Ruins of Chaos (Legacy of the Nine Realms #3) - Amelia Hutchins Page 0,5

taken another route to be safe, or because of some unseen issue arising, they’d have still beaten us here.”

“And yet they didn’t,” Brander exhaled slowly, turning to look at me.

I shook my head, throwing the stone I’d been tossing up into the air over the edge. Turning on my heel, I headed for my warhorse. I wasn’t waiting any longer as a foreboding feeling had entered my mind. Pausing at my horse, I whispered a command that sent a raven from my skin into the air. Telepathically, I gave the ravens an order to find Killian.

Mounting the horse, I waited for Brander and the men with us to catch up before starting down the long, winding trail through the pass that took us back to a branch of my army. It should have been entire army. It wasn’t.

A thousand scenarios went through my head. Had Aria escaped? It would make sense why Killian hadn’t shown up on time. I had ordered him to use all resources to capture her if she ran. Had the silver-haired men set a trap and lured them in, capturing Aria to take her to wherever the fuck they lived? Had Kreyton told the truth, and Lord Andres slaughtered his army to prove his loyalty to a witch?

Any of those scenarios were possible. I’d gone back to the cavern beneath the waterfall after leaving Aria to search for any signs of Eva and Aden and found nothing. The entire cavern had collapsed as if Eva held it together with her presence while she slumbered. It was likely a sanctuary spell used by witches, keeping ancient places intact with magic to ensure an undisturbed, eternal rest. Eva hadn’t been in eternal slumber, though. I’d felt the spell outside the barrier that had placed her in stasis.

Whoever Eva and Aden was, they’d vanished with the rest of their men into a layer of the Nine Realms I couldn’t trace, which was worrisome since we knew nothing about the pricks. It had floored us to learn there were more women like Aria out there, but Eva hadn’t excited me. She lacked pretty much everything that drew me to Aria.

Fucking Aria.

She was my perfect ideal vision of what I’d craved as a mate. She was bare-bones, beauty, brains, and very brave, which floored me. She didn’t even realize how stunning she really was. Her innocence was a flaw, but one I enjoyed. Her loyalty was unshakable. I respected her for the way she stuck to her principles and dug her heels into the ground when she believed in something.

Aria Hecate was born to be a queen of the Nine Realms, but the fact that she was born to be Queen of Vãkya made me ill. How was it possible that five hundred years to the day after losing my mate, a woman who was my perfect ideology of what I wanted in one, walked in and shook the shit out of me, rattling my world? Add that she was a Hecate witch and very powerful, making me crave her like opium after a bender in a den, and it made me question everything. Aria was too perfect. Her timing was too fucking convenient. If I had planned to turn the head of the rebellion with a pretty pair of turquoise eyes and rare silver hair, I’d send Aria in too.

She made me want to change shit that I’d never questioned before. Aria made me crave things I’d stopped wanting and thought gone forever. Shit, I got hard at the thought of her swollen with my babe in her belly, and then I hated her even more for betraying my wife with the idea of it. Aria was right. I lashed out hard and fast to protect myself.

Aria had made the image of Liliana fade to nothing. She lessened the pain of Sven’s death with her sweet smiles and shy glances. I needed that pain to fight the war I’d started. The Nine Realms depended on me to keep my shit together to fight for them. As much as I wanted Aria, I wanted to protect the innocent lives lost every fucking minute in this place, besieged by evil and witches that claimed they were the superior race.

My people crowned me King when Aria’s grandmother murdered my parents. Hecate had forced me into this role. She took everyone I loved from me and made me become King before I was ready, and now the one woman I wanted to keep was