Page 238 of The Queen’s Shadow

“Hey, hey!” She greeted us and my knees almost gave out. I hadn’t heard her say that in so fucking long. “He also wears armor sometimes. Though it doesn’t make him look like any less of a douchebag.” She quipped, shooting me a sly grin.

I didn’t remember moving but suddenly I was in front of her with my hand wrapped around her jaw. I squeezed her cheeks, forcing her lips to pucker.

“I hope you brought more of whatever’s on your lips because I’m going to be sucking off every last drop.” I growled before doing just that. She tasted like strawberries and it took everything in me not to bite down on her like she was made of candy.

She giggled in my mouth and squirmed away, grinning up at me. I didn’t like her pulling away. The panther in me growled in protest, but she brushed a strand of hair out of my eyes, giving me a saccharine grin.

“We can suck things off each other later. Right now we have to go deal with… what did you call them? A bunch of entitled shifters?”

My eyes widened. Suck things off each other!? What had gotten into her? I was going to have to give her orgasms more often. Holy fucking shit.

Aiden barked out a laugh behind me, and I turned to face him. He took one look at my shocked expression and laughed even harder.

“Your girl’s got jokes.” He remarked, standing up and throwing his hands behind his head. “She’s also right. Let’s go.”

I glanced at Kasha, waiting for her to deny that she was ‘my girl,’ but she just grinned and slid her hand into mine.

What the fuck was happening right now?

I nodded, feeling like I was in another fucking dimension as I let Kasha tug me toward the door. Aiden followed behind, smacking me on the back as we made our way outside.

“Get that heart rate under control, Chief. We’re only just getting to the hard part.”

I knew he was right. This group was not going to accept Kasha just like that. I hadn’t explicitly talked to her about this yet, but I would be introducing her as my Rhiannon during this meeting. Most of them would be expecting Rhyalla, but they were going to need to get used to Kasha running the fucking show with me at some point and the sooner they got it through their thick skulls the better.

Seeing my mate back to her old self, minus maybe the earth shattering power I knew she still had somewhere deep within her, I didn’t fucking care. If they didn’t accept her I would walk away from it all and follow Kasha to the ends of the godsdamned earth if she asked me to.

No one else mattered. Nothing else mattered.

It was her. It would always be her.

Everyone else could get fucked.

Raven

“Voidseed?” I asked, frowning. Balthion nodded, looking serious for the first time since I had met him.

“Yeah, that’s what she said. She also gave really specific instructions on how much to use and what to do with it. I wrote it all down.”

We were gathered together on the forecastle deck of the ship. A member of the crew had called out ‘land ho!’ that morning. I had never been more relieved. Balthion had told us it usually took a week and a half to travel the Obsidian Sea, and we had made it in five days, thanks to Conrad.

The trip had also been extremely smooth sailing. The skies had remained sunny and we hadn’t had to deal with one storm, which Balthion said was also highly unusual. The Obsidian Sea was known for being one of the most treacherous stretches of water known to The Dominion, and had claimed the lives of countless sailors. Judging from the easy grin on Conrad’s face, I had a feeling he had something to do with that too.

However, the closer we got to land, the more tense Conrad seemed to become. When I asked him what was wrong, he stuck his tongue into his cheek.

“Mi really thought Di Siren would try tuh intercept us on our way.” He admitted, scanning the horizon, as if she would appear out the blue any minute.

I glanced down at the notes that Balthion had handed me on voidseed. He hadn’t been kidding, they were extremely detailed, which wasn’t surprising, knowing Meredith.

She had written out different measurements that could be used and how much time we could expect our powers to be nullified for each measurement.

Balthion had written her recommended dose and method of dosage at the bottom and circled it twice.

Meredith had recommended we put the equivalent of the juice from one seed into a capsule. The idea was that we would be able to quickly bite down on the capsule the moment we found ourselves confronted with The Flute, and our magick would flicker out, freeing us from its grasp long enough to snatch it back from the user. Our magick would then return and we would have both The Flute, and the upper hand.

It was clever. Dicey… but fucking clever.

“It’s good that she hasn’t intercepted us yet. Until we can get the voidseed we’re going to be pretty fucked if she uses The Flute on us.” I pointed out to a still somewhat put out Conrad.