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He nodded.

“Good idea,” he said.

I went over to one of the helicopters on the lawn. One of my royal guards was sitting inside.

“You know how to fly one of these?” I asked him.

“How difficult can it be?” he grinned at me.

Then I flew out to help Izzy. She was in the West and I had no idea what she was doing there, so close to my home and where so much conflict was happening.

Then, suddenly, I knew.

She’d gone to confront Chakrat.

I should’ve known. For her, this entire mission was about avenging her father. Once she knew who was responsible for his death, she would set about finishing him off.

I gritted my teeth as the helicopter stalled, my guard figuring out his controls. We were flying into enemy territory and I wasn’t quite strong enough to deal with hordes of drugged up vampires.

But I had to help Izzy. We were bonded now, through blood.

As we headed through thick clouds and turbulent weather, the pilot gripping the controls and looking stressed, I tried to focus on other things.

Izzy.

The way she had changed my life. When the Seer had grabbed her and I pulled her off, in those few moments before Iended her, the witch had whispered, “She will be the end of your family.”

Her words had shaken me and I had immediately pushed them away.

But now, they came back to me, along with the other warnings of how I’d mellowed with age, had become less bloodthirsty and ruthless. I knew it was seen as a sign of weakness, that I was losing my edge. The Seer was of the old creatures, who believed in the superiority of the supernatural. She had not liked the terms of the peace accord reached after the Great War and she was not the only one.

I had seen the look in Sunil’s eyes this morning when I told him not to kill the soldiers.

He had been surprised by my call to save their lives. The truth was that I didn’t want to kill them. He had felt nothing, merely wanting to dispose of them even though they weren’t a threat. They mattered less to him than insects. But I saw people, with families, with daughters, like Izzy.

Being with her had brought back the memory of feelings, of emotions. I liked it. But I would never admit it to anyone of course.

This was the worst possible time to have feelings for anyone, let alone a mortal. The people I was responsible for expected me to be fearless and strong, they wanted action. Especially if there was a suggestion of madness in the Council. I remembered Mrs. Harris’s words of having me on the Council. It made me uncomfortable, that level of power and I didn’t want to be pulled into the affairs of governance. But I couldn’t stand by and let Tempesto continue down this crazy road he had chosen. Either he would succeed or the mortals would stop him. I couldn’t imagine which was worse.

My conversation with Ragnar had confirmed something I had been suspecting for a long time, however, that we hadunderestimated the mortals. I needed to find Dominic to find out how we could open a channel of communication in the Capital, to show them that another way was possible.

A nuclear war would be a disaster.

For everyone.

The pilot leaned over towards me and shouted, “Which direction?”

In front of us, I could see the western lands. To the right, the Grey Mountains rose and ahead of us, was the city of Ginnerlong, covered by heavy clouds and smoke.

“That way,” I pointed south-west of the city, to a small village, where I could feel the strongest pull. As we dipped and decreased altitude, some older houses came into view, some of which seemed familiar.

“More towards the woods,” I yelled and the helicopter rose again to clear some trees.

A big manor house came into view and my heart started being faster, this was it.

Izzy was here.

But I needed to be careful.