the damp soil with his blade.
Dressed in a loose tunic, hair tousled, I could see the fear and disquiet clearly. Mira whimpered, and I wrapped her tightly in my arms, holding her trembling body close. Ari let out a long breath and softened his eyes.
Still, there was a madness in his expression. One he’d never lost since the day Davorin slid into the sea.
The sight of the brilliant, emerald flames had snapped something in my husband. Full of words and jests, tender and brilliant, now he was the brutal warrior he kept beneath it all. Blood and vengeance lived in those eyes. As though he craved it.
Now, to see more tricks of Davorin after the flame, I was certain one more game, and Ari would snap into a man made of nothing but violence.
Tonight revealed a truth we’d all known could come to pass. A dreary piece of our tale we’d chosen to keep buried while we lived and loved.
It had shattered upon the first sight of that green fire.
His long Night Folk legs had him across the cooking room and next to me in six strides. His palm cupped the back of Mira’s head. She squeezed her arms tighter around my neck.
“Mira,” he whispered. “We’re going to the burrows now, like we always talked about.”
“No.” She sobbed. Born a natural fretter like her mother, Mira sensed trouble before the towers burst in the warning. She’d already been sleeping between the two of us from a slew of nightmares.
Now her dreams of shadows and losing her maj and daj were coming to pass.
“My girl,” I whispered. “We’ve talked of this. We’ve told you what happens if the green fire came.”
“No, Maj, no! You saw him, he’ll . . . snatch me up!”
“Listen to me, Starlight,” Ari said. Starlight, a name he’d always called her, a name that belonged to the two of them, since Ari always said she was born beneath the stars, and they brightened with delight at her birth. “No one will touch you. But I need you safe, Maj needs you safe, understand?”
