4. CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 4

KALYLL

“Kryn, stay here. Larina, find my uncle. Tell him I want his best guards to come here and protect Daniella.” I told him.

He gave one solemn nod, and I knew he understood watching Daniella was the most important thing I could ask of him.

“When the guards get here, come find me,” I urged as I hurried out of the chamber and rushed down the winding steps of the tower. As soon as I abandoned the area, there were signs of disarray. Servants and guards hurried down the long corridors, looking panicked.

“Does anyone know where to find the king?” I heard someone shout down the hall. “He needs to know what happened.”

I clenched my fist as I marched past a couple of startled page boys. I hadn’t been here to guard my home, and now my mother was dead.

As soon as I passed them, one of the page boys ran in the opposite direction.

“The king is here. The king is here.” He went calling.

The doors to my mother’s workroom were thrown open. Several males stood guard, their expressions grim. When they noticed me, they bowed deeply, and I sensed a combination of sorrow and guilt. The queen mother was dead, so I understood the sorrow. But the guilt… I was sure it was misplaced.

I was the only one to blame for this. I should’ve been here to protect her.

My steps echoed in the large space. More guards stood inside, facing the door I’d just walked through. Their backs were turned to the chaos.

This workroom had never been the tidiest of places. There were always canvases everywhere. Brushes, pallets, and half-spent tubes of paint lying around, but now… there was no disarray, only destruction.

Easels sat broken on the floor, their canvases trampled and torn. A tube of bright yellow paint lay busted, boot prints smearing away from it toward the center of the room, where a shape bulged under a heavy tarp, and my uncle, his wife, and two council members stood.

Everyone turned to face me as I approached.

“My King.” Captain Loraerris pressed a fist to his chest. His eyes were red-rimmed, his entire demeanor crestfallen.

If I still harbored any doubts that my mother was dead, his expression erased them. That was his sister on the floor, under the tarp.

My uncle’s wife was deathly pale, clinging to her husband’s arm. The council members—one male and one female, who had always been close to my mother—appeared just as distraught.

Reluctantly, I lowered my eyes to the floor. There were red splatters everywhere. I wanted to tell myself they’d been caused by paint, but I knew better. I’d seen enough violent acts to know that these patterns spelled brutality. I moved closer and lifted the piece of cloth. I was only able to handle the sight for a couple of seconds before I pulled away.

Dry blood stained her beautiful hair, which looked matted. Her face was unrecognizable, a deep cut slashing her from temple to jaw. And beyond that, her neck… a puncture.

“Did anyone see what happened?” I asked, forcing hoarse words past my tight throat.

“I got here too late,” a small voice said behind my uncle.

Someone I hadn’t noticed stood on the corner of one of the still-standing canvases. It was Shadow, my mother’s closest servant, the sprite who had once been a slave to a wealthy lord for many years and whom my mother had liberated by paying a substantial sum. Strangely, instead of using her freedom to go back to her land, Shadow decided to stay beside my mother.

I turned to face her. She looked beyond sorrow. She was angry. I recognized my own fury in her expression.

“But I did see who did it,” she said, without taking her eyes from my mother’s motionless shape.

“Cardian,” I said, without hesitation.

Her gaze cut to me. She seemed surprised, but for only an instant, then she nodded.

“How did he get in?” my uncle asked. “The guards at the door never saw him.”

“He has a transfer token,” I said.

Shadow startled. “That’s how he got away so fast when I went after him.” She clenched her small hands.

Cardian better hoped I got a hold of him before the sprite did. She was vicious, a Sunnarian warrior known to have defeated more than one powerful foe, just the reason my mother had welcomed her request to remain by her side.

Though the way that Wölfe was thrashing inside me made me wonder which of the two would make Cardian wish he’d never been born.

I started pacing. If I didn’t move, I would crumble like a too-old statue battered by a tempest. In the expanse of two weeks, I had lost my father, my mother, my brother, my mate.

All I had left was this useless kingdom and an all-consuming desire for revenge.

Wölfe whispered in my ear.

—You chose this godsforsaken place over her. It’s your fault she’s frozen in time. You had to take the crown from the little prince, so you could wear it. Now, we both suffer. Now, we both mourn her. You don’t deserve her—not when you don’t put her first. You killed her.

No! I have not lost her. She’s still here, and soon she will awaken.

And once she was back, she would soothe all this pain away with only a smile. And her mouth and smooth skin would provide refuge. Her touch would be a salve to all this loss.

—How selfish are you? Can’t you think of no one else but yourself? No matter. While you cry like a weakling, I will be the one soothing her, protecting her, making sure she’s safe.

I shook my head, a growl escaping me.

