the person who caused this—the real person, not Quinn, not the boy, but the man that sent those things after him and your mother—he’s still out there. He is our enemy.” Axe stopped struggling as Lorraine spoke. “You’re a queen now. You can choose to be a sullen child and let Petra and your advisors decide everything, or you can be the queen your mother would have wanted. Would she have stood here and thrown a fit?”
Lorraine lifted an eyebrow, and Axe’s lip quivered a little as she said, “No.”
“No,” Lorraine agreed. “She would have slit the throat of the man who did it and dumped his body in the ocean as an offering to Myori.”
Axe’s breathing slowed a fraction as it sunk in. She looked past Lorraine to Kairick, and her eyes hardened, but she stopped fighting. Petra released her slowly, and she didn’t reach for the axes. She just looked to Lorraine and said, “You lot asked me here because you want my men and my armada. You have it, but I get to kill the git when it comes time.”
Then she strode past Lorraine and Quinn and Kairick and all of House Fierté. She ascended the steps with her back to them and didn’t turn around.
Petra flashed them a tight smile and followed after.
It was only when all of her guards had either entered behind her or pulled around to the stables that Quinn finally said, “Did any of you see the mark on her forehead before she left?”
Lorraine shook her head. As did Draeven.
But Lazarus’ gaze burned as he said, “I did.”
“What was it?” Draeven asked.
Quinn stared up the steps to where the young queen had gone, wondering not for the first time how great a hand the gods chose to play in shaping their champion’s.
“It was Saltira’s symbol. The mark of the Goddess of War.”
Chapter 30
Storm of Ice and Fury
“Only when you lose sight of who you thought you were can you find who you truly are.”
— Mariska “Risk” Darkova, beast tamer, Mazzulah’s heir
She wasn’t sure how long had passed before the frenzy set in. The madness. The desperation.
Lost. She was lost in the forgotten forest.
And if she didn’t find a way out, she’d fail.
Quinn would lose the war.
Everyone would die.
And once more, Risk would be the weak link.
Risk fisted her hands in her hair, pulling hard. Her arms had scars from her scratching down them. Her body was thin once more, painfully so. But this cursed realm kept her alive all the same because the raksasa blood that ran through her veins.
Risk’s breathing turned harsh.
She dropped to her knees, letting her legs sink into the muddy forest floor. Shadows and light drifted over her as she lowered her head to the ground, screaming in frustration.
Weeks. Months. It could have been years already for all she knew.
Years surviving but never really living in these forsaken woods.
Anger heated her, and that age-old rage she held close to her chest blossomed.
Risk wanted to give up so badly. She wanted to give in and just die.
But she also didn’t, and it was her anger toward the dark god that made her pick her head back up. It was that rage that made her pull herself up and start to rise.
It was her determination to get out of this forest and show Mazzulah and everyone that she was more than they wrote her off to be—that drive that made her stand and begin to walk once more.
Her magic was now out all the time. It listened to the sounds of the forest and felt the beasts call within. They came to her often, but none of them was the one she thought.
Her familiar.
She needed to find it.
Somehow.
Risk continued onward, walking almost aimlessly. If the blood moon rose and descended, she never knew it from how thick the foliage had grown. She’d be thankful to see any sky right now, even a dark one. All she saw instead were luminescent insects and flowers on creeping vines and black trees. It was beautiful in a sense. Chaotic, and yet serene.
But she hated it.
She hated this forest so much because it never seemed to end.
The trickling water made Risk lift her head. She’d found it before, but the beasts in it had worried her. They were stronger than anything she’d controlled before. Wild and untamable. She’d kept moving because of it, but now . . . she was just frenzied enough to not care.
The sound of water made her thirsty. She stumbled