Page 66 of Night’s Fall (The Four Realms #1)

Her expression shifted and my stomach clenched at what I read in it. “ Laura? —”

“ Can you see Antheme ? ” I shrieked.

“Honey, she’s not moving. But the ambu-lift is already here.”

Another comm came through.

Aleksei.

“Aleksei’s comming. I have to go. Do what my team tells you to do, nothing else. Promise me.”

“Promise,” she said.

“Love you,” I replied.

“Love you too.”

I took Aleksei’s call.

“Are you safe?” he barked.

“We’re heading to the Palace . Honey , Antheme? —”

“I’ll meet you there.”

Then he was gone.

“Landing cleared,” the on-dash computer said.

My heart skipping every other beat, I stared at the Palace looming before us.

And then we landed.

* * *

Due to my beast expanding so much, she felt like she would burst out of my chest, I knew he was arriving not only because she and I felt him, but because the room darkened as his flight blocked out the sun.

I jumped off the sofa.

“He’ll be met with clothes, dear, and—” Queen Calisa started.

But I was already racing out.

Down the hall, the stairs.

To the front door.

Out of it.

Allain was there.

As was Aleksei , naked, but tugging on a pair of jeans.

I let him get them up before I hit him like a rocket.

He picked me up and carried me into the Palace .

He dropped me on my feet in the entry and started buttoning his jeans.

“What’s happening?” I asked.

He took a shirt from Allain and shrugged it on, not meeting my gaze.

Oh gods.

No .

“Aleksei!” I shouted.

He turned and moved so fast, I didn’t see him do it, but suddenly my face was in his hands and his face was all I could see.

“We lost Antheme ,” he whispered.

The tears sprung to my eyes.

“Lost, as in… dead ?” I asked.

“ Bissi .” He was still whispering.

Lost, as in… dead .

The tears spilled over.

He pulled me into his arms.

“They were aiming at me?” I asked his chest.

A hesitation and then, “ Yes , darling.”

“She died for me.”

He held me tighter.

“She died for me,” I repeated.

“She will be remembered for eternity, an honored hero of Night’s Fall ,” he decreed.

I yanked away. “ I don’t want her to be an honored hero!” I yelled. “ I want her to live a full life and retire to a beach.”

He hauled me back into his arms.

The spurt of anger extinguished as fast as it came, the sound of Antheme’s body hitting the ground so close to me reverberating through my head.

I melted into him and sobbed.

“Son?”

I felt Aleksei shake his head.

I peered out from his chest to see they were all there, Fillion , Calisa , Aleece , and even Timothee and Errol .

I was in no state, but Timothee appeared sad and shocked, and Errol , shaken.

I couldn’t deal with them now.

I couldn’t deal with anything now.

I turned my face back into Aleksei .

“You’re moving to the Palace ,” the king decreed.

“Yes, we are,” Aleksei agreed.

I just kept crying.

* * *

The curtains on the windows had been closed, and I was lying in the dark in his bed that was dressed in aubergine velvet, feeling cold through to the bone, but so listless, I didn’t bother dragging the bedclothes over me.

This is how I was when he came to me.

My body was limp as Aleksei adjusted it into the bend of his while he rested against the headboard, his long legs in front of him.

“What do they know?” I mumbled into his shirt.

“Let me get some food in you first.”

I couldn’t eat a thing.

“Please tell me,” I begged.

My torso rose as Aleksei drew in a huge breath.

Then he let it out.

“The team was scattered. Antheme down…”

I closed my eyes tight against the sound of her hitting the pavement assailing me for the millionth time.

“…Diablo and Fannon were on you, Geleena was on your females,” he continued. “ Once she got them secured, she gave chase, but it was too late. The killer got away.”

Got away?

I tipped my head up to look at him. “ I saw a male lying on the pavement.”

“An innocent bystander, caught in the stream that got Antheme .”

Oh no!

“Did he…?” I couldn’t finish that.

“He passed too, love.”

And it gets worse.

I swallowed my grief for that unknown male.

It didn’t go down easy. Not at all.

“How could he get away? There are cameras all over the city, Aleksei ,” I pointed out.

“Yes, and they caught him jumping into a craft that launched without course approval. It also had its tracker disabled, so traffic control couldn’t follow it, it had no identi-tags, and it disappeared before they could lock a trace on it.”

I lifted my head to look at him. “ Do you think Anna has gone this far around the bend?”

“No. I think something else is happening, and I thought that before Prince Tanyn commed and asked Father and I for a meeting.”

By Lilith .

“Arnaud?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Tanyn’s flying down tonight. We’re meeting first thing in the morning. Whatever it is, he has something to share, and the timing cannot be coincidental.”

