54. Arran

I was going to kill her.

Turn her over my lap and spank her for her insolence. Then kiss her. Then kill her.

Fuck.

I scrubbed my hand over my face, through my hair. Dark strands fell forward out of the knot at the back of my head. Veyka was picking me apart piece by piece, even when she was not standing in front of me.

I'd started counting the seconds from the moment she disappeared. I started to rally my power. If she did not return, I would scale those impenetrable black walls and drag her back to safety.

"You'll get used to it again."

I blinked, several seconds passing. I'd lost count. Fuck. I managed a response.

"I was used to it before?" That seemed impossible.

Lyrena sword was no longer gleaming with flame, but it was still an impressive weapon. She brandished it easily, despite its massive size. Gold gilded the hilt, gold that matched the tooth that glinted in her mouth as she smirked at me and said, "I think you secretly liked it."

"What? The irreverence, the impetuousness, or the fuck-you attitude?"

Lyrena grinned fully. "All of it."

Ancestors fucking hell.

I was about to ask Lyrena how she did not tie Veyka to her bed in her sleep when the High Queen of Annwyn appeared before us, hands on her hips and mouth pouted out, looking like she'd never left us.

My beast growled.

Veyka's eyes flickered.

She fixed them on Lyrena as she spoke. "I did not go inside. But there is no one on the battlements or in the inner bailey, either. They haven't been deserted long, though. The fires are just as you said."

Before I could flay her, verbally or otherwise, Vera and Kay reappeared, approaching from either side of the castle.

"Nothing" and "No one" they confirmed.

A plan began to take shape in my mind. We would not bother to take the castle. It was not the prize—the mines were.

I felt the weight of Veyka's eyes on me, trying to read my expression. Just like I knew that she would find nothing. I'd been a battle commander for three hundred years before whatever twists of fate had landed me here, a high king without the memory of ever becoming one. There was no way she would find the answers she sought on my face. I was not that stupid.

But her gaze did not linger, moving beyond me. Over my shoulder.

Widening.

I turned on instinct, battle axe in my hand, growl ripping from my throat.

Veyka whipped past me, dagger flying.

She missed. Her dagger landed blade-down, buried in the snow.

No.

My beast sensed it even before the faint his filled my ears. Hisssssssssss.

Veyka stalked forward, leaving heavy brown footprints in the snow as she approached her target.

A snake so pale, it nearly disappeared into the snow around it. Only the hilt of Veyka's dagger and its milky blue eyes provided contrast against the solid white ground. And the horrible forked tongue, bright red and darting out again and again as it writhed against the blade that impaled it.

Veyka pressed her booted heel into the vertebrae just behind its skull.

"Shift," she crooned.

Lyrena and I flanked her, moving in silent parallel, weapons drawn. Was Veyka fast enough with her void power if the shifter lunged for her—

She was the fastest female—elemental or terrestrial—that I'd ever seen. The male's shift had not even solidified before she had her hand around his throat, her fingers tight. One hand, that was all she would need to snap his neck. It would not kill him, but it would render him unconscious long enough for her to divest him of his head.

The male glared at her, unkempt dark hair plastered to his sweaty forehead. Now that he was returned to his fae form, blood started to drip from the wound in his thigh, where Veyka's dagger was still impaled.

"I'll have that back, now," Veyka said, voice dripping with sweetness.

She held out the hand that did not hold his throat.

He looked like he wanted to spit in it.

Lyrena casually brandished her sword.

This was a dance they'd executed before.

He was close enough to stab her with the dagger, but doing so promised a swift death at the end of Lyrena's mighty broadsword.

Veyka watched with unhidden satisfaction as he pulled the dagger from his leg, blood spurting. He swayed on his feet, and her smile deepened. Only when he'd placed the hilt of the dagger into her palm did she release his throat and step away. Lyrena immediately stepped into the space she'd left.

Veyka reached down to scoop up a handful of snow, using it to clean the blade, careful not to touch a single drop with her own fingers. As if the male's blood was repellant. Beneath her.

She was much, much better at this game than she'd let on. Admiration kindled like a small flame in my chest. Veyka had a plan—one she had not judged me worthy of sharing. The warrior within me admired the caution. But the male, the one who longed to be close to her at a level deeper than consciousness, growled with disappointment.

Veyka slid the dagger into the jeweled scabbard at her waist—the one that matched my own. A Joining gift, I guessed. I had not asked and she had not offered an explanation. There were too many questions between us, and too many of them threatened to scrape over raw wounds.

Veyka opened her mouth, no doubt to parry some sassy comment that would equally inflame and enrage me.

But a voice boomed across the plain. From behind us. From the battlements.

They were no longer empty.

"Welcome to Castle Chariot, Your Majesties."