Page 123 of Empire of Flame and Thorns

Then she walks away.

Struggling to my feet, I just stare after her until another voice shatters the silence.

“You can’t do this!” Kevlin screams at me from the ground. “I’ve worked so hard for this. Fought so hard for this.”

While keeping all of my weight on my uninjured ankle, I twist around to face Kevlin. Desperation pulses across his whole face.

“Please,” he begs. “This has been my dream for over three hundred years. And I can’t wait another hundred and fifty years for the next chance.”

Draven’s words from earlier suddenly echo inside my skull.Why does everyone else’s dreams matter more than your own?

A harsh laugh rips from my lungs. Because he’s right. They don’t matter more than my own.

Holding Kevlin’s gaze, I shake my head while something steady settles inside me.

“I don’t care,” I reply.

And then I turn my back on him.

The edge of the forest is right in front of me. Pain spikes through my leg as I begin hobbling towards it.

All I need to do is to make it out onto the grasslands outside where Jessina and Bane Iceheart are waiting. After everything I’ve been through to get to this point, everything I’ve done and everything I’ve endured, there is now only a short stretch of forest and an even shorter stretch of grass standing between me and victory.

I stumble towards it on my one good leg.

But I only make it a few steps before a heart-stopping sound booms through the forest behind me.

The sound of beating wings.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Everything inside me screams in pain and exhaustion and sheer fucking desperation as I try to run with a broken ankle while the beating of wings grows louder behind me. Lightning shoots up my leg with every step, and the agony is so blinding that I can barely see the forest before me. I cry out in pain as I stumble through the trees.

I have to make it. Please, Mabona, I have to make it.

Begging to any deity that will listen, I shove my way through tangles of vines. Thorns slice into my skin.

The beating wings draw closer.

With a scream, I shove myself out between two twisted tree trunks right as a dark shadow sweeps through the air above me.

My legs give out and I crash down on the grass right at the edge of the massive field between our city and the Golden Palace.

A second later, Draven slams down on the ground a few strides away.

Lightning flashes in his eyes as his gaze locks on me where I’m crawling forward across the grass. My heart jerks violently at the expression on his face. He looks like he’s about to slaughterevery person in this court and then burn the whole forest to the ground.

Clenching his fist, he takes a threatening step towards me and opens his mouth to say something. But right before the first word can make it out, another voice breaks the silence.

“Draven,” Empress Jessina says. “You’re back. Were you monitoring the trial all night?”

Draven freezes in place. There looks to be a war going on behind his eyes as he stares at me.

“Yes,” he at last replies.

“Any issues?”

His golden eyes sear into me, burning through my very soul. Behind his thigh, where only I can see it, he flexes his hand again. It looks like he’s about to pick me up and simply throw me back into the forest. But I’m gambling on the fact that he can’t interfere while Empress Jessina and Emperor Bane are watching. However, based on the way Draven is clenching his jaw, it looks like he might ignore their orders and do it anyway.

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