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None more so than my mate.

But I wanted all the parts of her. I craved her. Even the dark and damaged parts, even amidst all this death.

I didn’t need her scent on the wind to know where she’d gone.

Not to the tavern where we might have rested the night, or the guild hall where any rescue effort would have been organized.

Veyka went to the houses.

The small dwellings, no more than huts, as squat as the one she’d spent most of her life in, closeted away in the water gardens.

They were nothing more than ashen heaps. The families that had once dwelled within…

“We shouldn’t have lingered over breakfast.”

I ignored the yawning need in my chest to reach for her. “We had no way of knowing.”

“We were fucking in the woods while families were burning alive.”

Wehadfucked in the woods—slipped away while the others broke camp because we couldn’t keep our hands off of each other for another second. But that had nothing to do with what had happened here.

It took all three hundred years’ worth of restraint I possessed not to grab her and force her to see reason. “This isn’t your fault, Veyka.”

“We could have stopped this.”

“You do not know that. You aren’t the queen of the human realm. This isn’t your responsibility.”

She rounded on me, her hair flying behind her. She was caked in ash, her pale skin covered in a sickly patina of gray.

How close had she gotten while dumping those flower buckets of water?

How had I failed to notice?

Failed to protect.

Failed my mate. Again.

“This could be happening in Annwyn! And I am not there! Neither of us are!” Her chin trembled with fear or rage or sadness. “We wouldn’t even know!”

“We had to come, to find Avalon—”

“We wouldn’t have to if I could master my Ancestors-damned power!”

She shoved past me, away from the row of houses toward the outskirts of the village.

I wanted to tell her that it took most fae decades to master their powers. But she was the High Queen of Annwyn. She didn’t have decades, not if the shadows of doubt from the prophecy were real.

My beast growled within my chest, tugging at the bond, demanding I go after her. But the male tried to reason—give her space to sort it out. Don’t smother her, don’t push too hard, or I might lose her again.

Footsteps.

Wings.

“The fire is out. Lyrena is sleeping. I told Maisri we’d eat a cold supper.” Osheen’s voice was steady. Always the diligent soldier.

I didn’t answer—waiting for Cyara. She listened before speaking. But if Veyka was involved, she had an opinion.

Her steps were near silent as she came to stand beside me, eyes fixed on Veyka’s retreating back.