Page 2 of A Fate of Ice and Lies
Before.
“If you’d stop hesitating and just kill them?—”
“Lecture me later,”I said.
Her frustration with me rose. It was all I could feel. It blurred my vision and made my ears ring.
While she wasn’t wrong, I didn’t want to think about it. I definitely didn’t want to talk about it, but I couldn’t fight with her emotions swarming me.
I sighed.“I’m sorry, Nalari.”I tried to appease her.“You’re right. I hesitated, and now my people are in danger. Please help me.”
She huffed, and I knew that for now, the people of Somnio and all of Niev would be safe. She’d help us kill the thunderbirds despite my failures.
“Thank you.”I hoped she could hear the sincerity through our mental connection.
Without her, we couldn’t defeat the creatures outside our borders. Even with our best fighters and magic wielders, we didn’t stand a chance against the hydras, thunderbirds, or any of the other predatory creatures.
Unless of course, we unleashed our primal instincts and allowed our brutal sides out. But such extreme, dark power would destroy us, the same way it had so many of our ancestors.
It was why we needed the Guardians.
Their magic had killed the mages and tarasque, the mages’ most favored pets who were just as lethal as the fae-like beings who almost took over our realm. The mages hadn’t just practiced magic but conquered it, making them almost asuntouchable as the dragons. Had the Guardians not stepped in and fought our war, it’d be the fae who’d gone extinct.
Where we could learn to weave magic, the dragons themselves were magic. They didn’t try or do; they simply were.
And thankfully, they were on our side.
Chapter
Two
ELIAS
With the hard-wonbattle behind me, my mind drifted toher.The human female, who was always present somewhere in my mind.
Hair the color of blood that fell in curls past slender shoulders. I could almost feel the soft tendrils wrapped around my fingers while I imagined her pouty lips parting as she breathed my name.
Clear eyes rivaling pristine lakes seemed to see me and somehow search for me as if we were something attainable. I pictured the weight of her attention on me; that made me want to puff out my chest in the hopes of impressing her, even with the veil keeping us apart.
How could I long for someone I’d never touched or seen in anything more than visions? It didn’t matter. The depth of my yearning was sealed in our distant silence.
It drove me mad and was the sole reason I requested a meeting with my parents, the king and queen of our realm. Despite their many duties to the kingdom, they always made themselves available to me and granted my request.
“I have to see her.” My words echoed off the high ceilings, pleading not with my parents but with King Thierry and Queen Renee.
My father drummed his fingers on the side of his throne, his crown gleaming as if in a taunt as his long black hair spread past his shoulders. “We lost three warriors today, and you want to speak of the female?”
“We lost three of my friends, Father,” I said, one side of my mouth ticking as I reined in my anger and spoke to my father with the respect he’d earned. “Two males and one female who I trained with, drank, and ate with. I know more than you what and who we’ve lost.”
He squeezed the sides of his chair but didn’t say anything.
“You know what it’s like to be gifted this bond.” I referred to his and my mother’s soul bond. “But you were never tormented with this aching need to see someone you couldn’t. Mother was always right there. Nothing kept you two apart.” I rubbed the center of my chest, where I felt my mate the strongest. “This. . .”
It was an anguishing taunt that seemed to grow more pronounced each day the veil kept us apart.
“You must be reasonable, son.” My mother, an empath who felt others’ emotions as if they were her own, wore her despair for my predicament across the light features of her face. Her worried eyes, identical to my violet ones, darted back and forth between my father and me.
“If you cross into the human realm, you wouldn’t just be dooming her world, but her as well,” my father reminded me.
