Chapter 43

Hanna

Kaelan stumbled. He was still hurt. I wasn”t sure he felt it. But every movement was painful for me to watch. He was under such a deep enchantment that I wasn”t sure he could feel, could take care of himself.

“Where did that thing come from?” Seraphine muttered, and at first I didn”t know what she was talking about, until I saw the furry blur streaking toward us.

Finnias. The last time I had seen the cat, it had been through Kaelan”s eyes. The cat had settled down beside him when he was broken and hurt. Now it was running frantically across the ballroom, trying to escape, as if even the cat had surrendered hope that his master would ever return to his senses and love him.

“I still have a few pets that Mother gave me that she can’t take back” Seraphine said with a smile, making a small motion.

Fuck. There were more monsters, despite how many we had seen streaming out of the city.

“Kaelan, think!” I shouted at him. “She’s the one who commands monsters! Could your wife command monsters?”

He seemed to waver as if the word wife had meant something to him.

“Husband!” I called to him, desperately, hoping that word would break through. My own voice broke, unexpectedly.

Seraphine held out her hands to him. “Let”s finish our wedding, Kaelan. I want you for all my life. All I need is for you to kill the imposter, and we can be together, forever.”

“We already married!” I screamed. “Kaelan, don”t you remember? Does it mean so little to you?”

The memory rose up of the night that he had rejected me for another woman, the night of the ball when he had broken our engagement. He had flashed me a glance over his shoulder, his eyes cold and lips set, even as he steered her ahead of him. That look had told me that he wanted to gut me.

I knew he was under an enchantment, and yet, it reminded so much of the last time I”d been torn apart by my love for him and his hatred for me.

He seemed to waver. Then she was touching him, stroking his face, and all I wanted to do was rush in and to kill her.

But then I saw the monster: an enormous alligator-like creature whose claws gouged the ballroom floor with very step.

Its greedy eyes were fixed on me—until the cat streaked desperately across its path.

Then it turned its attention to it.

This was my chance to strike, while the monster was distracted; it was an opening to defeat Seraphine before her monster could reach me.

Finnias loved Kaelan, and for all his faults, Kaelan loved his cat. He would be destroyed if he ever came back to himself to know this cat was gone.

And besides, I loved Finnias too.

As desperate as I was to stop their wedding, I ran to protect Finnias.

I shifted into the dragon as I went. Just the flicker of a thought rose in my mind-- could Seraphine use her deceptive magic to make Kaelan see her as a dragon? Would she take away that aspect of what made me special to him, just as I had once before?

Kaelan twisted, his gaze following me, his jaw dropping open as I exploded into my dragon form.

Then I couldn”t spare him one more bit of attention. I was fighting fiercely with the monster, blasting it with my fire.

Finnias was so afraid at first that he tried to get away from all of us, flattening himself to the ground and moving from side to side. He ran away from me when I reached out with my talons, but I slipped him up gently and held him to my chest. The memory of Dare holding me so tenderly against his chest rose in my memory.

I blasted out my fire, and the monster fell before me, wailing its pain as it caught on fire, whirling around with the orange flames leaping from its scales.

Then I turned to face Kaelan again.

“A monster,” Serafine accused. “Sent here by my mother to kill me.”

I couldn”t speak in this form. I needed Kaelan to come back to us. If he saw Hanna—or rather, Seraphine, who he thought was Hanna--destroyed in front of him, I didn”t know what it would do to the enchantment. To his mind. To his heart.

And so, even though I wanted to blast her and watch her burn, instead I shifted back into the girl.

And I did feel like a girl again, vulnerable and young and exposed in a way I hadn”t felt since I let Kaelan break my heart for the very first time. I”d known he would hate me when his love was twisted by the magic, but I hadn”t known then how much that would hurt. I”d never felt anything like that before.

Kaelan had destroyed me then, and he could do it again now.

But I wouldn”t give him up without a fight.

