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My guards positioned themselves around the room, guarding me, guarding us. Even here, in this horrific moment, they didn’t relax. But the potent scent of the sea—the salty tinge that conveyed sorrow and remorse—swirled around them.
All four of them had seen what my mother had endured over the seasons. They knew of their queen’s true nature, her resilience in the eye of my father’s storm. My mother was my light. My father, my darkabyss. Where the male who sired me clouded the room in ugly menace and raging storm clouds, she brightened it with soothing words and rays of hope.
“But he can’t kill her!” Ilara sobbed as she kneeled by the queen. Black hair cascaded down her back, the same shade as my mother’s. Wildness grew in Ilara’s eyes. She laid a gentle hand on my mother’s shoulder. “Queen Lissandra?”
But my mother didn’t move. Didn’t speak.
A tightness squeezed my chest, so tight it was nearly unbearable. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t do this.How did I let this happen?
“No.” Ilara wiped at her eyes. “I lost a mother once. I’m not losing another one.”
“Ilara,” I said, my voice rough. “Nuwin’s right. If we take her to a healer following my father’s beating, the bargain will kill her. There’s no win in this situation.”
But Ilara only shook her head, a million emotions fleeting across her features before her gaze whipped up and her eyes widened. “What if we don’t take her to a healer? What ifIheal her?”
My eyebrows snapped together.
Nuwin shook his head. “How could you heal her?”
“I have an angel affinity, and I recently learned it can also heal. Maybe I can call it forth again. Maybe I can save the queen.”
“Would the bargain allow it?” I asked my brother.
Nuwin shrugged, and his mouth slackened. “The bargain stated she could never seek a healer after Fatherpunished her. He wanted her to feel the pain he’d inflicted, but...Ilara’s not technically a healer.”
“No, she’s an angel,” Haxil agreed from the corner of the room. “That’s different.”
I faced my mate and gripped her shoulders, searching her expression. “Do you think you can do it?”
Her wings burst from her back in an explosion of power. White feathers spread wide on each side of her as her magic hummed around her. “I can try. I’ve never healed somebody else. I don’t know what it entails, but we have to try, right?” Tears filled her eyes. “Not trying means she dies.”
Nuwin nodded emphatically.
“But I’m not sure what to do.” Ilara’s wings snapped back in tight until her feathers were a plume along her back. “Nuwin, can you seek Matron Olsander? Maybe with her helping me, I can do this.”
“I’ll travel as fast as the northern winds.” In a flash of mistphasing magic, Nuwin was gone.
Ilara breathed heavily, and through the bond, her fear and determination flowed simultaneously.
I laid a hand on her lower back, my palm heating her tunic. “Even if you fail, it won’t be your fault. My mother’s going to die no matter what in this state. Please understand any outcome that isn’t favorable won’t be because of you.”
Ilara’s vivid violet eyes, transformed within her affinity, met mine. Her lips thinned, the steel within her character shining upon her expression. “I won’t fail.”
The shocked lookon Matron Olsander’s face when she appeared in the queen’s tower at Nuwin’s side would have made me laugh if the circumstances weren’t so grave.
“Blessed Mother Above and Below,” she breathed, bringing a hand to her chest when she saw both me and Ilara. “Trouble’s arrived.” She rushed to us and embraced me, then my mate, a bewildered expression covering her face when she beheld Ilara’s wings.
“Thank the Mother you’re here,” Ilara sputtered. “I’m so glad Nuwin found you.”
“Indeed he did.” Matron Olsander gazed upon my mother, and her breath sucked in. She brought a hand to her mouth, then lowered it and balled it at her side. Her lips tightened into a thin line. “Nuwin told me what happened to the queen. So, it’s true? The king abuses her?”
“He does.” Nuwin’s hands were fisted when he stuffed them into his pockets. “He has for many, many winters.”
Matron Olsander brought a hand to her chest again. “Blessed Mother. I’d heard the talk in the capital. I just couldn’t believe it, though. I’ve never seen an inkling of such abuse during my time within these walls.”
Ilara and I exchanged a look over the tutor’s white-haired head. If word had already reached the capital’s citizens of my father and what he’d done, our plan wasworking. But what good would that do if I couldn’t even protect my own mother?
“Can you help me heal her?” Ilara pleaded. Her wings extended, and she nodded over her shoulder. “You were right about my affinities. I’ve birthed two more.”
