Page 138 of A Sword of Ice
“I was worried about you!” she cried into his neck.
Clay’s arms wrapped around her waist and pulled her close. His breath pressed against her neck as he exhaled his own relief. “Thank Mana you’re okay,” he whispered. When he pulled away, the beautiful lines of his face were in a tight frown. “Fuck, Shula—”
“We have to go find my father and quickly,” Valerio interrupted. He turned to Weylyn. “Contact him.”
The Fae’s eyes glittered before they rolled to the back of his head.
Shula felt a tug on her own mind as she was ripped from her own consciousness and sucked into the void.
* * *
“Father! Where are you?!”The echo of Valerio’s voice was suspended over nothing and pulsing against everything at once. He could feel many bits of subconscious’ flittering through the connection. It tethered them together, Weylyn’s magic. All of them.
Why he’d allowed so many in at once, Valerio did not know.
But his father’s voice cut through his question and instilled a coiling sensation low in his gut that he tried to fight off.
“What are you still doing here, boy? Take the Elementals and go, get to safety!”
The panic in his father’s voice was evident, and it filled Valerio with an unease he was not accustomed to, for he had never heard that particular brand of urgency in the king’s voice.
“Father, where are you?”
There was a long pause and magic in the empty space seemed to flicker in and out. And then, “I was hit.”
Valerio felt his consciousness reel back from the revelation. To admit to even that… the king’s injuries must have been severe.
He did not know how to feel about that. He did not know what he should feel, so his body decided for him. His stomach dropped in what felt like a pit even darker than the one he was currently in. His throat tightened, and the next words Valerio said felt like they were forced, ripped from somewhere in his chest.
“Tell me where you are. I will bring Ryker and—”
“Foolish boy,” the king cut him off. His voice sounded weak, like it was flickering in and out. That did not bode well, and Valerio felt his eyes burn. “You know as well as I that we cannot be found together.”
“We will not be,” he said vehemently. “Father, tell me where you are!”
The panic was unexpected. It choked like a noose around the neck. He had never imagined any circumstance in which he would be in this situation. His father hurt; on the verge of death, he could not be sure.
Valerio had lost one parent. He thought he would not care if his father died, yet when faced with it, it felt like much too hard a concept to grasp. Like it did not quite belong within the confines of his mind.
It was something he could have never pictured, and even when it was there in the tone of his father’s voice, he did not want to accept it.
The King of the Seelie Courts could not die.
Valerio would not let him.
“We would be caught together and killed. Our lineage severed,” he continued, as if Valerio had not interrupted in the first place. Like he usually did. “Is that what you want, boy?”
It was in those words that Valerio knew how dire the situation truly was. It was in those words that Valerio realized he would not be saving the king, the leader of the Resistance.
His father.
“Your Majesty…”
“Nova, get my foolish son out of Tuath, and boy…” He paused, and Valerio wondered if he was contemplating what he was going to say. If this would be their final goodbye. If he would never say the words he had held in for the entirety of his life. “Find the Elementals, and this time, do what you are fucking told.”
His voice drifted further away, and within one second and the next, Valerio was slammed back into his body. He sucked in a harsh breath, blinked open his eyes to find he was still in the castle. Debris till pelted their bodies. The humans were still approaching.
Everything was still moving.
