Page 34 of Revealing Fate

The man’s serious gaze flicked over her head. “Indeed.” He shouldered past her and disappeared behind the boulders. Felíne’s limbs began to shake from the surge of adrenaline, and she sagged against a mossy trunk.

Several minutes later, the stoic stranger returned, Felíne’s pack clutched in his grasp.

“Thank you,” she managed, hoisting herself to her feet. “My name is Kitty.”

The man accepted her proffered hand in greeting, his serious attention assessing. He did not relinquish her belongings. “What’s your code, Kitty?”

“Code?”

That flinty gaze narrowed. “No one is foolish enough to enter Stillwater Wood without a code.”

Oh gods, a code? She didn’t have a code. Penn never mentioned needing one. Panic seized her anew. She tried to back away from the man, but he held her fast. “Please,” she attempted, trying to reclaim her hand. “I’m traveling to visit family. Just in Fahren’s Pass. They’ll be expecting me.”

Heavy brows lowered over the man’s steely eyes. “Fahren’s Pass is just ahead,” he said, and Felíne’s heart leapt. She was so close to the little border town. To freedom. “But anyone with family there would know the code. Tell me, and I’ll show you the way.”

Her stomach dropped, tears threatening. “They didn’t give me a code.”

The man lowered his face to hers, grip tightening. “Then you must forgive my assumption, Kitty.”

Felíne yanked at her arm to no avail.

“Anyone found within the boundary of the wood must give the code. Without it, you are assumed a traitor to the Cozened until proven otherwise.” He turned, dragging her along behind him. Away from Fahren’s Pass. In the wrong direction.

“No. Please! I’m not a traitor! I must get to Fahren’s Pass!”

The stranger’s grip was unbreakable, his steps undeterred. “If what you say is true, then I’ll take you to Fahren’s Pass myself. But not until the Conclave determines your innocence. Until then, Kitty, you are a prisoner of the Stillwater Watch, and you are coming with me.”

Chapter 14

BY YOUR COMMAND

DOMITAN FAELSTROM, HIGH KING OF ASTEROS, hunched in his high-backed chair and rubbed the space between his furrowed brows. A headache throbbed behind his eyes.

His usually meticulous receiving room was strewn with broken pieces of furniture, scattered tomes, and sheaves of parchment. A glass lay shattered in one corner, shards untouched where they’d landed after impact. His servants had rallied to clean the room after the initial destruction, but desisted when Domitan had shifted, gripped the nearest throat with a clawed fist, and crushed the old man’s windpipe in an uncustomary fit of fury.

The loss of control did not befit a king. He despised having displayed such a lack of restraint. Yet he’d been unable to stop his skin from splitting, second form spilling forth, at the news he received.

The guards at the western perimeter wall had rushed to him. She returned, they’d exclaimed.

Tavene. His huntress had returned.

Domitan commanded that she be brought before him. His moment of anticipated triumph had been obliterated when they carried her in, her near-lifeless second form leaking like a sieve, innards barely held in place by a bloodied strip of cloth.

Tavene had never failed him. Not once in all the years she’d faithfully served. Now, she had the fucking gall to claw her way back to the capital on the brink of death, empty-handed? The carelessness of such a thing, the blatant disobedience, had annihilated what remained of his self-control. Domitan had shifted to second form on the spot, monstrous, tawny hide erupting, clothes shredding, and exploded in a blind rage.

Now, hours later, he had a demolished receiving room, a dead servant, and a ruined huntress. And still no answers.

No fucking answers.

The menders said it would be days, possibly weeks, before Tavene regained consciousness, if she ever did. He was no closer to solving this mess of a missing Prima. No closer to identifying the fucking assailant who had killed his soldier with the fragmenting blade. The one Domitan was certain had abducted the Prima.

Serebine remained in the Temple of the Rising Dawn with her priests, praying tirelessly at the foot of the Goddess’s scepter. The undying flame that had been lit upon the Prima’s birth still glowed with holy fire. Because of that single fact, the queen clung to hope that the Goddess had not deserted them. There was still time. As long as the Prima was returned and her presentation completed, they could still break the curse. Domitan and Serebine would maintain their sovereignty.

If they failed, they risked an uprising. Domitan would not tolerate any additional loss of control. He wouldn’t suffer losing his crown, his legacy. They would break the damn curse. The King of Asteros wouldn’t allow his name to be smeared by failure, his rule to die with no future generations to remember his greatness. No. He would retrieve his missing offspring so that she could do her duty to their race, and no shurii would ever again dare refuse Domitan as sovereign. He wouldn’t be King of Asteros. He would be the unopposed ruler of Ilistaar. The closest thing to a god to walk their lands in millennia.

Would that the Goddess had placed the fate of the shurii upon his shoulders. This catastrophic complication would have never transpired.

Serebine could continue counseling her priests. She could conduct her summoning rituals in attempts to locate the Prima, endeavoring to gain some manner of divine insight. Reaching beyond the veil, the queen called it. Domitan left her to her fucking witchcraft. He needed something solid. Something tangible.