Blackbird Crowned (The Witch King's Crown #3) - Keri Arthur Page 0,93

won’t you?”

He smiled and touched my cheek, a gentle caress that caused inner havoc. “I’m not the one flying into the middle of a battlefield.”

“No, but you might find yourself in one regardless. We can make as many plans as we want, but there’s no guarantee Max will react in the way we hope.”

“If there’re two truths in this whole mess, it’s the fact that he wants the sword and that he’s spent a lifetime underestimating you.”

“I know. It’s just—” I hesitated and shrugged. “For all my tough words, for all my determination to put an end to my brother’s crimes, I’m worried that Winter is right and I just won’t have the courage to do what has to be done.”

His fingers slid down to my chin and held me still as he leaned forward and kissed me. It was little more than a gentle brushing of lips, but there was nothing sweet about the storm of emotion that burned between us. It was heat and fire, love and caring, need and desire. We might not in truth know each other all that well in this lifetime, but our souls had spent an eternity finding and then losing one another. This might finally be our time, but only if we could survive what was coming.

He pulled back and rested his forehead against mine. “You’re the most courageous woman I’ve ever met. You’re also the Witch King’s heir and Elysian’s wielder. You can do this. You just have to believe in yourself as strongly as the rest of us do.”

A smile tugged at my lips. “That’s hard when I’ve spent almost my entire life believing I was nothing more than a disappointment—”

“Not to Mo, you weren’t. Even blind Freddie could see that.”

“Well, no, but—”

The rest of the words were lost to another kiss. And oh, this time there was nothing gentle about it. It made my blood roar and my heart sing, and I wanted nothing more than to lose myself in his arms and his touch, to rip off our clothes and feel the press of his muscular and glorious body against mine, the heat and thickness of his erection deep within. But the first time we made love deserved time, and we had none of that left right now.

I had to go. If I didn’t, we wouldn’t stop my brother, though why I was suddenly so certain of that, I couldn’t say.

I pulled away reluctantly and pressed a hand against his cheek. “I’ll ring when we get to London.”

“Good. And good luck.”

“You too.”

I left without looking back, even though I knew this might be the very last time I ever saw him. Not because he might die, but because it was very possible I would. I wasn’t a fool, and I was about to use Elysian in a way that had already been responsible for the death of one witch king.

If such a death was to be my fate then so be it, but one thing was certain—there was no way on god’s green earth she would take me before my brother.

The bloody glow of the fires consuming parts of London were visible from a long way out, and were no doubt representative of the disaster happening on the ground.

We flew fast over Watford, following a wide highway of destruction that ran from the gate near the old Priory down into London. But the damage in the outer boroughs wasn’t as bad as I’d expected. The demons’ target had been London, and they’d simply taken the most direct route to get there, destroying anything and anyone that got in their way, but leaving multiple other areas untouched. There were even streets where destruction was heavy on one side and nonexistent on the other. That was not Darkside’s usual method, but given the palace was the key to their plan and their main goal, it also wasn’t surprising.

We swept over the M25 and into Greater London. Red and blue lights filled the streets below; some screamed through the streets, chased by demons on foot or in the air, while others formed a part of the multiple blockades that spanned many major and minor roads. Each had at least one heavily armed military vehicle on hand and was manned by dozens of people, although from this height it was impossible to tell whether they were witch, military, or police, or even a mix of all three.

While Darkside attacked many of these blockades and ran riot through the surrounding streets and parks,