22. Taryn

TWENTY-TWO

TARYN

Edevane stands in the doorway, his shoulder-length blond hair gleaming and his emerald-green eyes sparking with malevolence. A smug grin spreads across his handsome face, revealing lethal fangs.

Finn steps in front of me, feet braced apart, fists clenched at his sides, and a menacing glint in his golden eyes that promises death if he’s challenged. “You take a single step in her direction, and I swear to the gods, I’ll rip your fucking head from your body.”

My brows shoot up in surprise at the melty feeling in my chest. I would rather die than ever let a male fight my battles. So why do I think it’s sweet that Finn just threatened dismemberment for looking at me wrong? Shaking myself out of it, I sidestep the giant to stand next to him, as his equal. He glances down at me, seeming to consider something briefly. Then he gives me a slight nod and returns his attention to Edevane.

“I’m not here for her. I’m here for what she’s holding.”

My breath catches in my lungs as I close my left hand tighter around the tiny scroll.

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” Finn says. “We came down here to pay respect to my father.”

“Nice try, but I watched the two of you fumble around the atrium for a good ten minutes trying to solve the clue you found at the Conservatory.”

Narrowing my eyes, I shoot invisible daggers at the fae. “I knew that was you. How were you able to find us through our shield glamours?”

Edevane’s lips twist into a smug grin. “A magician never reveals his secrets, Your Highness. Now hand over the next clue. I have a spear to find.”

“Like hell you do,” I grate out. I summon a swirling ball of violet fire with my right and thrust it at him with a rage-filled shout.

Edevane flicks his wrist like he’s swatting a fly, and the fire ball changes course. It blows a hole in the side wall, the force of the explosion throwing me into Finn. He steadies me, then lunges for the Light King with a roar. Another casual flick sends Finn flying across the cavern and crashing so hard into the back wall that the cement buckles and cracks. When he falls forward onto his hands and knees, blood leaks from his head and trails down the side of his neck.

“Finnian!” I rush to his side but he’s already shaking it off and pushing to his feet.

“I’m good.” He tilts his head to each side to crack his neck, then rolls his massive shoulders back.

I whip my gaze in Edevane’s direction. “Your magic,” I say, seething. “I can feel traces of mine in it. How the fuck did you do that?”

“Oh, that? There are more than just a few traces of you in here,” he says, sweeping his hand down the front of his body. “All those times you were knocked out in my facility, we were taking your blood.”

I think back to the times I woke up after being unconscious, trying to reconcile what he’s claiming. A needle mark would’ve been small enough to heal before I could see it. But a massive loss in blood would explain why I always felt so weak afterward. Fear at what this means grabs me by the throat, preventing me from screaming at him like I want.

“Unfortunately, I have to keep replenishing after using too much magic, but that’s why I made sure I have a huge stockpile of it. Once I had enough for what I need, I decided to tip off your brother and his new friend here with your Armas. I wasn’t going to let you go, but I didn’t care if they managed to break you out either. I was curious if they could.”

Edevane looks at Finn. “Nice work using Garvey, by the way. He had no choice but to help you; that was clever. I still killed him, obviously, but I forgave him first. I’m not a complete monster.”

Finn’s hands clench into fists at his sides. “That’s debatable.”

Edevane chuckles like Finn just told a joke. “Anyway, I’ve spent the past year learning how to use these glorious Mystic powers of yours, Princess. It was downright messy for the first few months, as I’m sure you know, but I’ve more than gotten the hang of it now.” He tilts his head and pins me with a knowing look that turns my veins to ice. “Jealous?”

“Of a second-rate, wingless royal with no real magic of his own? I don’t fucking think so.” I glance at Finn. “No offense.”

“None taken,” he answers, keeping his focus trained on the enemy. “Get the fuck out of here, Edevane. You don’t belong in this city, and you sure as fuck don’t deserve to breathe the same air as her.”

Edevane folds his arms over his chest and leans against the doorway with a bored expression on his face. “I’m not going anywhere without what’s in her hand. You know now that you can’t win. Give it to me, and I’ll be on my way. I’ll even leave you alive. Cross my heart.”

