Page 95 of The Forsaken Heir
“Bravo,” Jolon said, and clapped his hands once.
The world tilted on its axis, the room and candle vanishing. My vision blurred, and my stomach somersaulted. Just when I thought I couldn’t take any more, my eyes snapped open, and I stared up at the glass ceiling of the conservatory.
“Is she all right?” Aurelius was shouting. “What’s wrong with her?”
“I assure you, she is fine,” Jolon said as he helped me to my feet.
“Thank you.” I had to clamp my mouth shut and swallow like mad to keep from puking everywhere. “That was a hell of a trip.”
Jolon led me to my chair beside Aurelius, then returned to the center of the room. Every eye was locked on him. Beyond the glass walls and ceiling, night had fallen. The moon was visiblein the sky, but I couldn’t see much more than that due to the reflection of the lights inside.
“Well?” Bastien asked, standing from his chair. “What’s the verdict?”
Jolon stood again and took a deep breath. “My lord?—”
An arrow shattered the glass wall behind Bastien and slammed into Jolon’s throat, crashing through his larynx and out the back.
My jaw fell open in horror as the fae’s mouth dropped in agonized surprise. He tilted backward, crashing to the floor, his sightless eyes staring up at the glass ceiling above.
He was dead.
21
BRIELLE
For a single moment, everyone in attendance stared in horror at Jolon as he lay on the stone floor, his blood oozing from the wound at his neck. Even from here, I could smell the reek of silver emanating from the arrow.
Then, a high-pitched and heartrending scream came from one of the fae at the side of the room. A young woman rushed toward Jolon and fell to her knees beside his lifeless body, running her hands over him and muttering spells, but it was already too late.
“The dragons!” Bastien shouted, leveling his finger at our group, his face contorted in a mask of rage, but I didn’t miss the glee in his eyes. “They did this! They knew that thing with my sister’s face was an imposter. They killed the fae before he could reveal their crimes.”
“How dare you?” Aurelius yelled, rising from his chair.
The other wolf shifters had risen from their seats as well, lobbing angry shouts in our direction. To the left, the fae dragged Jolon’s body toward the exit. The tension in the room was so thick,I thought I might suffocate. We were standing in a tinderbox soaked in gasoline, waiting for someone to toss a match inside.
“Your Highness?” Octavian said, stepping in front of the prince and me. “What are your orders?”
As soon as the fae were out of the conservatory, a dozen of House Laurent’s men took their places at the door, blocking our exit, each holding a crossbow with silver-tipped arrows, their hands clad in thick gloves to prevent the metal from hurting them.
Fuck, we were going to die.
Bastien stepped down off the platform. “Kill the assassins!”
With that, he shifted into his broad-chested brown wolf that stood nearly to my shoulder in height. Chaos erupted—most of the others followed suit.
Aurelius shoved Rasp and Vince toward me. “Guard Elle with your lives!”
He and Octavian shifted to their dragon forms, massive reptilian shapes that twisted and roared in the confines of the conservatory. Aurelius’s onyx black dragon stood taller than Octavian’s maroon dragon, but both were impressive, yet the wolves weren’t intimidated. Instead, they surged forth, snapping at their haunches and trying to bite their tails.
Rasp pushed me behind him as a Laurent wolf dived between Aurelius’s legs and lunged toward me, its jaws snapping the air a foot in front of my face. Rasp kicked it aside at the last second. The royal guard drew their weapons and fired on the approaching wolves, but it was no use. The wolves simply shrugged off the bullets. A stipulation of the meeting was that nosilver weapons would be allowed, but my family hadn’t followed their own rules.
Octavian swung his massive horned head around and tossed six wolves to the side, sending them crashing against the wall. With their bullets ineffective, the quarters were too tight for most of the guard to fully shift as Aurelius had, so they resorted to partial shifting. They slashed out with their claws, and the wolves did the same. Claws, teeth, and talons, swiped and bit through the air.
I gasped in horror as a wolf tore out the throat of one of Aurelius’s guards. The man tumbled to the ground before me in a writhing and bleeding mess, clutching his ruined throat. Another of the guards flew backward, a silver arrow protruding from his chest.
“You’ve got to move!” Rasp shouted. “Where’s another exit? You grew up here. How do we get out?”
“I don’t?—”
