51. Elianna

Chapter fifty-one

Elianna

I burst through the front door of Jace’s old home after putting my wedding dress back on, the only item of clothing I had since our surprise stay in the cottage, and stormed up the hill that led up to the estate’s back door. Jace remained right on my tail as we passed Nox, whose golden gaze was locked on us while we ran past him.

With each step, I internally worked on the speech on how to convince my court that we needed to move our army sooner than anticipated. Not only that, but Idina’s possession of the witches’ dark magic had now been more than confirmed.

I stormed through the back door to find Zaela standing in the kitchen, looking every bit of hungover from the night prior.

“Is everything okay?” she asked as her eyes flared.

“No. We need the others,” I stated as I stalked through the kitchen, aiming for the living area.

“You look like shit,” Jace said to his cousin.

I peered over my shoulder in time to watch as she flipped him off in response. Normally, I would’ve laughed, but there was no room for that in our current situation .

“Family meeting!” I bellowed.

When no one answered, I stormed up the stairs and down the long hallway that held all the bedrooms, banging on each door I passed.

“Everybody up, now! Family meeting in the living room in five minutes.”

Sleep-filled groans sounded on the opposite sides of the doors as I made my way back down the stairs. Jace sat in the chair next to the fireplace, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, and when he looked up at me, pure exhaustion was etched into his features. My heart lurched, realizing that this was truly only the beginning of the exhaustion that we were about to feel.

The stairs creaked from the weight of the small stampede that paraded down them as they all made their way to us.

“We couldn’t have one day to sleep in?” Finn groaned as they took their seats around the room.

“I’m sorry, but something has happened,” I admitted.

“Oh, gods, Elianna, you’re still in your gown?” Veli asked.

“Thought that would have been torn to shreds by now,” Gage joked, but when no laughter answered him from either Jace or myself, they all felt the seriousness of what was to come.

Veli let out a huff. “What has happened, Elianna? In a matter of hours.”

I blinked a few times as I tried to form the words. “The queen appeared in our room just before dawn. It was as if she had materialized from shadows.”

“What?!” The word echoed from everyone as they shouted in shock .

“She was physically in your room? You saw her?” Avery asked.

I nodded. “I woke up feeling uneasy, as if I had eyes on me, and when I noticed motion in the corner of the room, she emerged.”

“Was her body present in the room, or was it a projection of herself?” Veli demanded.

“I’m not sure I know what you mean,” I admitted. “I saw her, though her presence was certainly from sorcery. Shadows were whirling around her feet.”

Swirling fuchsia eyes snapped to Jace. “You saw her as well, and she didn’t move to harm you?”

“Aside from insulting me, she was focused on taunting Lia. I wasn’t able to see her on my own, but I watched through her eyes.”

“Through the bond?”

“Yes,” I answered. “He saw everything as I did.”

“And felt it,” Jace growled, anger crawling through him.

“I knew the dress had to come off at some point,” Gage whispered.

“Gage!” Jace and I yelled in unison.

“Okay, I’m sorry. In my defense, I think I might still be half drunk.”

Avery reached up and smacked his cheek lightly a few times as she pressed her lips together in a flat line.

“Did she touch you? Did you feel her skin in any way? Her clothing, hair…anything tangible?” Veli asked.

“No. When I went to strike her, she vanished.”

The witch’s eyes flared. “You tried to hit her? ”

“She taunted Lia to bring her to the edge. She was trying to get a rise out of her,” Jace interjected.

“And it worked .” Veli crossed her arms and raised a brow, a scowl working its way across her face. “Elianna, what have we talked about with the impulsivity? If she had been physically there and grabbed you, she could have pulled you through the portal back to where she came from!”

Panic erupted down the tether, and my eyes wandered to my husband. “I never thought of that,” I whispered.

Jace placed his face in his hands. “Gods, Lia, that could have been a trap the entire time. And neither of us thought of it being a possibility.”

“Well, it appears that Idina didn’t think of that either, so we lucked out,” I said.

“If she touched you…” His nostrils flared as his hands balled into shaking fists. “If she had been able to bring you back to Isla…you would have been put to death immediately or handed over to Kellan if he managed to survive. Lia…”

“I know, okay?! I realize that, too. We have to be more careful. But how are we supposed to look out for shit like this if she can now come and go as she pleases?!”

I was never going to be able to sleep again.

“What did she say to you that made you want to strike her?” Avery asked.

I forced myself to swallow. “That she killed my mother. She slit her throat the day I was born, and her only regret was that she wasn’t patient enough to wait and do the same to me. ”

Avery's and Finnian's eyes widened in horror, exchanging a quick glance before looking away. My own eyes narrowed in on them as I watched beneath furrowing brows.

“Oh, gods, Lia…” Avery started.

My gaze moved back and forth between my two siblings.

“What is it, Avery?” My tone had more bite than I intended, but I had a sinking feeling in my gut as I watched their quick exchange.

She audibly swallowed. “We…we knew this. We found it out the same day we discovered she murdered Father. Lia, I—”

“You, WHAT ?!” I shrieked as the feeling of betrayal violently slammed into me.

