Page 171 of A War of Three Kings

That gods-damned golden light of the bargain swirls like a storm around me, ensuring I don’t prevent Keira from holding up her end of it by stopping her from leaving here with Titania.

Maeve sobs at Edmund’s side, screaming at him to do something while she slams her hands into his chest, but he is just as frozen as I am, with his hand on the hilt of his sword and fire burning in his eyes. All his soldiers and mine are caught the same.

Caitlin’s hand encircles Keira’s wrist, a statue cradling her baby in one arm, and my mate has to force her fingers from her. Everyone with intent to stop Keira freezes, encased in gold light, her mother joining us the moment she takes her attention off her husband and tries to charge at her daughter, caught mid-stride.

It takes a long time for me to hear Keira’s voice over the screaming inside my head.Aldrin, I’m so sorry. It had to be this way. Please understand.

A tear rolls down my face, followed by another, and I can’t even wipe them away.I will come for you, Keira.And when I do, I will kill her.

Titania doesn’t waste any time drawing her people out of the castle. She doesn’t even look at me or gloat, but maybe the bargain won’t let her. As bodies of fae soldiers funnel around the living statues of Keira’s people, only one approaches me.

Torin peers into my face, a cruel smile on his lips. He slaps my cheek hard. “Not so scary now, are you, Aldrin?” he laughs, then walks away, whistling.

A heavy silence falls over us as they leave. My heart shatters the moment I feel Keira disappear through the portal and into another world so far away from me, I wouldn’t see its star if I looked up into the humans’ night sky.

Chaos erupts the moment the spell is broken.

I fall to my knees, clutching my face in my hands as devastation rolls through me in earth-shattering waves. My entire body shakes as I grapple with this new reality.

People scream and wail around me.

Caitlin, Maeve and Edmund huddle together in an embrace, both women sobbing on Edmund’s shoulders while he stares into space with desolation in his blank eyes. Morgana cries, but her little voice is lost among so many others.

Drake charges into the room with Klara and Hawthorne on his heels, and skids to a stop as he takes in the devastation, the color completely draining from his face.

It all seems surreal compared to the battle that rages within me.

A hard body wraps around me, pressing me into a chest with a thick arm. “We will get her back.” Cyprien’s voice is rough. “I promise you. We will throw everything we have at getting her back.”

I wrap my arms around his middle, and I don’t stop the tears from flowing. “Wejustgot her back.”

I fall apart completely, then pull myself together, mobilizing my warriors. We march for those same portals at a fast pace. Cyprien argues with me the entire way there, but I can no longer hear him. It is like the creatures of the darkest realm possess me.

In the end, he follows my orders and leads what is left of our forces in the human realm through a portal that will take him to Lord Cedar. They will regroup and muster support.

I have a very different mission.

One I must do alone.

I step through the portal’s mists that lead me into the clearing at the edge of Spring—where I first met Keira, because I am a sentimental bastard. They will find me anywhere. I sit on the massive tree stump where I stood, cutting down rotting spriggan and dripping with their blood, the first time I laid eyes upon her.

It doesn’t take long for the sun to dip behind the horizon, its last rays bleeding across the sky, red as all the blood I will shed to get her back.

As the silvery light of dusk sets in, I am, very suddenly, no longer alone.

I stand and raise my hands in the air as a dozen figures in deep indigo robes creep in from the edges of the forest and surround me.

Assassins of Belladonna.

Their faces are hidden by deep hoods and fabric masks that cover their mouths and noses, but I get glimpses of gray skin, black eyes and scales. The assassins’ steps are mere whispers despite the panels of black-and-blue armor across their bodies. They hold their swords, glowing and sparking with white light, at the ready.

“I demand to take the Trials of the Belladonna Assassins.” My voice echoes across the stillness. “I demand my right of free passage to join your number.”

They halt in unison, then sheathe their swords while their dark cloaks billow behind them on a phantom breeze.

One steps ahead of the rest. “As is your right, it shall be done,” he lisps, a forked black tongue darting out of his mouth.

With a click of his fingers, a tempest roars up around us, the fast winds pulling at me. An inky darkness churns out of it like thick black clouds speeding in for a storm.

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