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She dipped her fingers into the pot and scooped out some of the mixture, now thickened, onto Lyrena’s leg. Lyrena hissed through her teeth, but didn’t complain.

A good soldier. As good as Gwen, I could admit. Even though I’d questioned Veyka before.

“I will come back tomorrow to change the dressing. But you can walk and crawl and do whatever else you want.” She nodded to Lyrena and the others.

She paused at the door, her eyes finding Veyka’s, then mine. Then she bowed.

Deep. Respectful. A subject to her Queen and King.

Ancestors.

Instead of finding answers, we were gaining new subjects to protect.

But as soon as Isolde was gone, the others turned their eyes to us.

Veyka rolled her shoulders.Can we escape and take a nap?

I have a few things I’d like to do to you before we sleep.

“If you don’t have anything important to tell us, then go to your room. At least we won’t have to watch,” Lyrena groused.

Veyka flashed me a wicked grin and settled down on the bench next to her golden knight.

I took the spot on the other side of the entrance, opposite Osheen.

My beast growled in frustration. Veyka’s squirming on the bench didn’t make matters much better.

Soon, I promised my beast. And myself.

Andher.

* * *

We briefly recounted what Taliya had divulged about the nightwalkers—the succubus.

Having a name for it made it less fearsome. The things we’d learned… had the opposite effect.

Veyka may not have been the one to bring the succubus back to Annwyn and the human realm initially, but the connection was undeniable. Both creatures of the void.

The void that had taken my mate.

The void that she was just now learning to command.

Learning to love.

I’d witnessed the joy on her face as she used her power against me in sparring. I had sensed that brutal satisfaction in her when she used the void to battle the nightwalkers. She wasn’t just learning to control her magic—she was coming to love it.

It was what I’d wanted. Only by embracing that power inside of her, letting it become a part of her, would she truly be able to master it. She wasn’t there yet, was still teetering on the precipice.

But we’d unblocked something in that clearing. Moved past a barrier. Veyka was fast and clever and brilliant.

No matter what awaited in Avalon, her power and her control of it would only grow.

I thought that training her power was essential, the only way to keep from losing her to the void.

Now I wasn’t so certain.

Now the void contained monsters.