They all looked at me strangely. I had the urge to tamp the darkness down, but I didn’t have to anymore. They all knew what I was. Mother had weaved her lies artfully, so I could remain the legitimate king, so I could spare the people of Elf-hame a gruesome war.

But that was before.

Before Cardian and Varamede brought pain upon my mate. Before I brought all of this on Daniella. Because Wölfe was right. I was responsible for her awful fate, and that meant now there would be no peace. There would only be destruction until those directly or indirectly responsible paid the price of her pain in blood.

Peace was not meant to be a burden for one person to bear. It was a shared dream, a collective purpose that everyone needed to uphold. I’d been trying to bear the Unseelie King’s duty as well as my own, and in the process, I had forgiven many of his transgressions. But no more.

I had left his trespasses unanswered for far too long, and he had grown bold. He thought he could act with impunity. For the sake of sparing the many, the few—like Valeriana and her Dryad clan—had paid dearly. But now, it was time for the likes of Kellam Mythorne, Cardian, Varamede, and anyone who shared their boundless greed to pay for their crimes.

“I must talk to my generals,” I said.

My uncle inclined his head. “I will make sure the arrangements are made for Eithne’s sendoff.”

“Thank you, uncle. Forgive me that I can’t be of help at the moment, but—”

He shook his head. “No need to explain. You are needed in the war room, my king.”

Uncle Vul Loraerris, forever faithful, first and always first the captain of the palace guard, even when it meant taking on the painful burden of putting his sister to rest.

I placed a hand on his shoulder. “Thank you.”

He opened his mouth to say something, but voices and the frantic whirring of wings stole his attention. His head snapped to one side and so did mine.

Larina hovered by the door. Her blue skin appeared nearly gray with fright, and the guards who had been outside were now standing behind her, looking unsure of whether or not to swat her down like an overgrown bug.

“There’s an attack in the tower,” she cried out.

A burst of dark energy shot through my body, and in the next instant, I dashed out the door, a ball of dread lodged in my throat. I was dimly aware of my uncle and the guards following my tracks, but one thought took center stage.

Not her. Not her. Not her.

My blood pumped, and my heart pounded like a giant fist as I bounded up the stairs faster than I’d ever run in my entire life. When I reached the landing and was able to see the door to her chamber, I nearly came to a halt.

A body—a guard judging by the uniform—lay on the floor in a puddle of blood.

Horror gripped me. If I stayed out here, I could pretend Daniella was all right, that no harm had come to her. But the hope that I wasn’t too late spurred me on, and I dashed past the door, my boot splashing the male’s blood without care.

The sight that welcomed me next arrested me in place. It took all my strength not to fall to my knees and bellow at the sky.

Two more guards lay on the floor, punctures in their necks.

And Daniella… she was gone.

Her bed was empty—the pedestals with their wilted flowers the only witnesses.

A moan from behind one of the armchairs snapped me from my stupor. I rushed there and found Kryn holding a hand to his neck as blood squirted through his fingers.

“Brother!”

He reached a hand toward the bed and attempted to speak, but only a gurgle came out.

“Don’t speak.”

He was deathly pale, even his eyes didn’t look as green as normal as he blinked in a daze. I had to fight to keep my focus on him and not on the absence of my mate. Tearing a sleeve off my shirt, I removed his hand from the wound, pressed the cloth to it even as blood shot out.

“Hold this as tightly as you can,” I ordered him.

He obeyed, and I willed his healing powers to work faster and save his life. I couldn’t lose him too. As I sprang to my feet, eyes searching for any sign of Daniella, my uncle and his men rushed into the room, weapons at the ready. They froze as I had, though their eyes searched every corner, and under my uncle’s orders, they quickly spread out to search the bathroom and the closet.

Larina flew without a care for her safety and stopped to hover right over the empty bed. “Oh, no! Where is she?”

“Tend to my brother,” I ordered her as I rushed past the library doors, throwing them open and finding nothing but emptiness. “Daniella,” I bellowed, my voice echoing through the three stories of useless shelves and books.

As the guards came out of the closet and bathroom, their blank expressions suggesting they found nothing, I ordered them to search the library from top to bottom. They rushed in and efficiently spread out, two staying on the first level, and the other two bounding up the stairs. They dashed between the shelves, but I suspected they would find no one there.

I started to turn away from the library when my uncle cried out a warning.

“Kalyll! Behind you!”

I had no time to react as I noticed my brother appear out of thin air. A stab of pain went through my neck. The world turned completely black. I tried to lunge for him, to wrap my hands around his neck and strangle him, but the floor seemed to shift under my feet, and I fell, tumbling into the gloom until I knew no more.