Page 160 of A Crown Without Mercy

Diaspor lifted the rope attached to his hip. “Yes, Priestess.”

“Follow me.” She backed up toward the main gate and turned around to run. However, she stopped mid-stride when noticed Sylvana and a legion of warriors walking toward her.

“I’ve been told you are looking for me?” Sylvana questioned.

A ripple of defeat crept through Vispera’s body with the realization she had lost all control; she had not anticipated Sylvana would become a dangerous and unpredictable threat, nor had she accounted for Marius and Lucinda, who were emerging from the fray behind her with deadly intent. Although her entire world had just shifted off its axis, she remained calm and unemotional, and Diaspor and Mascuriel remained at her side.

There was a brief interval of silence when everyone laid eyes on Marius and Lucinda. The brothers glanced at each other and then looked at Sylvana.“How can this be?”Nicolai asked telepathically.

“I have no idea? It’s not possible for Sylvana to have freed them?”Riordan replied.

“It appears I no longer have to chase the dragon,” Vispera replied, interrupting the queer silence of all those standing there.

Sylvana glanced at her mates and then back at Vispera and her two warriors. “Your executions will be wrought in iron,” she threatened.

Vispera held her arms out and walked in a slow circle. “All my enemies in one place, makes thy dreadful work of tracking you down one by one a less tedious task. Just like thy seasons, your world can change with a gentle breeze. Now let’s make a deal, shall we?”

Riordan let out a nefarious laugh. “What could you possibly offer us?”

“Cathagne,” Vispera replied nonchalantly.

With long strides, Lucinda advanced and stood face to face with Vispera, looking as poised and regal as she did the night she disappeared. “You dare to speak my daughter’s name?”

Everything in Vispera’s body told her to flee. However, she stood confidently, with her feet grounded in the mud. “Yay, and I will return her unharmed. In exchange, I choose thy Ascelin.”

Nicolai and Kieran stepped on either side of Sylvana, and Vispera felt the cool steel of their blades on either side of her neck. Diaspor and Mascuriel dropped their swords when they too felt the tips of the blades settle on their throats.

“Our mate is not on the bargaining table, but your heads are,” Riordan threatened as he stood directly behind Sylvana.

“Should you fail to negotiate, I will sit on my throne and smirk as thy cries of terror, indistinguishable between Nosferatu and beast, fill my ears when you bathe in thy poison of darkened souls. Demons fraught with a brutal desperation to arise, will claw their way across your lands when I open thy dark side of thy veil and unleash them.”

“Should you fail to return my daughter—unharmed, I will see that every one of your kind lay bloodless, and bare-boned, on the ground of your own kingdom,” Lucinda stated sharply.

Vispera, Diaspor, and Mascuriel dropped to their knees and a violent, rotating column of Snow Crested Owls rose and consumed them all.

They struck them with their blades, and it was not long before the column rose into the dark of night, revealing three doppelgängers identical to Sylvana standing there, each of whom looked at either Riordan, Nicolai, or Kieran.

Having dropped to his knee, Kieran rose, grabbed one of the girls and pulled her tightly into his body. “This is not Sylvana,” he said, as he shoved her back.

“What happened?” another asked.

“Where did Vispera go?” the third asked.

“They are shifters!” another yelled as she pointed toward the other two and backed up.

Riordan, Nicolai, and Kieran placed a hand on the lady’s shoulders and pushed them into the center of the crowd; all the while, everyone standing nearby was at a loss. They had no idea which one was the real Sylvana. The brothers looked at each other and then back at the lady’s.

“Smell that?” Riordan asked. He then cocked his head and stared inquisitively at Kieran.

“Yes. Her scent is strange,” Kieran replied as he smelt his tunic.

“Not one of them is our mate,” Nicolai snarled.

Kadric shouted aloud and held his hand out when the Acheron’s blades cut through the air as if in slow motion. “Wait!”

Nothing but swirling, gray smoke followed the motion of their swords as they slashed through the lady’s bodies.

“To the veil. Vispera has Sylvana!” Riordan ordered.

---