I swear it, Nyxabella. I’ll keep him safe.
Daivad’s own words didn’t truly penetrate his thick, dense fucking skull until she was gone.
One look at the full moon’s position in the sky, and Nyxabella had rushed off with an offhand farewell (compared to the theater production’s worth of farewells she’d gifted to the little nightbeast) and a flash of silk. The moment she was out of his sight, Daivad realized what he’d done.
He stared at the tree she’d just vanished behind. And horror dawned upon him.
I swear it, Nyxabella.
In his arms, Kitten gave the same tree a suspicious growl, upset that the swaying, pale branches had yet to release his mother back to his sight. The monster’s lids sagged, her magic finally settling on him, but he fought against it, wiggling and growling and trying to go after her.
What the fuck had Daivad been thinking?
I’ll keep him safe.
What the fuck had he been thinking?
Daivad told himself to run after her, to tell her he hadn’t lost his mind, he’d just misplaced it for a moment, but it was back now and he could not get this ridiculously fast-growing beast the hundreds of miles back to Silvax Forest (no matter how powerful a sleep spell she put on him) and then baby-sit the little terror indefinitely. How the hell was he supposed to keep the thing out of trouble? Out of danger?
He tried to get his feet to move, or his arms to open and let the beast free to chase her down himself—
It’s rare I read a man so wrong.
Daivad closed his eyes. “Sh—”
~*~*~
“–it,” Jac muttered as Richard twirled the guard’s sword in his hand.
Warin spoke over the crowd, “Your Highness, I beg you name your intention with this rebel.”
“To face her.”
Jac’s eyes snapped to Z, still seated, watching Richard carefully.
Warin had to get a good bit of stuttering out before he could make himself say, “Face her? Your Highness, the queen would never allow—!”
“The queen,” Richard spat, lip curling, and had to take a second to get himself back under control before he continued, “isn’t here. She left Broken Earth to me. To my judgment. So shut up and sit down before I throw you down to the sands to be this bitch’s next victim, Warin.”
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Jac started, “Y—,” but before she could get the word out, Z’s grip on her arm silenced her.
They hissed, “Don’t speak—”
~*~*~
“–even one word,” Daivad said when he met Pait at the gate of the graveyard.
From within her hood, Pait’s eyes fell on Kitten, who occasionally managed to jerk himself awake to spit angrily at Daivad before flopping back to unconsciousness.
She gave Daivad an utterly exasperated look, and then opened her mouth.
“Not one.”
She closed her mouth. At least for the time it took them to make their way back to the sewers.
The moment the kid’s boots hit sewage-smeared stone, she said, “You have a problem.”
Daivad ignored her.
“I’m serious. You need help. She has infected your brain—”
Mother Light, she was right. “Shut up, kid.”
He could feel the glare she shot at his back. “Fine, Your—”
~*~*~
“–Highness!”
Maybe Warin was braver than he looked, Jac thought, because even though the color drained from his already pasty face, he still argued with his particularly murderous-looking prince. “If something happened to you, Queen Arantxa would—”
Ah. It wasn’t that he was brave—he was just more scared of Aran than he was of Richard.
At least until Richard seized the front of Warin’s tunic and jerked him forward. “You think I can’t kill the cunt?”
Then Warin shut his mouth.
Richard shoved Warin away, and walked forward, placed a shining black boot onto the edge of the box, and stepped off.
BOO—
~*~*~
–OOM.
The tunnels shook hard enough that sewage splashed up onto the walkway where they stood and Kitten growled in his sleep.
“Shit!” Pait shrieked, debris raining down on them. “What was that?”
Earthbreaking. Richard’s Earthbreaking.
~*~*~
Jac had thought getting hold of the crowd, pulling them from their frenzy now would be impossible. She’d also thought that the Arena couldn’t possibly rumble more, not without crumbling beneath them. But when Richard landed in the black sand, she was proved wrong on both counts. He hit the ground like he weighed ten tons, his magic blasting a crater into the sand and blowing a chunk out of the wall behind him. The wall that held up this box. The nobles in the box screamed, but the crowd was so shocked they fell to earsplitting silence.
~*~*~
Daivad stuffed Kitten into Pait’s arms, and she was so surprised she actually took him. “Get to Maxea,” he growled.
“What?”
“If I’m not back by dawn, tell her I said to take you home.”
“What? Where the fuck are you—?!”
But Daivad was gone.