Page 125

“And what about me?” Oh, so now, Piper decides to speak.

“What about you?” I snapped.

She cocked her hip and threw her hair over her shoulder. “You don’t want to help me?”

I scrunched my nose, shaking my head. “Oh, no. I have a feeling you wanted to do this.”

Piper’s brows went sky high. “Why?”

I took a step forward and Avery tensed. “Because you’re a jealous bitch who has been trying to undermine me every step of the way.”

I should have expected this. From the moment Lukas took the throne and I took her spot, she’d had it out for me.

“Avery, stab her,” she said. Like it was just that simple. Oh no, my fiancé had trained me too well for that. Combined with my power's knack for battle strategy, I wasn't going down without a decent fight.

Avery blanched. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Stab. Her.” Piper stomped her foot with each word, like a child in the middle of a tantrum.

Their interaction gave me the distraction I needed to pull the water out of the flower vases lining the walls and hit them both with it. They were knocked over, enough for the knives to fly out of Avery’s hands and for me to pull them into my own with a bubble of water.

It was the quickest use of power I could manage, not tempting Fate with anything more, now that I knew I’d been fucking poisoned since I’d been back.

But now, with Avery’s knives in hand, I had the advantage. And Lukas and I would get our answers.

Chapter 34

Lukas

I spent the morning working the job I was supposed to have. As the spare, I wouldn’t have been placed in any danger unless Nikolas assigned a different heir. I wassupposedto be training the guards and soldiers, imparting what I’d been taught, then honed to perfection, on them.

I walked the young recruits—all freshly eighteen—through a series of drills, before letting them off early. I wasn’t known to be a particularly lenient coach, but I was in a good mood today. Had been for a week, smiling like a fool in love.

I was back where I belonged, at Daphne’s side. I let my mind wander to some more illicit thoughts relating to Daphne on my walk to the garden. I checked in on a few of the plants, all looking healthy.After Adrian dumped a deluge on them during the Harvest Moon festival, I wanted to make sure they weren't dying from too much water.

Then I moved to a lotus plant, cleanly snipping a few flowers off and gathering them in a bundle for Daphne.

A dull thud to my left stole my attention. I looked up to see Loretta slamming her tail against the protective barrier.

The second she realized she had my attention, the full force of her panic hit me. Followed by an image that had my stomach dropping and my heart seizing with fear.

Daphne.

The flowers were forgotten, dropped to the floor. I was already running toward the barrier to push through, but I asked Loretta if Daphne was alive.

She sent back a muddled feeling of immediate panic, but not sorrow. She couldn’t give me any details, but as far as I could guess, that meant that Daphne was in danger but not presently dead.

An image of our dining room pushed through the panic, and I stepped through a portal before I could even consider what I’d be walking into.

As the room materialized around me, I stopped short.

My trident, conjured to my hand as I walked through the portal, clanked to the ground.

Daphne was sitting on the dining room table, swinging her legs under her, and tapping two long knives together like they were drumsticks. All while she stared at Piper and Avery, tied to chairs in front of her.

I moved toward Daphne, needing to make sure she was okay, and stumbled into a chair. There was nothing but her in my vision.

At the noise, she looked over her shoulder. “Oh, there you are.”