Page 84 of A Sword of Ice
Iona scoffed. She should shut up, but she couldn’t. She was too riled up, too pissed that he wasn’t listening to reason. “Your father must know how beneficial it would be to this war to save those in the camps. We’ve been nearly eradicated. We need Fae.”
“The Fae in the camps are dead,” Valerio argued, and she wondered if it was because he really believed that or if he was trying to convince himself.
“They are not. They’re there, and they need us.”
His eyes narrowed. “How do you know?”
“Because Mana told me!” She couldn’t hold back her shout. It echoed harshly through the trees and burned out her throat and at the backs of her eyelids. She was aware everyone had closed in to listen now, but she didn’t care that they had an audience. He would hear her, either way.
“You want me to believe that Mana speaks to you?” Valerio mused, his brows raising over burning eyes. “You?” He said it with disdain, as if Iona was worth nothing.
She knew better.
She was an Elemental. Favored of Mana, with power that surpassed even the prince.
“Mana speaks to me,” Iona repeated firmly. She didn’t need him to believe it, because she knew the truth. “There are Fae in those camps. Which you’d know if you did your job as prince and actually tried to save them from those places, instead of cowering in fear.”
“Careful with those words, Elemental,” Valerio warned on a low growl. “Remember who you are speaking to.”
“I thought I was speaking to the Seelie Prince and not the coward before me.”
She felt the blade kiss her throat before she saw the blur that was Uric at her side. He growled, menacing, moved like a shadow. She swallowed and felt the edge dig into her skin.
Roars sounded through her bonds. Her familiar growled and Julius was suddenly there, his own sword pressed to Uric’s throat.
“Release my mate or I’ll sever your head, Uric.” Julius would make good on that promise, too. She didn’t need to look into his eyes to know. She felt his emotions through their connection.
“Enough!” Valerio growled.
The command had Uric and Julius both dropping their arms. She didn’t look at the prince’s bodyguard or reach a hand up to her throat where she felt a thin line of blood dripping.
“The fact of the matter is, we need numbers,” Iona tried again in a much calmer voice. “The camps have those numbers. If you don’t believe me, let’s go look. We don’t even have to engage. Let’s just see if there really are Fae being kept there still. Perhaps not all hope is lost.”
Valerio’s jaw worked extra hard, and she wondered if he was contemplating her words. He had to be, she couldn’t accept anything else.
“There are too many camps.”
“We will start with a small one,” she urged. “There’s one a few miles from here.”
Uric’s eyes narrowed, and his voice dripped with suspicion. “How do you know?”
“George told me.”
He’d given her the locations to every single camp in existence all across Illyk because she’d asked. He’d marked them up on a map. A map she had studied just as fervently as she did the splintered ceiling. And when she had every single camp memorized, she burned the parchment and wept.
Their locations were still imprinted into her brain. She knew the size of every camp, their exact location. The only thing she didn’t know was how many guards were watching and how many Fae they harbored.
She just wanted to prove to the prince she was right. She wanted him to shift his priorities. To save their people.
“You’re a prince. You’re supposed to care about the Fae.”
“I do.”
“Then prove it!”
Silence followed, filled with nothing but their harsh breathing echoing through the cold winter air.
Valerio looked like he was in deep contemplation. Uric sidled beside him, hovering, protecting, and glaring. Weylyn slipped to his other side and he was grinning at Iona beneath the broken nose she had given him. Like he knew.
