Page 276 of The Queen’s Shadow

I felt another tear slide down my cheek as she pressed her lips gently against mine again. The slavery bond roared at me to kill her, but her darkness held me firmly in place.

“I am going to take you home.” She whispered and I closed my eyes, swallowing back the painful tightness in my throat.

“You can’t, Raven. The soulforge… we’re trapped. I’m enslaved. There are fifty thousand daemons watching us…”

“I can’t?” She asked, raising an eyebrow, her dark eyes burning with emotion. “I don’t think you’ve ever said that to me before.”

My body jerked against her magick’s grip and the slavery bond cut into me, demanding that I exact its will.

“Please, Raven.” I begged her, but she shook her head, stroking the side of my face so gently it hurt.

“I will find you again, in the next life.” I promised her, meeting her dark gaze. I had waited one hundred years for her. It felt unfair that our time together had been so short, but I would wait one hundred more if it meant she left here alive.

“Wait for me, I’ll find you again.” I breathed.

She rubbed a thumb over my cheek and gave me another small, sad smile.

“No, Amon. No more waiting. We’re going home.”

Frustration welled within me. She was so damn stubborn. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, trying to think of how I was going to convince her that this was the only way.

“Queen Raven!”

My eyes flew open and my heart stopped in my chest as my mind tried to process what I was seeing. Standing beneath us, with her dreadlocked hair whipping in the raging storm of darkness, was Nytara.

“Catch!” She screamed and threw a sword through the air. My eyes widened as I felt the familiar energy of the blade she had just thrown to my mate.

Bond Breaker.

Raven looked just as shocked as I felt, but she caught the sword easily, staring down at it as if she couldn’t believe it was in her hand. I barely registered Ash Nevra’s enraged screech and the sudden boo’s that erupted from the audience.

My mate didn’t hesitate. She gave me a savage grin, before hooking her aura through the slavery bond and pulling it out and away from me. She met my shocked gaze, her eyes wild.

“Let’s go home, Amon.” She whispered. Then, she sliced through the bond, releasing me from Ash Nevra’s grip with an explosion of darkness.

Raven

‘Alexa, play You Should See me in a Crown, by Billie Eillish.’

Iwrapped Amon up in my shadows immediately after severing the bond, worried that he would lose his grip in the backlash and fall to the ground.

Unlike the others, he barely made a sound as the slavery bond was torn from his aura. He was staring at me, as if I were the most awe-inspiring thing he had ever laid eyes on. I held his gaze, refusing to look away from him. Now that I had found him, I never wanted him out of my sight again.

I lowered us to the ground, and he reached for me with trembling hands. He slid his fingers down the sides of my face then up into my hair. He watched every minute movement of his hands against me, as if he couldn’t believe this moment were real.

He pulled me to my knees with him in the sand, and began leaving feather light kisses across my face. I ran my own fingers into his hair, pulling him close and inhaling his cinnamon scent. Neither of us said a word, we just touched each other.

We were here.

We were together.

Nothing else mattered.

He was shaking. His shadows quivered against mine and I pulled him into my chest, wrapping my arms around him.

He was mine. He was alive. I was going to take him home.

“I’m sorry I called you a coward.” I whispered into his hair. He choked, wrapping his arms around my waist and pulling me tighter into him, as if we were in the privacy of our own home instead of the middle of a packed colosseum.