Jace reached out from where he stood and grabbed my wrist, stroking it with his thumb, but I wasn’t na?ve enough to think he wasn’t also subtly trying to hold me back as he felt the agony of it all bubble through me.

Tears were streaming down Avery’s cheeks, and Finnian looked too terrified to speak.

“Tell me it’s not true,” I demanded. “Tell me that you did not withhold information like this from me.”

“We didn’t withhold it from you.” Avery’s voice was on the verge of breaking into a sob. Gage stood then, carefully wrapping his arm around my sister’s waist.

“Liar!” I screamed, and everyone averted their eyes from me as the tension in the room rose, except for my sister.

Her lips trembled, but she steadied it before she spoke. “So much has happened since we learned of this. This was back when you were still assumed dead after the shipwreck. Before you were dragged back to Isla by Kellan and before your escape from the dungeons.”

“It’s true, Lia, it was a horrible bit of information that we had overheard months ago while learning about our own father’s death as well,” Finn chimed in. “It slipped from us, but we never planned to not tell you. Everything changed for us that day.”

I sucked on my tongue as guilt loomed over me like a taunting shadow.

“I led a rebellion to you.” Avery took a hesitant step toward me. “I have done everything you have asked of me since the night of the wedding massacre at the castle. You begged me to get us out and run… I did that. I brought Finn, Landon, Veli, hundreds of fae…Nyra! Our entire lives were uprooted in a single night. I had barely ever left the castle grounds, never mind the city. We risked our lives and committed treason against the crown to find you, not even knowing if there would be anything left to find.”

I was clenching my teeth so hard I thought they would shatter as she looked at me with her doe-eyes filled with tears—tears that I put there in my fit of rage.

“So no, Elianna,” Avery continued, and the use of my full name from her made me feel so small. “We did not withhold information from you. I will beg for your forgiveness for forgetting that we knew this, but you need to know that it never once crossed my mind that we held this knowledge while you didn’t.”

The room fell into an unbearable silence .

“Okay,” I choked out after a few moments. “There will be no need to beg for forgiveness when you’ve done nothing wrong.”

“Oh, I have done plenty that is wrong. My mother now has this dark magic at her disposal because of my fuck-up, but you must know where my loyalties lie. It is right where they have always been, and that is with you.”

My eyes softened, and I tugged my wrist from Jace’s hold. “I know, and I’m so, so sorry for assuming otherwise in this brief moment of insanity,” I admitted.

She gave me a nod before she sat down on the settee, and we all blew out a breath as the tension in the air slowly fizzled out.

“Well, since that is now out of the way,” Veli started. “I believe I now know how she materialized before you and evaporated when you moved to touch her.”

“By all means, Veli, go on,” I announced.

“It was not a portal spell they cast to make her appear in your room.” Jace’s relief was palpable at her words. “You would have seen her slip back through the rift. I believe that she had projected her conscious before you, appearing in a non-tangible form.”

“Such a thing is possible?” I wondered aloud.

“As if she was a ghost?” Zaela asked from where she stood, leaning against the windowsill.

“Precisely,” Veli answered. “Which means that she does not necessarily know where we are. If a portal had transported her there physically, the witch who cast the spell would have had to, at one point, physically be in the location that she opened it to. Now, it' s impossible to say if they have ever stepped foot on this particular soil over the centuries, but given the circumstances of Idina appearing directly in your bedroom, it’s safe to assume that is not the case.”

“What does it entail to project one's consciousness before another? Are there rules or guidelines like the portals?” Jace asked.

“All it would take is for the person to have met the individual they wish to present themselves to. Once the spell is cast, it only takes merely a whisper and picturing them in their minds. Seconds later, they will appear wherever the person is located.”

“That may be the most terrifying form of dark magic I’ve heard of to date,” Landon said softly.

“It’s not even classified as dark,” the witch answered. “Though, since shadows were present, I’m assuming they were acting as an extra barrier of protection for the queen.”

“That’s even more terrifying,” Finn echoed.

“So the good news is that she can’t travel here by portal and she likely doesn’t know that we lay hidden beyond the mountains. The bad news is that she may appear before us whenever she wishes, and depending on where we are at that time, she may discover our whereabouts.”

I rubbed my temples as a migraine brewed from everything she was unloading on us. “Mother’s tits, this is a gods-damn nightmare.”

“That it is,” Veli huffed.

“We need to move our armies, and we need to move them soon. Much sooner than we planned,” I stated .

“How soon?” Gage asked, every bit the calculating second-in-command, and no longer the joking, half-drunk best friend.

Nyra trotted up to me and sat on my feet, tilting her head to the side as she looked up at me. I reached down and scratched her ears as I blew out a breath.

“I want us marching by the end of the week,” I stated. “Can we make that happen?”

Gage’s eyes darted to Zaela and then over my shoulder to Jace. “It won’t be a simple task, but we can talk to Leon too, and get a better idea.”

“Excellent. I want the ships prepared, too,” I stated.

He gave me a curt nod. “We will do everything we can.”

I aimed for the stairs set back from the living area. “I’ll come with you to speak with him. Let me just change out of this first. ”

The sound of footsteps filled the room as everyone dispersed, following me up the stairs to prepare for the demanding day that awaited us.