Page 3

Maeve

B EFORE

The panic from Ivy made us move faster through the crowd, searching for the damned mage. Guilt tightened my chest. I should never have let him go without us. I should never have let him go at all.

And I certainly should have never left Ivy. Not having her in my line of sight brought upon a different kind of panic. There was no doubt about it now. We were surrounded by enemies.

But where? I scanned the crowds for anyone who didn’t fit, but no one stood out. I couldn’t scent anything wrong in the air.

And yet my skin prickled, the hairs on my neck lifting as I turned to the male beside me. “Anything?” I asked carefully, taking in the stress lining his features.

Adrian looked up from the rune on the inside of his wrist and shook his head. “He’s gone quiet.”

I gritted my teeth, scanning the ballroom again. From where we were positioned, I couldn’t see Ivy. “I don’t like this.”

“Neither do I,” Adrian replied, “but we need to find him.”

“Keep an eye out for Sable. She might have insight into where her son is,” I murmured. We started our search again, picking our way through the crowded dance floor.

On the dais, Queen Greer sat with her eyes narrowed. She seemed to be watching Ivy. It should have brought me some comfort, knowing there was someone else keeping an eye on my mate, but it only made the worry worse. Like the Queen knew something terrible was going to happen tonight.

Even her mates seemed to be on edge. They barely moved from her side. In the years before, they would have been mingling with guests as the Queen’s Council should, but they remained stationed around her.

A shiver rolled down my spine as Adrian and I made it to the space beside the dais. The guards here were heavily armed, more than double what I expected. Silently, Adrian and I shared a look. Based on his expression, he’d noticed it, too.

This was my first Nyx Ball, but I’d read previous reports to prepare myself. The increase in guards was new, though not unexpected.

But it made the beast within me rise, as if recognising the potential threat surrounding us .

We kept moving until we hit the outskirts of the room, following the walls. “The wards don’t feel right,” Adrian said. “Like someone changed something in my father’s spell.”

“Can you work out who?” I asked, pausing in the corner of the ballroom. From here, we could see everything. Again, my skin prickled with that ominous awareness.

The dance between Elias and Ivy ended, with the crowds all converging on the dance floor. Any chance I had at catching sight of her was gone. I’d managed the barest glimpse of her crowned head and Elias’s tall, broad frame, but they were quickly swept away by dancers.

Ivy’s emotions reared. I tried to check in with her, but the bond felt…strange. I glanced at Adrian, who glared at the crowd. “Do you feel that?” I asked.

He shook his head. “It’s like someone has put a dampener on our communication with Ivy.”

That would explain why Rowan never reached out to Ivy before their bond went dark. She said she’d only felt a moment of pain in her head before it went quiet.

Shaking my head, I turned in time to catch sight of a dark shadow appearing and disappearing from the wall. My stomach clenched. The wards were supposed to keep that from happening. The only way in and out of the ballroom was meant to be the double doors.

“Grey. Kingsley.” My head snapped in the direction of Elias, who appeared from the sidelines, his jaw clenched.

I strode up to him, anger flaring in my chest. “Why the hell do you not have eyes on her?” I growled.

He bared his teeth, stopping by one of the large columns lining the outskirts of the room. “She’s with her other mate.”

Adrian appeared beside me. “Who? And why the hell did you leave her? There’s something wrong here, Elias, and—” The prince stopped. I turned in time to watch him crumble. Adrian hit the floor without a word, and shadows crawled over his body before taking him.

I didn’t get a chance to fight back. Not as shadows curled around my ankles, slicing through my trousers. I looked up in time to watch as Elias’s eyes rolled into the back of his head.

The male dropped, and the shadows swarmed him, too.

I opened my mouth to call out to the nearest guard, but something pricked my neck.

Darkness loomed in the corner of my vision as I sought Ivy out in the crowd. But I couldn’t see her as shadows wrapped around me, forcing me into its chilling embrace.

NOW

I awoke to agony and thirst.

My heart crashed hard against my rib cage, a thundering beat that matched the pounding in my head. My ears rang from the attack and whatever they’d used to knock me out.

I struggled to sit up, taking in the dark room we were locked in. Other than the bodies of my fellow bond mates, there were several guards surrounding us with guns raised. They barely moved when I sat up.

“Knock the vamp out again,” one of them growled. “The cunt shouldn’t be awake.”

I grunted as feeling came back to the rest of my body. It ached with the same ferocity as the thirst.

I knew I’d promised Ivy that I wouldn’t feed from anyone but her. But I would gladly tear these ones apart, drain them, and leave them to be found by their worthless king.

My fangs burned as they slid free. “You will have to try harder than that.”

“Move, and we shoot your friends,” another spoke up, cocking his gun at Elias’s unmoving form. He, like Adrian and Rowan, were still unconscious.

Maybe it was the fact I had over two hundred years on the three of them. Or maybe it was Ivy’s magic helping me burn through whatever poison they’d used.

Whatever it was, I wasn’t going to let the chance slip from my fingers.

Before I could strike, the shadows around us thickened, darkening until it became a heavy weight upon us all.

The guards cursed, but I still had the one I needed, his scent in my lungs.

Not even the shadows could keep me from detecting his fear, sweet and overwhelming, perfuming the air.

The sound of his racing heart was like music to my ears.

I pounced, landing atop the male, ripping the gun from his hand.

Before he could scream, I tore into his throat with my teeth, drinking in the bitter, watery taste of his blood.

The male jerked beneath me, falling against a wall, but ripping into his spinal cord was enough to keep him from fighting back.

As I pulled away, a different gurgling voice bit out, “The Shadow Knight of Nyx,” before succumbing to their own injuries.