Kaelan”s gaze met mine for a few long moments, and I thought he remembered me. His face was always so hard to read, but his eyes... he looked as if the fog had cleared as he studied me. But maybe it was just my wishful thinking, I wanted it to be true so badly.

“Kaelan,” I begged. “You have to remember me.”

“You aren’t my wife, so why do you nag like you’re mine?” he asked, his face as cold as ever. “Like a siren song that makes me want to leap into the nearest body of water.”

I stared at him, wondering if he remembered that conversation in the market, when we had pretended to be husband and wife, playing out a fantasy that we both secretly loved. Or perhaps, the phrase was just still stuck in his mind from all those years ago without him knowing what those mocking words once meant to me to us both.

Then he lunged at me.

I blocked him, slipping under his grip—though he almost caught me. My heart was in my throat. Kaelan was impossibly fast, dangerously strong, and so much bigger than I was. I couldn’t play with him. My knife was in my hand.

I needed to strike fast and hard to have a chance.

My mind whirled. Maybe he’d meant that reference as a signal.

Or maybe he was completely under Seraphine’s enchantment and would break my neck as easily as I’d seen him tear apart enemies before.

Fear choked my throat, but when his hands flashed out and seized me… I resisted the first impulse I had to fight him off.

I let him drag me with him. I threw out a jab with my knife, knowing how well he knew my moves, my body. He’d known me by heart once.

He blocked it. Then he dragged me against his body, his powerful forearm cutting into my throat. I gagged as he cut off my airway. The hard length of him was against my back, and my feet kicked uselessly at his knees. I couldn’t find the ground and my boots slipped off his legs as I tried to find purchase there, so I could leverage my smaller body to flip around.

Seraphine smiled, pleased. I could barely see her through the blur as I struggled, but Kaelan and I had closed the distance between us as we fought.

And then suddenly, his arm released my throat. He thrust me toward her.

She had another monster crawling across the expanse, and it reared back in alarm, but it was too far away to reach her.

The world was a wild blur. I could barely catch my breath as I slammed into her. Her smile turned into open-mouthed alarm as she tried to throw her hands up to push me away.

But I had all Kaelan’s force and momentum behind me.

The knife went deep into her side. Blood gushed over it and my hand, and it was slippery underfoot as I yanked the blade back.

She stared at me in horror.

“Why?” I demanded, ready to drive the blade in again. “Why did you do this to him? To me? To our kingdom?”

She tried to say something. But only blood came out of her mouth, no words.

Then she was falling to her knees in front of me.

But I didn’t care about her.

I couldn’t stand to look at him yet, in case I didn’t see the face of the man who loved me looking back.

“You finally recognized me.” My voice was a rough rasp. It didn’t sound like a question, but it was. I cleared my throat.

“No one else pisses me off like you do.” His voice was a deep rumble, sexy and sarcastic and present.

It was such a typical, offhanded bit of Kaelan bullshit. It made me smile.

We’d fight and kill for each other, but gods forbid we were sweet.

Kaelan rested his hand on my shoulder as Seraphine collapsed, dying in front of us.

“Look at me,” Kaelan said then, and I turned.

His icy eyes were clear. He towered above me, still so dangerous.

Then suddenly, his reserve broke, and he gathered me tightly into his arms.

This embrace was the opposite of the one mere moments ago when I had feared he would kill me. I let myself sink into him, into his size and power, feeling safe and held.

“I almost hurt you.” His voice came out sounding broken. I didn’t want to know if he had always been able to remember who I was throughout that fight, or if I had gambled my life on a desperate hope. “I almost lost you.”

“I’d never let you lose me,” I said.

“That’s what Thorne said. He said to trust you both…” Suddenly, wild emotions washed over his face in an uncharacteristic display: fear, sorrow, regret. “Thorne.”

Then: “I think I killed Thorne.”

The two of us ran for our fallen friend.