Page 142 of The Crown of Nyx

But something about this was…

“Is this what Ivy saw? In her dreams?” the half-demon male spoke up suddenly, his brows furrowed.

Ah, that was why I’d thought it familiar. She had described the road, but not the little lights.

“I’m not sure,” the charm mage murmured. He softly touched the top of her head, though she did not stir. “This is what she described, but…”

“But it is different,” I finished. The lights were odd. They cast no real light, more of a glow than anything else. It was only my enhanced eyesight that allowed me to see the rest of the forest for what it was.

And it was deep. Unending. Darker than I could put into words.

“We need to move,” the Fae male said. “We can’t just stand here and wait forhimto find us.”

The male had a point, but which way to go? One could lead us to the cottage Ivy described from her dream. The other could take us out of the forest, but further away from our goal.

I scrubbed a hand over my face as I turned back to the group. “We’ve no direction.”

“I don’t want to wake her up,” the shifter growled. “We can figure it out on our own.”

Pressing my lips together, I glanced down at her now sleeping form. Her face scrunched like she was in the midst of a nightmare, lashes fluttering. A soft sound camefrom her lips, part whine, part gasp, and it had everyone tensing like they expected her to wake at any moment.

But she didn’t. The tension in her face softened, and when she buried her face in the shifter’s shoulder, everyone sighed.

“We might be able to figure something out,” the divination mage said, “but we could also be wrong.”

“My fear exactly.” I barely glanced at him. Doing so dredged up memories of him withher. I had not lied to my wife about not caring much about sex. Whether it was performed around me, outside of my presence, or whatever. I hadn’t cared when it was offered to me by the false bastard king, the company meaning nothing to me.

And yet, I could not understand the burning jealousy that had rushed through me when I’d glanced over my shoulder to find him fucking her against that rock. The way my heart had clenched seeing her kissing him, her body pressed against his. Hearing her moans when she came.

She was the deadliest creature in all the lands, stunning and soft despite that.

And for the first time in over three thousand years, I had wished it were me. Not him.Me.

I wanted to be the one basking in her attention, enjoying her touch, making hermine.

It was such a foreign feeling that I had to bury it. Lock it away and throw away the key. Do anything but address what it meant.

Because it could mean nothing. Not now, not ever. And for the next five hundred years, after securing her rule and putting her back on the throne, I would have to see her only during our deal. I would have to watch her have a family with these mates, and I would never be able to be a part of that. And then I would have to watch her die, and never join her there, either.

I’d never had a fear of death before. I was king of the Elysian Fields, and yet, I feared her death most of all.

There was a quiet discussion happening around me, one I was not part of. My eyes were glued on the sleeping Queen, on each rise and fall of her chest as she was swept from nightmare to dream.

They chose a path,and I followed without protest.

There were no complaints that I could make that they would listen to, anyway.

I did, however, keep my eyes on the glowing lights in the forest. There was something about them that made my skin prickle. There was little that unsettled me about any of the worlds, and yet, I kept turning back to the lights.

What were they?

I didn’t ask that question aloud. No one else seemed to care much about them, using their soft glow to light our way out of the forest. We hadn’t found anything on the road to indicate that it had been used recently, or that it could possibly be leading us to danger. The false bastard king could use whatever spells he wanted to hide his scent, and the scents of his army, but there was no true way to hide magical signatures. And there were no remnants here.

Silence was becoming a familiar presence within our group, especially when there was no Ivy to bring us together. As we walked, she slept, and no one was tempted to wake her.

Though I remained at the back of the group, her charm mage mate walked beside me. His magic leaked from him dangerously, pouring from his well in waves. I could tell why, though. Every so often, he reached for apouch in his belt. Within was a charm he was building, one that I could tell cost him a lot of power.

It was dangerous, pouring all of his magic into it. But I understood why.

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