pool of light began to coalescence.
With that pool of light took on form, she wasn’t surprised to find herself staring at Irian. The light ebbed until she was looking at Irian as he must have looked in life, rather than the spectral form she normally saw.
“Don’t you ever grow tired of playing tricks with my mind?” she said, a bubble of anger forming in her chest. Had she just spent all this time trapped in some enchantment of his? Why?
“This is no trick, Tyriel,” Irian said.
The sound of his voice, oddly more...real than she’d ever heard him sound startled her and the poignant grief in his eyes had her throat thickening.
Tearing her gaze from his, she looked around.
“No? Then what is this?” She was barely able to see much more than perhaps an arm’s length before her before the darkness cloaked everything, although she thought the light just might be increasing from...somewhere.
“This is...you,” Irian said. “I have to admit, it took a long time to come so far. I was starting to worry we’d never find this.”
Frustrated, Tyriel glared at him.
“Find what?”
“Look.” Irian spread his hands out and turned in a slow circle.
There was more light, although she had no idea where the source of it was. Her vision, sharply acute thanks to her elvish bloodline, had adjusted to that scant illumination well enough that she could see him without difficulty. He had his head tipped back and she mimicked the movement more out of habit than any real curiosity about whatever it was that held his attention.
“We’re within you, Tyriel. In the very core of you, deeper, even, than your soul.” He finally spun back to look at her, his dark eyes glinting. “That you don’t recognize this hollow hell is odd, but I’m not overly surprised. You’ve never had a reason to look so deeply inside yourself until you stripped away all your magic—almost all.”
She flinched. “Stop talking in riddles, Irian.”
“This is no riddle.” He lifted his eyes once more, a faint smile on his hard, rawly masculine face. “You stripped it all away, save for one faint, lingering spark.”
Tyriel shook her head and began to back away.
Irian lowered his gaze back to hers.
“What can a clever, patient soul such as you do with a spark, Tyriel?”
She tried to back up another step, and found she couldn’t. She wasn’t paralyzed and Irian wasn’t stopping her. She just...couldn’t make herself move. Compelled by something she saw in his eyes, she waited, not even daring to breathe as he advanced on her.
“Sparks can turn into raging wildfires.”
He held out his hand.
She looked down, mesmerized by the broad, scarred palm before her.
“You have to take this step, Tyriel. I cannot do this for you,” he murmured.
Squeezing her eyes shut, she put her hand in his.
“That’s my brave, beautiful warrior.”
Chapter 20
“You’ve always been such a brave, stubborn lass, love.”
Irian whispered as he shimmered into view, retreating from her subconscious so he could take the next step.
Behind him, he heard the mutterings from her father and the Royal Consort and while he much wanted to ignore them and move forward in his quest, much depended on Tyriel and Aryn being undisturbed while he finished his work.
Rising, he turned to face Prince Lorne.
For a moment, he was taken aback, surprised by the changes in both the prince and his consort. He was unshaven and wore fighting leathers, as if prepared to go to war, the coronet marking him as a High Prince among the People gone.
Alys, like the prince, had abandoned her regal garb. She wore a simple gown and her hair was pulled back into a plain tail at her nape.
Both eyed with eyes aglow with magic.
Lorne strode forward, a dagger in his hand. When he lifted it, Irian saw the black flames dripping from it.
“When you told us you might have a way to help, you said you’d need peace and for them to be undisturbed for a time—a short time. It’s been more than three weeks, you bloody fool specter!”
Irian eyed the black flames before shifting his attention to the furious fae lord.
“Three weeks is but a blink,” he said with a shrug. “It took me far longer to find the last, lingering spark of her magic than I’d thought. Then I had to call her to me. It is not quick work, Prince Lorne.”
The prince’s lids flickered, his mouth going tight. “What spark? Her magic is gone. She...”
He lapsed into silence, catching sight of his consort from the corner of