You can’t win. The truth of his words makes my insides tremble. I can’t even process what it means for him to have siphoned my magic, but I know it makes him incredibly dangerous. I have precious few seconds before what’s in my hand is no longer in our possession. But if I’m right, then this is the clue that leads us to the Spear of Assal. And if Edevane gets it before we do, he’ll have the power to destroy Faerie. And my mother.

I have to do something— anything —to prevent that from happening. And I have to do it using lesser magic. Come on, Taryn, think.

Finn tries a different tack. “Even if we gave it to you, it wouldn’t do you any good. She said she hid it in Faerie, remember? You told me that.”

“True. I believed it was in Faerie because my grandfather believed it and wrote about it in his journal. She made him think it was in the Darks’ original Temple of Rhiannon, but it’s not there. That’s when I decided to see what you were both up to, and lo and behold, we were on the same quest.”

Finn tenses beside me but I don’t dare take my eyes off the snake in front of us to check his reaction. “How would you know the spear isn’t there? You can’t get into Faerie any more than I can.”

The Light King’s smile never quite reaches his electric green eyes. “Again, we’re back to secrets. You have yours—or had , at any rate—and I have mine.”

I’ve finally come up with a plan. It’s a long shot but right now it’s the only one we have. Silently, I start reciting an incantation in my head and pray I have enough time for what I’m attempting.

Finn glares at Edevane. “Keep your secrets, asshole. We’re not giving you shit.”

The amusement falls from Edevane’s face. “Did I give you the impression you had a choice? That was my mistake. I’m simply giving you the option to be reasonable and maybe make it out of here alive. But I’m good with the alternative, too.”

My left hand is heating up, giving me hope this might actually work. I just need a little more time.

“You might have her powers,” Finn says, “but so does she, and she’s had centuries with them, not mere months. You should reconsider getting into a battle of magic with a Mystic.”

Edevane’s eyes widen for a split second before he erupts in laughter. It’s genuine, and I hate how it transforms his normal fae good looks into cover model stunning. People’s outsides should match their insides. If they did, the Light King would be as attractive as a bridge troll dipped in acid.

“Newsflash, Baby Verran,” Edevane says after he calms down. “The princess doesn’t use her Mystic powers, never has.”

I freeze in place, the incantation I’ve been reciting in my head all but forgotten as Edevane’s words slice me open and spill my darkest secret to the one person who’s come to mean more to me than I ever thought possible. The last of my masks has been ripped away, and now Finn will see me for what I really am.

A coward.

Finn scoffs. “Yeah right.”

The blond fae shakes his head and tsks. “Think about it. I used her magic to teleport out of the iron cell beneath your Temple. By the time I learned that particular trick, she’d been in the facility for months. She was weakened, yes. But not weak enough that she couldn’t escape. I tested it out myself before allowing you to capture me.”

Edevane drives home his point, leveling his piercing green gaze on me. “So you see, young prince, your princess chose not to use her Mystic powers to free herself.”

My stomach turns, and I have to fight the urge to throw up. The bravest male I’ve ever known, next to my brother, knows how weak I am. There would be no point denying it even if I had the ability to lie; Edevane’s ability to get out of a near-identical situation with ease proves that I could have done the same. Instead, I remained imprisoned in that mountain for a year and would still be today if Finn and Dmitri hadn’t broken me out.

Finn looks down at me, his thick brows drawn together. “Is that true?”

I swallow against the lump in my throat. “Yes, but—” My left hand suddenly clenches around nothing but air. I open it up and check my palm, hoping my contingency plan worked. It didn’t. “Shit.”

Edevane chuckles, drawing our attention to where he now holds the clue. He opens the tiny scroll and quickly scans the words. A wolfish grin curves the corners of his mouth, then he looks at us as a flame engulfs the parchment.

“ No ,” I scream and lunge forward, but Finn bands his arms around my waist and holds me back from a futile attempt. It only takes a second for it to turn into ashes in his palm.

