Page 70 of Mantle

She turned then and we watched as she went to Kelsana and her team and began reprimanding them.

I listened in and found out that Kelsana had used a highly illegal Dark Fae spell to violate free will and essentially turn Zephyraand Nexi into automatons who would do her bidding during the mission, while her and Rennick did things their own way. Apparently, they’d even made Nexi sacrifice herself to one of the monsters in there with that complete control that they’d taken over her mind and movements. Thank fuck they weren’t actually real or she’d be dead. But what had been done to her was beyond demented.

Motherfucker.It was everywhere. Power plays. Corruption. Sinister agendas. Dark and depraved politics.

All around us.

I’d had enough of it.

I was fucking done with it all.

Solumirawas definitely the salvation to all of that, and I couldn’t wait until we could make it a reality.

No matter how fucked-up the world around us got, how painfully loud, that place would be our solitude, our sanctuary, our very sanity.

And with the four of us together there, I just knew it would be a peace unlike any I’d ever felt before, a peace I’d never thought I’d be able to have.

Until them.

Until being with them had changed everything for me.

13

~Ariana~

“Kindred.”

I blinked and found myself in Meforian Forest.

But not as I remembered it.

Everything around me was dead.

The peonies.

The grass was ash.

The trees were chopped down.

A single cracked skull with a twisted iron spike driven through it, sat atop a mound of ash.

“Kindred… help. Help… me.”

A harsh wind whipped through the area as I spun around.

“Ketheron?” I called out. “Where are you?”

There was no sign of him.

I caught sight of myself, and strangely I was clad in the special armor that Grandfather had made for me as my birthday gift.

What was going on?

I saw some barbed, root-like vines—ashen gray with crimson seams—coiled into a spiral cage embedded in theground. They pulsed faintly with some rare, ancient magic I didn’t recognize.

“I’m here.”

“Where?” I cried, spinning around again, as an awful pain cut into me.

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