Through the Ether (Force of Nature Book 5) - Amber Lynn Natusch Page 0,69

a tug of war—which it was, I supposed. The question was: whose pull was stronger?

I heard a collective gasp ring out around me just as air rushed into my lungs, and the fey queen scowled.

Knox was suddenly at my side, and the rush of magic I felt from his presence was unlike anything I’d ever felt. It held notes of what he’d always been—the gasoline to my fire—but there was something else mixed in with it. Something darker and stronger and not of this world. I could feel the fey king within him, coursing through his veins like a separate entity that had not fully acclimated but begged to be used.

Even in death, it seemed the fey king still wanted his bride dead.

That mental connection brushed up against my mind and I startled, losing focus on the wind and the air and my battle with the queen.

Is this what it was like for Phineas? Knox’s voice echoed in my mind. Lucky bastard…

I turned to find his eyes still blazing gold with power, and I shuddered at the implications, fearing that the power had pushed him over the edge. He let me go suddenly and turned his attention to Larken, snarling like the beast he was. But this time, with that aggression came power to match, a swirling aura of shadow and light the likes of which I’d never seen before.

“Looks like you lost this round,” he said, a familiar edge of madness in his tone.

Before she could even respond, he cast his arms out, and that shadowy aura shot forward, directed right at my mother. She raised her hands to thwart his magical attack, but it bulldozed right through her, crashing into her chest. A blinding blue explosion erupted, and I turned away, shielding my eyes. When I dared to look back, I saw nothing but empty space where she’d been standing.

I glanced at Knox. His eyes had dimmed and he was breathing hard, and though I didn’t know what it meant, I worried that it wasn’t good.

Then my mother’s laughter rang out, and I knew shit had gone sideways. She stepped forward from the trees, blue light glowing all around her, and smiled wide.

“Thank you for that,” she said as her hand dipped inside her collar. “I couldn’t have fixed this without your help…”

She pulled out the now-healed amulet, and my heart sank to my shoes. The amulet that had refueled an entire realm. The one that had led to the near-deaths of so many of my friends.

Though I was nearly paralyzed by those memories, I managed to stomp my foot on the ground, splitting the earth beneath her. A flash of light pierced the night sky, and a portal opened behind her just as the ground fell away beneath her feet. She hovered above it like a ghostly figure as she conjured a ball of iridescent light in front of her, then cast it at me. I deflected the strike away from our army, but the explosion knocked us all to the ground. By the time I scrambled back to my feet, my mother and her army were gone.

And so was Etherian.

Chapter Twenty-Three

“Well, that can’t be good,” Kat said, turning to face Knox.

He didn’t answer, but I could see the strain in his face, tugging at the corners of his eyes and tightening his jaw. Her comment had hit too many nerves for him, and I worried what might happen next.

His gaze drifted to mine as though he’d heard my thoughts, and he gave me a tight smile. “I’m okay, Piper. Don’t worry. I’m not about to go off the deep end.”

“Well, that’s good, because we know how well that went for Brunton last time,” I replied.

“A fishing net holding me down didn’t help,” Brunton said from across the yard where he, Foust, Jagger, and the Alaskan pack were rounding up Mack’s former wolves. To their credit, they didn’t put up a fight.

Smart little doggies.

“Kat is right in her observation,” Merc said, pulling us back to the drama at hand. “Whatever just transpired with the queen puts us in a bad position.” His grim expression told me that his statement was the polite way of putting it. We were fucked was the hard truth; far more fucked than we were before the amulet had been healed.

“That can’t have been a coincidence,” Jase said as he walked over to us.

“It wasn’t,” was all Knox said in response. We stood in silence for a moment, trying to work through how