That was a name I did not recognise, but as I drew myself to my feet, and the shadows slid back to whoever controlled them, I stopped.

A male stepped out of the darkness, tendrils of shadow slithering across his suit jacket and pressed pants. Blood splattered across his cheek and throat, hands dripping with it, but his violet eyes barely met mine.

“Prince Orion.” I slid a dagger free. I knew enough about the prince, had heard plenty of rumours during my days with Ivy at the academy, and knew he’d watched her keenly. “Are you friend or foe?”

The prince raised a brow; his eyes were wild and wide, and a wicked smile played at his lips. “I am more than a friend, Maeve Grey. That, you have no need to worry about. My allegiance is to the true Queen.”

I didn’t lower the knife. “Prove it.”

His eyes narrowed; he didn’t appear to be a threat, but he was also closest to the others. I couldn’t trust that he was who he said he was with their lives on the line.

Orion cocked his head and eyed me. “I was her first. The one you call mystery mate .”

“You’re the one who abandoned her?” I asked, a different kind of anger boiling within me. Anger at the young male standing across from me who hurt my mate. The instinct to tear him apart was one I could barely hold back.

There was an unsettling calmness about him that shouldn’t have disturbed me the way it did.

He remained eerily still, observing me with those dark, violet eyes.

Perhaps he was assessing whether it was worth keeping any of us alive.

Hoping that maybe, we would not be missed if he slaughtered us the way he’d so easily killed the other guards.

But rather than responding, he slid his weapons into their sheaths and kneeled beside Adrian’s unconscious body. “Ivy is holding Dante back. We should try and wake them up. There is only so much I can do with the shadows, and I fear there aren’t many worth trusting right now. ”

A cold chill swept over my body. Taking a shaky step towards him, I dropped to one knee between Elias and Rowan. “What do you mean, she is holding Dante back?” I asked through gritted teeth.

The Fae prince glanced up at me and rolled his eyes.

“Unlike you, I don’t coddle our extremely powerful mate.

She has Hawk Nash with her right now, but she doesn’t need any of us for protection.

Right now, as a matter of fact, she has almost taken Dante out.

” He turned away from me to swipe his hand through the air above Adrian’s body.

“She knows I have you. Trust that she can handle herself.”

I swallowed hard and carefully reached for the bond. The thread linking me to her was dim and quiet, but as I brushed it, a flicker of light appeared in the darkness of my chest. A pulse of warmth followed, and I breathed a sigh of relief when I finally felt her.

“She’s okay,” I breathed, feeling the unfamiliar burn of tears pricking my eyes. Quickly, I blinked them away. “I feel her again.”

He bowed his head in a nod. “Good. Once we get out of here, we should perhaps work on protections to keep that from happening again. Ivy was terrified when you went dark. It took all my power to stop her from leaping onto the stage.”

I shuddered. “Then I should thank you for not putting her in additional danger.”

He snorted, pulling away from Adrian as he gasped awake.

The Luna prince rose. “Queen Greer is dead. And I know that right now, Dante’s people are taking the palace.”

“What?” Adrian coughed, wide eyes searching the room. He held a hand to his chest, making a pained noise as he attempted to sit up. But rather than helping him, Orion moved on to Rowan.

Adrian turned back to me, eyes filled with shock. “What did he just say?”

Orion grunted as he waved his hands over Rowan in a similar movement as before. “I said, the Queen is dead. Your brother, Dante, is the false king. Tricked your entire family, it appears.”

The colour, or what was left of it, drained from Adrian’s face as he dropped his hand to his lap. “No. No, not Dante. That’s not…” He swallowed audibly as he shook his head. “Dante isn’t?—”

“He is,” Orion snapped. A moment later, Rowan’s eyes opened. The mage gave a pained groan as he rolled onto his side. “Your brother, along with half the Fae Courts, several of the packs, a dozen or so covens, have been working for years on this takeover.”

My eyes narrowed on the male as he moved on to Elias. “And how long were you aware of all this?” I asked.

“Finally, a good question,” he muttered. As his hands moved over the shifter, he met each of our stares. “I’ve known since before the kidnapping. The first one. My father has been working with Dante since I was young. I only found out when Blythe removed the memory blocks from my mind.”

Rowan pulled himself into a sitting position, a horrified expression on his face. “That’s why his magical signature felt familiar.”

Orion stood as the words fell from Rowan’s lips. Elias blinked his eyes open and turned his head to the side. “Where the fuck is she?”

I struggled to my feet, briefly meeting Orion’s eye. “She’s still out there with Hawk, keeping Dante and his people busy so Orion can get us out of here. ”

Elias’s face twisted with anger as he attempted to sit up. “You promised not to leave her, you bastard.”

“Again with your over-protectiveness.” He stalked to a part of the wall I hadn’t noticed earlier and pushed down on a rectangular brick.

As he did, part of the wall gave way and opened up to reveal a dark hallway, and his shoulders tensed.

“Perhaps you have good reason to worry. She was just hurt. We need to leave. Now.”

That was all he needed to say for the others to stumble to their feet.

If they still felt the effects of the poison, they didn’t show it, not as we followed Orion out of the small hidden room and out behind the dais.

There were bodies lining the darkened hallway, some soldiers from Queen Greer’s private detail, and others belonging to Dante.

Dante . The male was well known for his extravagant parties, but nothing in any of his files would have indicated an ability to plan a coup like this.

He’d never gone to Phoenix training, which was mandatory for all of Queen Greer’s children.

And from what I remembered, he’d almost failed out of Oberon during his years there.

So, how had he done it? How had he amassed such an army without anyone knowing?

How—

My thoughts were cut off by the boom of some kind of explosive. The ceiling of the ballroom collapsed in on itself, cutting us off from the rest of the room—and from Ivy.