Brushing the small pile of soot from his hands, he says, “Thanks for doing all the heavy lifting on this one, but I’ll take it from here. I look forward to reuniting the two pieces of the spear and taking it with me into Faerie. I have so many plans. Not that you’ll get to see any of them. Oh, before I go…”

Giving us his back, Edevane extends his arms toward the ground with his hands facing up. Electricity crackles in the air around him and spreads throughout the small cavern making the tiny hairs on my arms stand on end. Finn moves me behind him then dives for Edevane like an NFL linebacker. The Light King swings one arm in Finn’s direction and sends him flying backward again. This time he hits the wall with so much force that I hear a loud POP .

I rush to his side and help him sit up on the wall as he holds his right arm against his body. “Fuck,” he grinds out through clenched teeth.

His arm is hanging too low at the shoulder, telling me it slid out of the socket. And that’s not the only damage. The right side of his face is all scraped to hell and bleeding like it lost a fight with a cheese grater.

The ground begins to shake beneath us like there’s an earthquake. Plumes of dirt fall from the ceiling, and I lose my balance from a particularly violent shift that puts me on my ass right next to Finn. My eyes flare wide as the earth in front of Edevane rises as though something is pushing it from underneath. It gets higher and higher until it seals off the entryway to the room, then he blasts it with Dragon’s Breath—a deadly stream of fire so hot it would melt the flesh from bones. Or a wall of sand. Is he trying to turn it into glass? But without a way to instantly cool it, it won’t?—

Before I can finish the thought, he aims one hand at the side wall and blasts it with a fire ball. Packed earth falls away to expose a large pipe, probably the one that cycles the water from the pool above us back up through the waterfall.

Another blast rips it open, allowing water to pour into the room. Edevane steps off to the side and redirects the flow to splash over the molten sand, causing an explosion of steam. Finn pulls me down with his good arm and tucks me against the wall, using his body as a shield. I hear him hiss through clenched teeth and feel his muscles tense as he takes the damage for both of us.

“Finn! Godsdamn it, let me up.”

He does, but only because the steam has already dissipated and the threat of getting burned is gone. My planned lecture gets sidelined when I see the result of Edevane’s efforts. A wall of obsidian glass as thick as a person is forged across the entire wall of the entryway. My stomach twists into a hundred knots. There’s no getting through that. And the water pouring in is already several inches deep.

“And now it’s time to take my leave,” Edevane says. “If you have anything you need to work out with each other, I suggest you do it fast.”

“You fucking fool,” I sneer. “It doesn’t matter what weapon you have. If you try to destroy Faerie, Aine will eviscerate you before you can blink.”

“Wrong again, I’m afraid. You really should touch base with your mother more often, princess. It’s amazing how much things can change over time.” He looks down at his feet and picks one up from the water and sighs. “Damn it, I liked these shoes.”

And then he’s just…gone.

For a brief moment, I’m wrapped up in a mix of astonishment and frustration that he’s able to do so much with my powers that I can’t. But when Finn shifts next to me and grunts in pain, it snaps me back to what’s important.

“Here, let me help you up.” He lets me put his left arm over my shoulders, then I push to my feet, helping him get his own underneath him. “You want me to help with your—” Finn slams the front of his shoulder against the wall, popping it back into place with a grunt. “Guess not. Oh, fuck, Finn, you’re badly burned.”

The back of his neck is bright red, and it’s the same when I lift his shirt to check there. He turns, forcing me to let go. “I’m fine, Taryn, I’m already healing. We need to worry about how we’re getting out of here.” He takes his cell phone from his back pocket, then curses. “Of course there’s no signal underground.”

Splashing through the water as he strides across the room, he examines the obsidian glass stretching across the entryway. It looks as though a massive crystal erected itself and sealed us in. The light from the flames I placed around the room earlier plays on the different angles within it.

“Move back. Let me try to hit it with something,” I tell him. Once he’s behind me, I shake my hands out and take a deep breath as I concentrate my magic between my hands to create a swirling ball of violet fire. I grit my teeth and force it as hard as I can at the wall but it doesn’t even crack the surface. I do it again and again, fireball after fireball, and getting more and more frustrated as each of them fails to do any damage.

