I’d known falling in love with a fragile human would only lead to heartache, but not once did I consider her death would arrive so soon. We should’ve had seventy—hell, maybe even eighty years together. Instead, I was kneeling in mud with my love’s broken body draped across me like a shroud.
The Queen’s cackling dredged the darkness in me to the forefront. And then she evanesced, breaking through the magical bonds Rían had weaved as if they were mere threads, appearing on the next hill over. More guards swarmed from the forest’s edge. Hundreds…maybe even thousands.
Tears streamed down my cheeks as I clung to the most precious thing in the world, praying death came quickly and never let me go.
Rían grasped me by the shoulders, gripping hard enough to leave bruises. “Look at me. Dammit, Tadhg, I said look at me!” I raised my eyes to his, peering through my tears to find Rían’s blood-splattered face. “You cannot fall apart on me now.”
How could he possibly expect me to keep myself together when my heart had been shattered? “She’s gone,” I choked. “She’s gone.”
“I know. I know she is. But we can get her back if we kill the Queen.”
Kill the Queen and use her immortal life force to resurrect my love. Keelynn would return as a true immortal. She’d be mine, not just for a lifetime but for forever.
“She must be wearing some sort of protection spell,” he went on, his words coming in a rush. He peered over my head to where the Queen commanded her army. “If we can get her isolated once more, you can hold her steady while I undo whatever spell she has in place. Then we’ll get one of the humans to stab her. But, Tadhg, I cannot defeat her on my own. We must do this together.”
“Together,” I repeated dumbly, his words only half penetrating my grief-stricken mind.
He nodded. “Together.”
What other choice did we have? It was either do this here and now or accept defeat and live an eternity without the woman I loved.
I shifted Keelynn’s body to the castle for safekeeping and took my brother’s hand. Stumbling to my feet, I glowered across the blood-drenched fields toward the witch who had started this fight, vowing to put an end to her reign once and for all.
Darkness that I’d worked so hard to keep at bay soared through my veins. I lifted my sword and sent fire coursing through hilt until the blade glowed like it had come straight from the blacksmith’s forge. My arms screamed as I hefted its weight and cut through the closest guard, cleaving him in two.
A man appeared in front of me, not in the black uniform of a guard but in blood-drenched chainmail. The pooka who’d come for Keelynn the night of our wedding faced me, fighting not for us but against us. When he saw me, he lifted his sword as if aiming for my heart.
The rage vibrating in my voice was only a fraction of the seething anger boiling in my blood. “You were shown mercy, andthisis how you thank me? By siding with the witch who tried to destroy our land—our people? My wife let you out of that dungeon, and yet you fight forher?” I swung my sword toward the distant hill.
The pooka’s nostrils flared, the brightness of my blade reflected in his golden eyes. “I never should’ve been imprisoned in the first place,” he shot back, both hands clasping the hilt as he stalked toward me.
I bared my teeth and let my shadows free. They shot out like phantom arms, wrapping around the pooka’s legs before he could evanesce. “You’re right. I should’ve killed you the moment you threatened my wife.”
The only sound he made was the quiet thump of his head hitting the ground.
I stepped over his headless body and cut through the next guard in line. Four more came for me, and I sent enough magic into the earth to break through the crust and swallow them whole.
No one would stand in my way.
I was darkness, and I would destroy the Queen for what she had stolen from me.
I would stop at nothing to bring Keelynn back.
54
AVEEN
All the airhad been sucked out of the world, and I was drowning. Tears clogged my throat, blurring the body-strewn field. Tadhg sobbed while he held my sister’s lifeless body in his arms. I tore my gaze away from them, refusing to acknowledge what I’d witnessed.
This wasn’t happening.
Something glinted on the trampled ground. The dagger. With numbness seeping into my soul, I bent to retrieve the cursed weapon. Black blood painted the blade.
Keelynn had stabbed the witch; I’d been close enough to see the dagger sink between the witch’s ribs. So why was the Queen still living while Keelynn—
I screwed my eyes shut, pushing the visions of the Queen snapping my sister’s neck from my mind. Silence settled over me, dulling the sounds of war and loss.
This was all some terrible nightmare.