The Darkest Wolves - A.K. Koonce Page 0,42

He’s quick. He’d land on his feet like a vengeful cat filled with grace and toxic entitlement.

I can do better.

My mind circles as I think it all through, and as I do, I notice how close the hell fae are seated tonight. They don’t dine in a class of their own nearest the High Hell as they usually do. The several hundred of the dark horned creatures are directly below us.

None of them say a word.

My gaze shifts from one table to the next, and everyone seems alight with happiness as they chew merrily and drink heartily to the special occasion. Except for those deadly dark eyes that peer up at myself and the Prince every few seconds that pass by.

It’s a chill of anticipation to have them watch me when I already feel so watched by the man holding me tightly.

“The Night Witch has broken our wards,” he says to me on an empty whisper.

His face is vacant, but there’s so much thought behind his inky eyes.

“The Night Witch?” I ask with as much confusion as I can muster.

He nods.

“Why do we hate her, my Prince?” I force my fingers to remain steady as I push back the silky black locks from his face.

“I don’t,” he tells me with an exhale that carries oh so much weight with it. “I love her,” he rasps on a broken whisper.

Now the confusion is real.

“She was my soulmate. She was my one and only. I married into the crown. She was queen of this realm. But the magic here can be consuming. It’s too much for some people.” My heart pounds in rhythm to the heaviness of his every word. “It turned her into beautiful madness. She was pretty like you.” He glances my way, and I can’t even fathom how the darkness of the Night Witch and myself could ever be compared. “This morning after you left my rooms, a guard told me he spotted Creatchin in the halls for the first time in centuries. The cursed magic in her blood seems to have tainted her physically, but my man said he’d recognize her anywhere. He saw her. He saw her talking to you.”

My stomach drops.

My fingers dig into his shoulder instinctively, and it suddenly isn’t a question of whether I could shove this man from his ledge but…if he’d do the same to me.

“That was the Night Witch?” I ask in an even tone as I bite back every urge to look for Zilo.

His searching gaze picks apart every detail I give him. And fuck, I hope I give him what he wants to see.

The hold he has against my hip loosens little by little. Seconds slip by. My heart counts each and every moment that it continues to give me life.

“My Prince,” Zilo says from somewhere behind Ravar.

I don’t dare look away. If I glance away for a single second, it could cost me my life.

“My Prince, the gift you ordered has just arrived,” Zilo’s words are pointed and, if I’m not mistaken, a little worrisome.

Worried indeed. I too feel that fear cracking open inside myself.

My beast rumbles to life, but I swallow that reckless feeling right back down.

Everything is fine.

Everything is fine.

Everything—

“Cersia?” A delicate, familiar voice says.

Her tone washes over my name like a river that’s worn down a stone for years. In this moment, she’s a gentle current of water caught up in a brooding deadly storm.

Because my sister is the kind one.

And she shouldn’t be here in the kingdom of hell.

“Nyra.” I turn in his arms until her heart-shaped face fills my vision. She’s there just behind the small table, and she’s looking at me with so much distress in her pretty brown eyes. She looks small here. Fragile. Breakable. “Why are you here?” I turn to the man I was so afraid of just seconds ago. “Why is she here?” I growl out.

“She is your gift, my lovely,” he says with a stabbing hint of viciousness. “Do you want to keep your gift?”

Oh no. No. No. No.

“Of course,” I whisper on the stiffest of words.

I have to kill this man. Right now.

I stagger out of his arms, and I’m practically stumbling to embrace my sweet sister—to shield her from the sights of the devilish man behind me. I pull her in hard against me until the golden curls of her hair tickle my nose, and still I hold her tight.

“Why are you here?” I breathe those words out on a breath of anxious terror.

“Please take