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“You lost her, and it was one thing when they weren’t with us but now… now she’s with him. I don’t understand how she can love him.Him. After everything he did to Palenor. We had to fight the pale ones for hundreds of years, we lost countless people because of that curse he’s responsible for, and let’s not forget the way he treated all of us when he first arrived. I can’t even fathom how you and her just welcome him with open arms. I’m disgusted every time she touches him and when he calls her hiswife. He created the pale ones, Thane.”

Thane ran a hand over the top of his head. Everything she said was absolutely true and yet she didn’t know him the way he and Valeen did and never would. There were no excuses for him either. He couldn’t say, “Once you get to know him, he’s not so bad”… because well, Hel wasn’t a hero. He didn’t share Piper’s morals. He’d cross every line if it meant saving Valeen.

“I know what he did. You’re going to have to accept that he’s with us now.”

“Why should I? Why are we even here, Thane? This is about them, not us.”

“You swore to be her bodyguard, didn’t you? To protect her?” A falling pebble from the top of the ruins bounced until it rolled to his foot.

“I swore loyalty to you, and through you, her, as your future queen. She’s obviously not that anymore.” Piper let out a long breath. “She’s—not one of us. She’s a goddess from this strange world. And I’ve only seen a fraction of what she’s capable of, but she and Hel will be fine on their own.”

“You have no idea what we’re up against. And she is still your friend.” The sound of the goblins inside the ruins caught his attention and he lowered his voice. If the creatures came outhere and found them, it was a fight they didn’t need. “You’ve only ever known me as Thane, but I came from this world, too.”

“Let Hel protect her. We can go back home. The gods will leave us alone in Palenor. It’s her they’re after, right?”

“Wow, you would really leave her alone to die? You’re not who I thought you were. And no, they willnotleave us alone.”

Shaking her head, Piper looked away. “You’re doing this because you’re still in love with her.”

“So what if I was? She is one of the closest people in the world to me. I do love her.”

“I bet if the situation was reversed and she chose you and not Hel, he wouldn’t be here. You don’t owe either of them loyalty.”

“He’s my family, Piper.”

“So is Aldrich and you’d kill him if you had the chance. Wherever that weasel disappeared to.”

Thane’s jaw began to ache with how hard he clenched his teeth. Piper was almost as stubborn as Valeen and never held back either, even to her king. “Aldrich didn’t spend hundreds of years with me. Didn’t defend me as a child, didn’t take beatings for me, didn’t stand by my side whenever I needed him. Hel and I were inseparable until… You’ll never understand because you see him as the Black Mage first.”

“I want to go home.”

He waved a hand at the ruins. “You see this—this is what they will do to Palenor. They will come with armies the likes you have never seen. Creatures from every realm, beasts and monsters, races who know the sword as good as any Raven. I had a thousand dragons on my side, and we still eventually lost. Valeen and I were captured at our full power, so was Hel. And the gods, they cannot be killed except with the blade Valeen has. Even if she and Hel stayed and we went home, they would destroy Palenor to punish me, to punish them.”

Her brows furrowed into what seemed to be turning into a permanent scowl. “I thought—how could they do that to all the innocent people in Palenor? I thought the gods were supposed to be just and fair?”

Thane let out a humorless laugh. “Just? Those are fairy tales for children. The gods of Runevale lost justice and peace keeping long ago. Like Synick said, it’s about power and who has it. We are a threat to theirs.” Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Valeen and Hel leaving the cover of the oak tree. She appeared to be composed but even from this distance sadness was etched into her face. “I want you to talk to her and see that Layala is still in there.”

Rolling her eyes, Piper stubbornly crossed her arms. “I will but I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive her for choosing to be with Hel. She swore she had no feelings for him, no loyalty at all, then they disappear for a few months and she’s his godsdamnwife.”

A gurgled, throaty call cut through the air; Thane snapped his head toward it. A goblin with gray-black skin and a fanged skull covering the top half of his face stood at the darkened threshold of the old castle ruins. He raised a spear above his head and a trill for battle brought hundreds crawling up over the crest of the wall and scaling down ropes like spiders from webs.

Chapter 6

VALEEN

“Holy All Mother,” Valeen breathed. The sheer number of goblins dropping from the walls, spilling out from the cracks in the stone reminded her of ants scattering from a hill under attack. In the dim light of the moons with their dirty, rusted armor and oiled black hair they resembled them too.

“I did warn you how many there were.” Hel pulled his electric, blue sword and faced the oncoming invasion. He put a burning civar to his lips, as calm as could be as a black wave swept toward them. The ground rumbled with the stampede. Their trilling calls echoed off the cliff and the ruins. “Do you still want to fight?”

Valeen pulled Zythara from her hip. Shadows pooled around her feet. Her black vines crept up from the ground ready to be commanded. “I don’t want to fight them. I want to destroy them.”

“So be it.” Hel waved his arm, and an arc of blue flame rose up, cutting across the landscape. With an unnatural speed it circled around the goblins’ chance of retreat. Thane already hadthe others sprinting for the cliff to climb up and out of this valley. Presco picked up Katana and carried her away on his wings, but Varlett stayed. She shifted into her black dragon and roared, sending an arc of fire upward, lighting up the night with red flame.

Valeen ran onto her rolling vine and rode it like a wave.

Hel soared above on white wings, a god of death.

The goblins screeched and roared, raising weapons behind the wall of fire. They wanted to fight. Lesser beasts did not fear dying.