Then without a word, blackness blossomed all around him. A cloud so thick and dark that it shielded him completely from her sight. She rushed forward, pushing the cloud of smoke aside with her air magic. She pushed straight through the smoke. Heedless of if it could contain a toxin or worse. But then she was on the other side.
And Kael was gone.
With Shadowbreaker.
Cyrene screamed, unable to control the burst of emotion that lashed through her body. He was gone. He was just gone.
“How…” Dean began.
“Self-portaling.” She ran a hand back through her dark brown locks and stared at the now-dissipating black smoke and the empty space where Kael should have been. “Malysa must have taught him how to do it.”
“He couldn’t have gotten far,” Dean reasoned. “We could go after him.”
“How? I can’t feel the bond,” she confessed. “I can’t find him. He’s gone. And with my sword.”
“Creator,” Kaliana whispered behind them.
Cyrene clenched her fists. “The coward. He couldn’t face us both, and so he just fled. How dare he.”
“Self-preservation is his strong suit,” Kaliana reasoned.
Of course it was. Kael always chose himself over everything else. They could have taken him in that moment, and he knew it. Which made him all the more dangerous. What would he do to get the power he needed to beat them?
Her fury ran rampant for the bastard who was to marry her sister. But it was nothing compared to what she turned on Killian.
“How could you do this?” she demanded of this king. She ignored the guards that had been shriveling in the corners at her fight with Kael and now came to attention when she directed her attention to Killian. “How could you have been so foolish to invite him into your home?”
“It’s reasonable to look at all the options,” he said clearly as if he hadn’t nearly wet himself at the magic display.
“Look at your options?” she snarled low and unforgiving. “Kael Dremylon is a monster. You invited darkness into your home and claim him an option while I stand here, offering you nearly everything you have asked for to ally with us. What can he give you? He won’t give you immunity. Not when the goddess of destruction herself walks free on this earth, hoping to cleanse all who refuse to bow to her.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Killian said. He bristled at her accusation and straightened, looking more like a king and less like a chastised boy. “But the powers that were displayed, the fight you had in my own throne room, as far as I’m concerned, you’re all monsters.”
Cyrene strode toward him. She flickered her wrists, and the guards were cast aside, allowing her access to His Majesty. She stepped right up onto the dais and glared at him. “I could have swaggered in here with my magic and had you on your knees within minutes, Killian,” she raged. “But I did not. I came with diplomacy. I followed your customs. I offered an alliance, not your head on a platter. Compare me again to the mass murderer. I dare you.”
Killian gulped. She watched his hands tremble, but to his credit, he did not back down. “Perhaps I was too forceful.”
“Perhaps,” she agreed with bared teeth.
“But you still lied to me. You might have come here with diplomacy, but you treated me like a fool. You had magic and did not disclose it.”
“You didn’t even believe in magic, and you would have seen it as a threat. As you do now.”
“And your captain,” he said, gesturing to Dean. “A prince?” He narrowed his eyes further. “Of Eleysia, I presume. You hid his position from me.”
“He is the captain of my guard,” she told him. “Where he hails from now is meaningless. What we fight for is all the matters. We are one. We are Doma.”
Killian just stood and shook his head. “You came under false pretenses. You believed that I was a weak king who would see a pretty face and bend to your will. I am no fool. Tiek does not belong in this war. We do not have magic, and after that display, I see no reason to see more of it in this world or any. There is no alliance. You are dismissed.”
Cyrene gritted her teeth and was about to throw expletives at him.
But then a man came racing into the throne room, screaming, “Dragons! Dragons! Majesty, there are dragons!”
Killian’s eyes widened in horror. “Dragons aren’t…real.”
“They’re sitting on a parapet. I…I think they mean to attack. How should we proceed?” the messenger gasped out.
Killian turned to her. “You! You did this.”
“So, I guess no marriage alliance, huh?” she quipped with an eye roll.
Then she strode off of the dais, leaving a quaking Killian behind. There was no alliance. There was no army. There was only a fool in the place of a king. A fool who would collapse under the weight of indecision in this war. She had done all she could do. She would not lower herself to beg him to change his mind. He was a man used to getting what he wanted. She knew he wouldn’t come around to her side with another bat of her eyelashes, and she was tired of being anything less than she was.
She was the Domina. She let the glow of her magic radiate around her as Dean and Kaliana fell into step with her. And they strode out of the castle toward their awaiting dragons, leaving Tiek behind.
32
The Princess
Avoca
The woods smelled like home long before she could see the great Leif city of Eldora. Memories flashed before her eyes. Of training and hunting and fighting. Of her precious Six Team and how she had come to command it. Of the life she had built here. The princess she had been in a world that no longer believed any Fae existed. A fairy tale to tell children of changelings and tricks and terror.
And now, she was about to ask them to give up that life. As she had. To be known to the outside world again.
She had known the minute Cyrene saved her life with her energy burst that day in the woods so long ago that everything was going to change. She had wanted it. Desperately. Could she ask her people to do the same?
It had been foolish to come on foot. She was wasting time that they didn’t have as she traipsed through the Hidden Forest back home. It was as much for healing as for the reason she had given Cyrene. Ahlvie was still in that beast. He was not fully Indres. She didn’t know how to reach him. Only that she had no other option. Her blood debt was to Cyrene. But she knew she would use it to save Ahlvie if it came to that.
With a sigh, she soldiered on until the walls of Eldora appeared in her vision. Until her Leif family appeared on the top of the walled fortress. Their elegantly pointed ears, smooth fighting leathers, and youthful expressions that betrayed disbelief at her appearance.
A call went out to open the gates. The same order she had given the night that Ceis’f appeared in Eldora after the destruction of his people in Aonia.
And then, to her astonishment, there he was.
Tall and muscularly built. His silver hair braided at the front in the traditional Aonian style. The rest a wave down his back. Those vivid gold eyes looking at her with both wonder and disbelief. Awe and worship and obsession. Love somewhere wrapped up in it.