“Taryn, stop.” Strong arms band around my waist and turn me to face him. My breathing is labored, and my arms are too weak to protest. “That wall isn’t budging without some serious explosives or a fucking miracle.”

I chew on my lip and try to think. “Maybe we can dig around the glass and tunnel our way out?”

Finn looks at the water pouring in and appears to do some mental calculations. It’s already at my knees, so I know the answer before he says it. “It’s rising too fast for that. I’d say we have ten minutes at most before the whole room fills up.”

“Right. Okay. Well, there has to be some way out of this. We just have to think and?—”

“Taryn.” His hands cup my shoulders as he looks into my eyes. “Why don’t you just teleport us out of here?”

Dread climbs up my throat. “You heard what he said. I don’t use my Mystic powers.”

His brows knit in confusion. “But you have access to them, right?”

Unshed tears blur my vision. “Technically, yes. But you don’t understand; I can’t .”

He’s momentarily distracted when the water level rises above my waist, reaching the top of his thighs. Picking up the Luna box, he slides the lid of the sarcophagus off just enough that he can place his father’s treasures back where they belong. Once they’re sealed up again, he climbs onto the obsidian tomb then pulls me up next to him. My gaze is fixed on the water as it crests the edges a few seconds later and quickly covers the surface.

My heart races and a cold sweat breaks out across my skin. I feel as if I might collapse under the weight of my fear and shame. We will both drown if I don’t use my powers. But Finn will burn to death if I do.

“Taryn, help me understand,” he says gently, his voice a soothing balm. He steps closer, his golden-honey eyes filled with concern. “I’ve seen you use your magic, so why can’t you use it now?”

I force myself to not look away as I finally bare my soul with a trembling voice. “You’ve only seen my lesser magic. Those powers are like a fire burning in a hearth—warm, comforting, and contained. But my Mystic powers are something else entirely. They’re like a raging brushfire that can’t be controlled. Every time I’ve tapped into them, they completely consume me, and everything around me turns to ash. I could kill you , Finn, and I couldn’t live with myself if that happened.”

A broken sob escapes before I can choke it down, and then I’m pulled into his strong embrace. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart. But you can do this, Taryn,” he whispers, his voice steady and reassuring. Pulling back, he cups the sides of my face and stares deep into my eyes. “I believe in you. I need you to try.”

I shake my head. “No! I can’t. You have no idea how powerful it is. It could affect all the innocent people in the hotel, too. I can’t control it.”

“Okay, so what if I promise that I won’t let that happen? Just like when we’re in a scene and I’m dialed into you so I can keep you safe, I’ll watch for signs that it’s getting to be too much. If that happens, I’ll put a stop to it, I promise.”

“How?”

“I need you to trust me, solnyshko . Do you trust me?” I swallow hard against the emotions forming a knot in my throat and nod. He kisses my forehead, and I can feel his relief in that simple kiss. “Good. I’m right here. You can do this.”

He grabs my hands and gives them a supportive squeeze. My heart pounds erratically and dread curls in my stomach, but I force myself to take a deep breath. As I exhale, I let my lids drift closed and carefully crack open the mental door I keep my Mystic powers locked behind. Once I give it the smallest opening, it crashes through with the strength of a tsunami wave, flooding my system.

It’s so intense, so much, and the power feels too big for my body. My skin is tight with the extra magic flowing just beneath the surface. All I can hear is the thrum in my veins, like electricity crackling in my lungs, and my breath comes in shallow, quick gasps.

I try to focus the energy into a single direction, but it’s like trying to guide smoke with my hands. A lump rises in my throat and my heart is racing. It’s too much, it’s too big. I can’t control it. It’s like a living, breathing thing that’s slipped its chain and can’t be reeled back in.

The faint echo of my name reaches me. My eyes snap open. I’m engulfed in violet flames. Just like the times before. A tear slips free onto my cheek and evaporates on contact.

Oh gods…I’m going to burn him alive.

“Finn…” As the last thread of my control unravels, I close my eyes and whisper a last request. “Forgive me.”