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“No, you won’t,” I growled.
“If the Shadows help, you’ll start a war. I won’t let you risk such a thing.”
“Fine,” Lyric grouched. “Be selfish.”
“I—what?” Raven asked, her eyebrows slanting.
Draven patted Lyric’s hand and gave Raven a conciliatory smile. “My mate can be a little bloodthirsty. It’s gotten worse during the pregnancy.”
“Right,” Phalen drawled satirically. “Let’s blame the pregnancy.”
“The pregnancy is exactly why you shouldn’t involve yourselves, why you shouldn’t risk it,” Raven argued. “I appreciate your … support. But it has to be me. Itwillbe me.”
“Not alone it won’t.”
Raven glared at me. I didn’t care. “You’re no longer alone,” I told her.
At last, Brokk, who’d been annoyingly quiet, joined in. “She’s never been alone.”
I scoffed. “You let her go to the Keep.”
“She’s not a child.”
“It wasn’t safe and you know it.”
The Council was well aware of The Navita’s secret, that Sersha was his half-sister. Their brute of a father, Keane, had coerced a mating bond onto Brokk’s mother, Olette, who was not Keane’s true mate. When Brokk was young, she’d managed to escape Keane, temporarily, and hide Brokk away with trusted allies. Eventually Keane caught up and took her life. Brokk was raised in secret.
Years later, Keane mated with Sersha's mother, who disappeared early in Sersha’s life. Keane never publicly addressed the disappearance and none of the fae made a fuss—to speak against the King was to forfeit your life. He never managed to find his son, not until Brokk decided they should meet. That meeting hadn’t ended well for Keane.
If Sersha knew of Brokk and his children, she would kill them—or try to, anyway. Unlike in the Shadowlands, where the ruler had to earn his place, the fae throne followed the bloodline. Her kin were her competition.
Raven cleared her throat. “He couldn’t have stopped me.”
“Couldn’t?” her father challenged.
“Alright,shouldn’thave stopped me.”
“And why is that?” I asked.
She licked her plush lips and my brain malfunctioned for a second.
“I was having dreams and a pressing instinct I had to go to the Keep. I think I was supposed to be there. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have ended up here.” Raven glanced in my direction, then back to Lyric. “I believe Fate set me on this path.”
The path to me!I wanted to roar the words aloud, lest there be any misunderstanding that I was her fate.
“Well, shit. That sounds almost romantic,” Lyric stated. “I mean, without the whips and scars and broken bones and such.”
My skin heated. “Getting captured and tortured because she wouldn’t fall on her back for a dishonorable male is not romantic, Lyric.”
“Of course it isn’t, Cas, but if not for her severe injuries Brokk wouldn’t have brought her here. And she haddreams! Raven, did you dream of Cas, specifically?”
“No.”
“Huh. Well, he dreamt of you.”
Violet sparked to bright lavender when Raven cocked her head at me. “You did?”
“Aye.”
