Frost Fae (Dark Fae Kings #2) - Meg Xuemei X Page 0,62

in the mortal realm. When the tech waves interfered with magic, you could get stuck in nowhere or even be torn apart.

“Take me home…please,” I pleaded again, my body boiling in an inferno.

“We’ll shield her with our combined magics while you continue to heal her,” Rydstrom said. “We’ll keep her safe.”

“I won’t fail her again as I failed her today,” Baron said, a tremor in his voice as he struggled to pull himself together.

The particles of the air vibrated, and sunbeam and night wind merged.

A web of lightning struck ahead. With Rydstrom and Baron’s strong arms cradling me, we sifted.

Chapter 20

When we touched down, I no longer bled. But the drained feeling didn’t go away, like I was still dying. My wobbly legs gave way, but Baron and Rydstrom pulled me up and let me lean on them. The Summer King’s healing energy kept seeping into me, boosted by the Night King’s power.

“I’m…fine now,” I said as I struggled to straighten myself, and then my entire body iced over.

A plume of smoke swirled into the sky from the parched land near the half-burned fence.

Piles of demonca and Fae corpses littered the front yard. Only two Fae warriors—a Night knight and a Summer knight—still stood, tattered and bleeding, guarding the house. They held their blades in front of them, their knuckles bone-white on the hilts, their eyes seething with rage and grief.

Seeing their kings, the Fae knights dropped to one knee and lowered their heads.

“We failed, my king,” they said, laying their swords on their bent knees to accept punishment.

Waves of grief for all the lost warriors hit me like freezing hail, but I had no time to process it yet. Icy fear clenched my heart and I bolted toward the blackened house.

I screamed my siblings’ names and they cried mine. I charged through the door, relief washing over me at the sight of them huddling together on the old sofa in the family room.

Their eyes were puffy and wide with terror.

“Evie?” they called tentatively as if they couldn’t believe that I’d returned to them.

I strode toward my siblings with an instinctive need to protect them, not bothering about my appearance and the blood on my clothes. I’d tried my best to prevent this, to prevent them from seeing the brutality of our new reality and the danger they were in, yet they’d experienced it all in one day. I couldn’t shield them anymore.

Everything was in shambles.

I scanned them again and stopped cold.

“Where’s Nox?” I asked quietly, ice burning my throat.

Emmett broke into a sob, shame and sorrow brimming in his eyes as if he blamed himself for being unable to protect the younger ones. Then the rest of my siblings started wailing. Asuka, the other twin, stared into empty space as if he’d lost part of his soul. The twins had been inseparable, and Nox was the speaker for his autistic brother.

“A demonca took him,” a Night knight said from a corner. While the two warriors guarded outside, he’d stayed in the house with my siblings. “We were too late to stop the foul creature when it grabbed your brother and disappeared with him in a trail of smoke.”

Baron and Rydstrom strode in and stood beside me, but their warmth and solidity and powers couldn’t comfort me this time.

“How could this happen?” Baron hissed, his fangs starting to show. “We warded the house. All three of us warded the house.”

My thought snapped to the Winter King, remembering him cozying up with the Dawn Queen.

“It wasn’t Rowan,” Rydstrom said softly as if he could read my mind. To a degree, I bet he could at least read my riot of emotions now, just as I could read his ever since the mating bond formed between us. I still didn’t quite understand the mystic bond, but I’d never felt as close to anyone as to him. My body and soul craved him even when I was devastated. And a realization hit me like light piercing through the deep night. The Night King was truly my mate now.

Rydstrom surveyed the surroundings. “We may have a traitor among us. Someone opened the back door to let the demonca in.” His sapphire eyes were hard yet compassionate, then sharpened again as they lingered on Safiya before turning away. My teen sister’s face paled like a corpse as fear flitted by her big brown eyes. Her shaking fingers clenched her sleeve.

“We’ll get your brother back,” Rydstrom said, gaze softening on me. “We’ll go to war.”

“War is