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“Where is Merlin?” he demanded.
The two Shadows’ heads snapped up at that—he was of interest now.
Igraine’s eyes had never left him. He stood in water up to his ankles now. “She is gone.”
“Where?”
A slight crinkle at the eyes. The first harbinger of aging in a nearly immortal race. “To ensure the chalice is safe.”
A stream of water snaked upward, covering his face, shoving itself past his lips and into his nose. He tried to spit it out, but the force of the water was too intense. He tried to swallow, but his lungs—
A roar echoed through the mountain, shaking the very foundations of the goldstone palace where they stood.
The water was gone, the dark lioness no more than a blur overhead as it leaped over him, swiping easily at the two Shadows.
She turned to Parys, and he nearly collapsed back to the sand.
There was nothing of the friend he’d come to know in those burning amber eyes, or the jaws dripping with thick fae blood turned black by the night.
But still he managed to say, to point, “Follow Merlin. Catch Merlin.”
Gwen’s lioness needed no more urging. She bounded away between the trees, leaving Igraine to him.
The Shadows got to him first.
He splashed through the deep puddle the Dowager had created, spinning wind all around him. He managed to knock one of the Shadows away with the force of that wind, but the other held on tight—tighter by the second. Tight around his neck.
But if he could create wind, he could take it away as well. He ripped the air from the Shadow’s windpipe and deeper, straight from his lungs, until his organs were popping and he fell unconscious to the ground.
His power was flagging. He’d used it to cover his approach in the tunnels, too much of it, not anticipating it would come to this. The other Shadow broke through his wall of wind with a spear of fire, grabbed Parys from behind.
Gwen understood—had always understood that ruling Annwyn would mean sacrifice. Parys hadn’t expected this… not again… not after surviving the Tower of Myda. He’d thought that sitting on the Round Table would mean reporting rumors to Veyka and Arran, spreading the ones they wanted to the courtiers. Never this.
But he’d do it all again.
Not a single choice changed.
For his friends.
For the male he’d loved. For Arthur.
He rallied the last of his strength, his magic nearly depleted. He sent a punch of wind into the face of the Shadow holding him. The male reared back, loosening his grip just enough that Parys was able to get himself free.
Only to be hit with a wall of water.
It caught him.
That was why Igraine had created the pool of water—for this moment. So she could summon it upward with a swipe of her hand into a waterfall, but opposite. Water going up. Water flowing around his limbs and holding him in place.
Water down his throat. Into his lungs.
Air. Wind. Fill my lungs with wind. Long enough for Gwen to get back. I have to tell Gwen, so she can find Arran and Veyka, so they can banish the darkness…
Water until there was nothing left.
I need more time. To figure out the Ethereal Prophecy, to help Veyka. To save Veyka.
Through the water, he imagined he saw the blur of a dark feline body.
