Page 146 of A Reign of Roses
“I’ll return to him.”
“You are nothis,” Kane hissed.
“But he still wants me to be. I’ll go to him, willingly.”
“In what Gods-damned world?” Griffin bit out, voice rough as a cliffside.
Noticing how my hands shook, I folded them across my chest. “It’s our only bargaining chip. If I offer myself up in return for a ceasefire before war even begins, maybe we can spare everyone. He still needs me to bear his heirs.”
“No way,” Mari said. “Absolutely not.”
“It won’t work,” Eardley added. “He’ll take you and still obliterate the keep.”
“See? No chance,” Mari said again. “Tell her, Kane.”
But Kane said nothing. His eyes only fixed on mine, a great well of sorrow pooling in them.
My throat tightened.
“It’s Arwen’s life. It’s her choice.”
“Oh, what the fuck?” Griffin rubbed his temples.
“It’s not her life if hekills her,” Mari snapped, just as a strange wind pulled through the very fabric of the room’s atmosphere and turned all our attention toward movement near a cluttered bookcase.
“We’re not going to let him do anything of the sort,” a surly feminine voice said.
Amelia emerged from a rippling, undulating chasm in the physical threads of the room. A portal—and with her, Hart Renwick…as well as a familiar face that made my shriveled heart inflate.
Wyn, smiling.
And in his arms—singing only to me a song of paradise and loss and ruin—the gleaming Blade of the Sun.
40
Kane
I wasn’t sure what hadshredded the two-hundred-year-old tether on Griffin’s self-control these days, but upon seeing Amelia for the first time since she’d betrayed us and ensured Arwen’s almost-demise, he lunged for her like a rabid dog.
Snarling, my commander had the new queen’s ice-white hair in a vise grip and had forced her down to her knees within seconds.
“Gods almighty.” Hart dodged back, nearly knocking over my nicest stained-glass lamp but grasping its thin shade just in time.
Amelia, whom I’d never seen shed a single tear, cried out, clutching at her scalp as Griffin forced her lower, and lower still.
The young olive-skinned man who had helped Arwen and I flee Solaris drew his sword at Griffin, and my lighte flickered at my wrists as I roared, “Enough.”
But my commander didn’t drop the wincing Amelia, her hands scraping at his wrist and forearm as she pleaded for him to release her.
I nearly growled at him. “I said,enough.”
“Griffin,” Mari urged, standing from her spot beside Briar, her face a little appalled. “Let her go.”
Griffin gave Amelia a lethal once-over before reluctantly releasing his hold on her hair. She fell to the floor with a groan. “She turned on us,” he seethed to the witch. “She’s the reason you thought your closest friend was dead.”
“And I’d do it again,” Amelia said from the floor, rubbing her scalp.
“Bold.” Hart shrugged, impressed.
