Good aim.
Then everything went black.
***
Before Asher, I had always imagined myself dying alone on a battlefield. Sometimes, I had even wondered if it would come down to her and I facing off.
I had heard of her, the princess of the fae who could control minds. Adbeel and I had spent many years contemplating what exactly she was and how she had come to be.
Knowing what we did about her parents at the time, we had come to the conclusion that she was likely infused in a similar way I had been. A memory sparked at the thought.
“There is something sinister in that female’s veins,” Adbeel said, his brow furrowed as he read the latest report.
Princess Asher Daniox, The Manipulator, had killed four fae the week prior—two sets of couples who had decided to fraternize outside of their faction. What a selfish and wicked law, to restrict who one could find love in.
“We need to kill her, Adbeel. We cannot allow her to continue on. If we do, they will sic her on us one day, and when that time comes, the demons will not survive her.”
Just as my parents before me, I was without sympathy. I had begged and begged Adbeel to let me simply kill her, to end the fae’s poison before she became our own. She had been vulnerable, cooped up in that comfy palace. Yet he had refused time and time again. Zaib never would have wanted the demons to attack, he would argue, insisting that his late daughter’s desire for peace was anything but horrifyingly stupid.
Which it was. Zaib’s ridiculous wish to maintain the peace was what led to the death of her and her brother, Malcolm. Adbeel had fallen into a fit of rage at their demise, preparing his armies to sail and portal into Betovere. Readying for war.
It was in that time, with the loss of her son and daughter so fresh and that of her beloved subjects eminent, that Queen Solei broke. Adbeel had only told me the story once, the horrific details spared. But it was not hard to understand what led to her sudden death.
The last thing she had ever asked Adbeel was to end the violence, to stop the fighting—for Zaib.
And stop he did.
As he had held her limp body in his arms, his fit of grief and fury sending raw magic shooting into the air, Adbeel did the impossible. Some scholars believed her Moon magic and his Sun magic merged somehow, bursting free of them and surrounding the realm like a wall.
The Mist.
It was an extraordinary and unfathomable form of magic, one that nobody was capable of understanding, let alone replicating. More than that, it was a promise to his late wife, an apology to his dead son and daughter, and a gift to his living subjects.
No more war. No more loss. No more suffering.
Then he found me, wrath incarnate, a plague to a king who had lost so much. I was everything he had once been and everything he had fought to no longer be.
Which was why he had forbidden me from taking our armies to Betovere, convinced that nothing good would come from attacking. He feared the loss that came from action in the same way I feared the loss that came from inaction. We were at a stalemate, neither willing to budge.
The attack on Claud, a village that resided on a small hill above a sprawling valley, was my tipping point. No longer would I allow us to remain complacent, waiting for their attacks and simply fighting back. Defensive approaches were not working, not anymore.
I tore through Judson’s estate, glaring at each of the guards that attempted to stop me, a storm raining pure rage down upon the unsuspecting residents of Yentain. They all wore the signature silver of Eoforhild but with violet stitching rather than blue, signaling that they hailed from Andreia. The whole gods forsaken manor was the same violet color, to the point that it bordered on the gaudiness of the fae royals’ love for gold.
When I finally reached the meeting room, still clad in my bloody armor from that morning, I found Engle guarding the stupid purple doors. I attempted to sidestep him, not in the mood for whatever he had to say this time. Of course, he stepped with me, a smirk on his face.
I was not in the mood. After Noe had come back for me and brought me to Ranbir to be healed from the stab wound to my side, I could do nothing but simmer in my rage like a pot ready to boil over.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
“You look quite worn out today, Bellamy,” he said, his laugh loud as he once again blocked my way.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
“What? No comment or retort? Is poor Belly angry that his little pet is not with him?” Ah, Revanche must have told him about Asher.
I let loose a sigh of annoyance when he backed into the doors, pressing himself to the wood and concealing the silver handles. I was not in the right frame of mind for this verbal sparring. Nor was I ever in a good enough place mentally to be near Engle for more than a few moments at a time.
Henry, Engle, and I had all grown up together. Henry as the Lady of Kratos’ son, Engle as the Lord of Andreia’s son, and myself as the crown prince of Eoforhild were all pushed into friendship from youth. I was the youngest, Henry a few decades older than me and Engle about a century older than him. From the moment I had mastered my power, around nineteen years after my birth, we had been trained and taught together.
