Page 28

“I do not want to train.”

They all stared at me. Silent, again.

Good, I preferred it when they let me have my way without an argument—

“Your Majesty, that is unwise.”

“Power like that will explode out of you whether you train it or not—”

“Veyka…”

A low rumble filled the room, drowning out the voices. I knew the rest of them could not hear it, but they lapsed into silence again anyway. They could feel it, I was sure. I could feel the power of it—Arran’s power—dark and demanding as it coursed through the room, filling the air until it was nearly suffocating.

I felt the ember of power inside of me, tucked away so safely, flare in response.

No. Absolutely not.

I brought my fist down hard on the stone table. “It is my power. It is my choice.”

Gwen was the first to get up the courage to challenge me. “The sort of power you displayed at the Joining cannot be left untrained, Your Majesty. It could be dangerous. Not only to yourself, but to those around you.”

“How very rational of you, Guinevere,” I said with a nod. “But my apparent power of throwing myself headlong through rifts—it only applies to me. I was holding Arran’s hand at the Joining, but he did not go with me. I am the only one at risk.”

“You don’t know that for certain,” Lyrena argued. Ancestors, even Lyrena was against me. “Power is unpredictable in the beginning. Which is why training is vital. Your wind—”

“Void power,” Parys yelled.

I’d never heard him yell. Not once. Even when Arthur died—cries and sobs, but not this. This was a frustrated demand.

“Thevoid power. From the Void Prophecy.” He stood as he spoke: “Then comes a queen, in the age of uncertainty, when shadows cast doubt upon the realm. Born under a double moon and marked by a radiant star, a faerie queen shall rise to command the depths of the voids of darkness.”

Everyone was staring at him. My heart was beating so hard in my chest, I was certain that if I looked down I’d see the distention.

Parys ignored everyone else, even Arran. He held my gaze, his normally soft brown eyes hard and unyielding. “You are the queen from the Void Prophecy, Veyka. You command the depths of the voids of darkness.”

18

ARRAN

“No.”

One simple word.

She might as well have punched him.

But Parys, the male I’d been so keen to kill when I found him lazing in her bed—who I’d imagined gutting more than once since then just to satisfy my male pride—he didn’t sit back down, and he didn’t drop her gaze.

“Denying it doesn’t change the fact,” he said, voice shaking even as the rest of him held steady.

But his opponent was Veyka—my fierce, stubborn mate. She flattened her palms on the table and pushed herself up to stand as well. She rose to her full height, her wide body commanding the room. In an instant, she was the wrathful queen I’d lusted after and then fallen in love with.

Her full lips curved into that wicked smile, and I knew. Parys was about to lose this argument, whether he realized it or not.

“An age of uncertainty, when shadows cast doubt upon the realm?”

Parys’ eyebrows rose as one. “The darkness from the human realm. You’ve seen it twice now—in the mountains, and the human you and the King questioned.”

Veyka’s hand went to the hilt of her dagger, barely cooled from the blood of her victims less than an hour before.