Page 23 of A Promise so Bold and Broken

Blinking, she glanced up at him.

His eyes collided with hers, and apprehension whispered over her skin when she didn’t understand what was swirling within the silver-flecked darkness as Merrick shook his head at her. “Don’t do that to me again.”

Before she could ask him what had his pulse so heightened, someone cleared their throat behind them. “M-Merrick?”

Lessia tried to wriggle free at the worry that laced Ardow’s voice, but Merrick was too strong, his arms only tightening their grip when she shifted.

“What?” Merrick hissed as he continued to look into her eyes.

“There is someone over there. And that wyvern seems to know him.”

Merrick’s arms left her so quickly that a rush of air threatened to blow her ripped clothing off, and she pulled at it as she took a stumbling step after the Fae.

Ardow sidled up next to her, with Venko taking the other side, but Lessia froze when she glimpsed what Ardow had noticed over Merrick’s broad shoulders where he walked ahead of them.

A copper-haired Fae, perhaps not as tall as Merrick but at least a few inches wider, stalked toward them on the beach.

Sunlight bounced off the jagged tooth-like edges of the crescent blades he held in his hands, and beside him glittered the wyvern she’d encountered in the dark waters.

Lessia caught the wyvern’s violet gaze, and a quake shook her knees when it bore its eyes into hers before splashing its tail down so hard a wave of water crashed onto the beach behind the Fae.

The wyvern seemed to follow the Fae’s lead because when the male lifted a large hand, both he and the wyvern halted about thirty feet away.

A jerk shook her body when Merrick also froze mid-step, and Lessia’s blood chilled when she realized she couldn’t move either.

Her fingers were locked around the daggers she carried—her feet stuck in the sand.

Only her eyes could shift slightly, and she realized Ardow and Venko also stood still as statues beside her.

Who are you?

Fear roiled in her stomach as the unfamiliar voice boomed through her mind, and if she’d been able to move, she would have sprinted in the other direction when cold claws seemed to creep into her head.

We’re friends of Merrick,she thought.

You lie. Merrick is blood-sworn to the king. He does not keep friends.

The voice floated and echoed through her mind, bouncing off the invisible walls she fought with everything in her to keep upright.

But it proved useless.

One gentle swipe of those claws broke through the barriers she’d spent years putting up.

Into all the memories she usually buried deep inside her.

Closing her eyes, she tried to fight—tried to find any way to keep this Fae out of her mind—but the little magic she’d had left after facing the wyvern faded so quickly she thought she might not have had any to begin with.

The presence began prodding through her memories as if it were reading a book.

Stop! Please!she begged when an image of a bloodied Frelina formed in her mind.I’m not lying!

A dark chuckle reverberated inside her thoughts.That’s what they all say. I shall find out for myself.

A silent cry tore through her when more memories flashed, splitting pain ripping at her chest as images began forming before her eyes.

Her mother smiling in the kitchen.

Her father gifting her the dagger in her hand.

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