AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Ferryn finally met my gaze as well. “We immediately searched the room and found no one. We never left our posts, King Goll. I swear we did not.”
I stormed across the room, the three of them right behind me. As we crossed into the corridor, Soryn strode up to me, panting after apparently running to the war room.
“We’ve caught her scent as well as Hava’s. They took the trail heading east through Esher Wood. The Culled are mounting horses now.”
That trail ended at the river where she could follow it directly south and across the border into Lumeria. Then back to her home of Issos.
I’d thought I’d known fury before, but nothing had prepared me for the living fire burning through my veins now, searing me from the inside out.
“Soryn, you lead the Culled to get them.”
His scowl deepened. “You’re not going?”
“Oh, I’m going,” I growled. “Havallah will be alone shortly.” If they were indeed alone and not being helped by some other Issosian ambassador. “Bring her back. I’ll take care of my mizrah.”
Without another word, I whirled toward the palace kitchens, the closest exit to the back gardens. Closing off my fury for the moment, but letting my urgency ring clear, I reached out to Drakmir telepathically.We must ride, brother. Be ready.
Everyone stepped out of my way as I stormed down the corridor, through the kitchens, and out the door. Drakmir rumbled a growl, waiting for me in the clearing beyond the maragord grove where he rested when he wasn’t wandering the skies or hunting across Meerland.
Keeping our mind-to-mind connection open, I showed him where we needed to go while I launched up his shoulder and into the saddle.
“Fly, Drak!”
Instantly, we were airborne, soaring toward Esher Wood and the eastern trail. Soryn and the entirety of my Culled pounded their way on horseback from the stables from the right of the palace, but my focus was on the trail.
I did not believe she would do this. Even after the Rite of Servium, I didn’t think she would hate me so much that she’d try to return to her homeland. She knew that if she broke her vows, I could punish her people. I still had garrisons occupying all of Lumeria. I could slaughter them all with the power of feyfire living inside me.
Especially now, stirring with the hot emotion of bitterness and betrayal that she would do this to me. That she would leave me.
The fury twisted into a spire of pain that nearly choked me. Cold wind gusted against my chest. A rumble of thunder vibrated in the distance, mirroring the storm growing inside me. For a moment, I closed my eyes and let the sensation of flight cool my burning blood. It barely worked, and the fire stoked anew when Drak purred a low growl.
There they were, walking along the trail, almost to the river. Drak knew where I wanted to go. He dove for the well-worn path and banked with beating wings to slow his descent in front of them, then landed to block their path.
Una and Hava jumped in surprise. Hava’s eyes widened in fear. As they should. Una, however, looked furious, which only burned me hotter.
As soon as Drak’s feet were on the trail, his girth and tail breaking branches reaching toward the path, I climbed down, leaped to the ground in seconds, and strode straight forUna. That was when her expression widened with trepidation. Whatever she saw in my eyes had her taking large steps backward, her black wings fluttering helplessly.
“Yes, Una. Go on.” A predatory thrill slipped through my blood, pumping my heart faster. “Run.”
As if the survival instincts built inside her could do nothing else, she did. My body hummed with magick and desire, hardening every part of me at the sight of her fleeing into the woods as fast as she could go.
Then I was after her, letting the maelstrom of emotions I’d been having since the night of the Servium to twist and fly, spurring me on to catch my prey and bring her back to me, back in my embrace where she belonged. The feral desire to bear her down in the grass and fuck her senseless hazed my vision with dark need, to make her understand she could never leave me, to make her know she belongedto me.
She was fast even without the use of her wings, her long legs eating up the forest ground as she dodged around one tree and then the next, her feet crunched on the fallen leaves, her breaths grower louder, her white hair flying behind her. She made a whimpering sound in her throat as I inched closer and closer, a similar sound to the one she made when she writhed and came beneath me in the throne room.
By now, I was furious and fucking rock hard when I took the last step to close the distance and wrap both my arms around her waist. Her wings pinned between us, hanging down toward the ground, she kicked with her legs and struggled against me.
“Let me go, Goll! Stop this!”
Her writhing body and hypnotic scent only amplified the inferno building inside me. I planted my feet and buried my mouth in her loose hair close to her ear. “You dared to leave me? My mizrah? The one the gods chose for me. You swore an oath,Una.”
“I wasn’t leaving you,” she panted.
“Just taking a leisurely stroll to the river where you might catch a passing ferryman who could take you straight into Lumeria, I suppose.”
“What? No.” She jerked and struggled again, obviously feeling my hardness pressing into the cleft of her ass. If I wasn’t so furious with Hava, I’d want to thank her for sewing these trousers for her mistress.
With a quick movement, I whirled her around and tossed her over my shoulder then marched back toward the trail.