I nodded, because he was correct. Nothing was that coincidental.

“It was a fucked-up thing to say,” he admitted. “ That Antheme was a hero to the realm. I just didn’t know what else to say.”

It hit me that he’d known her longer than I had, but it was me who was bringing the drama.

I pulled myself together, doing this the easy way, by cuddling closer to him. “ Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he said tersely.

He was so not.

“Your creature flew,” I noted carefully.

“When I got the news there’d been another attempt on you, it was a miracle I kept him contained before I heard your voice over comm.”

“Who’s telling her family?”

“They live down in Skull Bay . Set went down to talk to them.”

Not an easy task.

Poor Set .

I nodded again because I didn’t know what to say.

“I’ve talked with Mammon and Tomahs . They’re moving their females to the Palace . Monique is being moved too.”

Tomahs was Gayle’s dad. Her mom, by the way, was named Elayne .

My body went solid at this news. “ What ? Why ?”

“Whoever is behind this is targeting you.”

That was in no doubt.

“Yes.”

“And you’ll be at the Palace until we get to the bottom of this, and the Palace is impenetrable.”

I didn’t like where this was going.

“So, if whoever this is means to hurt me, or hurt you by hurting me, and I’m not available, they might cast a wider net by hurting someone close to me,” I deduced.

He pulled in a sharp breath through his noise, but he didn’t confirm, because I didn’t need him to confirm.

Yep.

I didn’t like this at all.

“Do you think this is Arnaud’s super farged-up way of saying, ‘ You’re messing with me having the female I want, so I’m going to take out your female’?”

“Darling— he started, then stopped.

“What?”

“Fuck,” he said under his breath, turning his gaze from mine.

I pressed into his chest with my hand.

“What?” I demanded sharply.

“Fuck,” he repeated. But before I could ask again, he shared, “ Fannon saw the shooter.”

“And?”

“He says he could swear he wasn’t aiming at you.”

“So, this was some random shooting on the street? That hasn’t happened since weapons were banned over a hundred years ago,” I said.

“No, he says he thinks the shooter was aiming at Antheme . Geleena didn’t have an open angle, but from what she saw, she shared it looked the same as Fannon claims.”

I blinked. “ Why would someone be aiming at Antheme ?”

“What I believe, the task force believes, and the agents at the RIC believe is that Arnaud is gearing up to do something. What , we haven’t been able to figure out. But even as insane as he seems to be, no one wants the dragons to fly.”

This was without a doubt. Even now, with modern weaponry, our dragon squadrons were feared in twenty realms. That said, our military was nothing to sneeze at. Even with no war for nearly a century, we were a warrior realm, and always had been.

We didn’t have the magic of the witches and the fae. In our human forms, we didn’t have the brute strength and speed of the demons.

But the creatures we shifted into were exponentially more powerful than their animal counterparts.

And our dragons were nearly unstoppable.

“And so?” I prompted.

“And so, while Four Realms are tied up in all that’s going on with me and my mate, he might have an opportunity to do it while no one is paying attention.”

“I can’t imagine everyone in Sky’s Edge cares that much about what’s happening between you and me, Aleksei .”

I said this, but the social tapes were worldwide, and we did seem to be on a lot of beings’ minds if the tapes were anything to go by.

“Yes, but the male who was engaged to the Princess Royal of Dawn’s Break , a female who is beloved by her people, is now engaged to another female, just three months from their breakup.”

“I still don’t understand.”

“And as such, the only other realm who is feeding off of us, perhaps in a different way, but just as ravenously as Night’s Fall , is Dawn’s Break .”

“Again, I’m not getting it.”

“There are two possible scenarios,” he shared. “ But we feel the first is part of the last.”

“The first?”

“Dr. Buildlore was recruited because of his past with Anna . We’ve found he was a male who was easily bought. The hysterectomy he performed outside his patient’s knowledge was purchased by her ex-husband after a highly contentious divorce.”

My eyes grew huge. “ Oh my gods.”

Aleksei nodded. “ If he was indeed recruited in the current plot for this reason, this would lead us to believe Anna was behind these things, and it did lead us to that. This would mean tensions would be strained between Night’s Fall and Dawn’s Break , even strained to a breaking point, pitting us against Dawn’s Break . ”

“The point of this being?”

“Distracting us from what’s going on in Sky’s Edge , at the same time lining us up to be an ally.”

An ally?

An ally in what?

“And?” I pressed.

“That brings us to the second scenario.”

“That being?”

Another deep breath from Aleksei before he asked, “ What causes a military, and a country, to band together under one leader?”

Oh hells.

I finally got it.

And in so doing, I felt the blood run out of my face and repeated, “ Oh my gods.”