Page 40 of War of Her Heart

And then came the pills. A faerie with a heart condition? Bullshit.

When I wasn’t searching the castle for the object that was slowly killing me, I was contacting every healer and scholar I knew to figure out what those pills were.

Violet said she had a heart condition, and she was telling the truth when she said that. At least the truth to her. I could tell when she was lying. She rubbed the palm of her hand on the side of her thigh, and she didn’t do that with the heart condition.

She believed she had a heart condition, but I knew she didn’t. It was impossible and yet everyone around her believed the bullshit. Either that or they all were in on it.

I wanted to just take her pills and force her to stop taking them. To prove to her that she was fine, for her to feel what I feel, and for us to figure out why she was given the pills in the first place, but I couldn’t do that. If it was anyone else, I would. But not her.

She had spent her entire life being a submissive Mountain Realm lady. Not anymore.

She had to make the decision herself. I just had to do enough research to prove to her that I was right. One thing I’d learned in the short time she’d been here was that she loved to read andlearn. She liked to know things. Maybe if I came to her with facts she would listen and stop taking the pills.

What did she tell Bronwen?Knowledge is power.

I’d like to show her what real power was.

But on top of all of that, I now had to deal with her being in love with someone else.

It hurt. I hadn’t felt hurt like this in three centuries.

She was mine.

But she needed to realize it herself. I would not force her.

Since she didn’t realize I was her mate, Bronwen had been working so hard to make her comfortable here. To make her not want to leave after the wedding so she could choose to be here, close to me.

But a relationship with Calum just complicated it all.

A week ago, I wouldn’t have had a problem killing whoever stood in the way of me getting what I wanted.

But now I cared more about her and her happiness than I did myself. If she wanted him, I wouldn’t stand in the way. I wouldn’t force her to choose me.

I would spend eternity in misery if it meant she was happy. But how could she be happy? Calum was to marry the daughter of a Sovereign. If not Nathara, it would be one from another realm. He was a rule follower and that was one of the rules Queen Mother created. He would never put her first.

I was assuming he planned to keep her as his mistress, which never ended well. I’d seen it happen firsthand. Her needs would always be second to his wife’s needs.

But with me, I’d let the world burn before I put someone above her.

I’d like to see Queen Mother try to stop me.

All I wanted to do was go to Violet and make sure she was okay. But as long as I knew she was safe in her room, I had to focus on finding the object that was draining me.

It started nearly a year ago. At first it was a small feeling that I was missing something. I disregarded it and assumed it would go away, that it was more mental rather than a physical loss of something.

After a few weeks and a few incidents of having to deal with some rather large and powerful creatures that needed to be reminded who they submitted to, I realized that my power wasn’t replenishing after being used.

I traveled to the Land of the Healers where I learned of a rare black opal found in the bottom of the Druan Swamp that has the ability to absorb power. When mixed with a few other things, a witch can place a spell on it to have its absorption ability directed towards one thing.

And someone chose me for this. It didn’t surprise me. Being the most powerful Sovereign makes for an endless number of enemies who would love to see me fall.

The problem was that when creating the spell, the black opal is turned into liquid which can be used to forge any object, which makes finding the object virtually impossible.

I knew the object was in my castle. When I was outside of the castle walls, my power stopped draining. I was still unable to replenish what I was missing, but I seemed to be too far out of reach from the object for it to continue to absorb my power. Since I had no leads in finding the object, I was going to leave my castle while Bronwen and Adar continued the search. I was getting ready to leave when Violet showed up.

I couldn’t leave her.

I’d rather lose all of my powers than spend a second where I couldn’t feel her presence.

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