THE PAIN IN MY HEAD, which felt like someone had taken an axe to my skull, was nothing compared to the agony in my heart. Ansel had just left the dungeon cell with the love of my life.
To bed her.
The farther their footsteps retreated, the less of a hold my brother had on me and the others.
The others.
I was locked in a cell with my childhood best friends’ wives. It was surreal. When I finally felt the pain in my head dissipate and the use of my legs and muscles return, I turned to the three woman who were now moving their arms and fingers in front of them.
“What the Fae was that?” Madelynn, the redhead said. I appraised my best friend Lucien’s new wife. She had some type of wind magic and she was powerful enough to use it minimally even under Ansel’s command. It was impressive.
“That was awful!” the brunette, who smelled like a human-elf mixture, stated. “I want to skin him alive.”
The blonde was eerily still, she merely cocked her head and looked at me. “Was that your mate?” There was smoke streaming out of her nostrils and my heart pinched at the word mate.
A low growl emanated from my throat and I fisted my hands, forcing my wolf to stay down so I could speak to these women. “Yes. And I need to get to her before he …” My words died in my throat and I spun, wrapping my hands around the bars at the door and shaking them. It was no use, I knew that. I’d lived in this cell for two years. This was where Ansel broke people down, though he’d never displayed the blatant disregard for others’ freewill like he did tonight. He must have finally snapped.
“Yeah, that’s not happening. We’re getting out of here,” Madelynn said bluntly, and the wind picked up, swirling around me. I turned to her and was surprised to find her just as angry as I was.
The blonde, who I was assuming from the smoking nostrils was the dragon queen, walked over to me. “I’m Arwen, queen of the dragon-folk and we’re going to help you get your mate back, okay?”
I could only nod, in shock at what was happening.
“And I’m Kailani,” the brown-haired woman said. “Elf queen.”
Arwen then walked over to the fae queen Madelynn and looked her dead in the eyes. “Can you take care of the guard?”
Madelynn nodded and then stepped over to me. “Move, please. We don’t have much time.”
I stumbled away from the door dumbfounded as she held up her hand in front of the bars.
“Are you hurt?” The elf queen was there beside me, inspecting my bleeding wrists.
“I’ll heal. It’s fine,” I told her, wondering when Raife had married her. He didn’t seem the marrying type the last time we spoke, which admittedly was years ago. I was slightly hurt there was no wedding invite to any of these marriages but I couldn’t really blame them. We’d all fallen out of touch when Raife’s family was murdered by the Nightfall queen.
I was watching the fae queen with a keen interest. She didn’t appear to be doing anything and yet I heard the sounds of struggling just outside the cell. Someone was gasping for—
“You’re stealing the air from his lungs?” I asked in shock as the realization hit me.
She looked over at me with a raised eyebrow and nodded. “The same thing I will do to your brother now that I know what he’s capable of,” she snarled.
Wow, she must be a fall fae to have wind magic. I had no idea the kind of power a wind fae could have, until now. I’d never really thought about it. Lucien could freeze people to death and she could steal the air from their lungs: they were quite the pair. As long as these women helped me get Zara back without harm, I didn’t care what they did to anyone else.
Thinking of Zara laying underneath my brother as he bedded her made me sick.
“Please hurry,” I growled as fur rippled along my skin.
I’d only just gotten Zara back, after five years of walking through Hades to be together. I couldn’t lose her again.
Madelynn stepped away from the door just as the guard’s body hit the floor in front of the cell with a thud. His face was purple and he was … dead.
“It’s done. Now how do we get out of here?”
Wow. She’d taken his life so easily! Without even touching him. “Can you kill my brother from here?” I asked her.
She shook her head. “I could collapse the entire building but that would kill us too. I need to be closer to him to target my power that precisely.”
I nodded, and then tried to think of ways she might be able to pull the door from the cell with her wind power. I’d tried so many things so many times, it was pointless. Iron and stone could hold a man for—
Blue flames burst from the palms of the dragon queen and she glanced over at the rest of us. “Stand back.”
We all took several steps back until we were pressed against the far wall. That’s when the dragon queen applied the blue flames to the wrought-iron lock.
Hope spurred to life in my chest then. If she could somehow melt the lock and the guard wasn’t alive to call for help … we could really get out of here.
“The second my brother hears us enter the room, he’ll use his power,” I told the women.
Madelynn looked at me. “I don’t need to be in the room with him to take his breath, just outside the room with a small crack under the door will suffice. It will allow me to sense their breathing.”
My eyes widened at her words. That was an incredible and terrifying power.
“How will you know whose breath is whose?” I asked. What if she accidently killed Zara?
“I’ll know. In that moment, I am the wind. It’s hard to explain. You’re just going to have to trust me.”
Trust her. I didn’t even know her. I frowned, looking apprehensively at all of them. How did they get here? Why were they here and not Raife, Drae and Lucien?
The elf queen seemed to read my apprehension and stepped over to me, pulling that tin box from her cloak. I’d seen it when she’d first walked into the dining room and peering at it now was like a blow to the chest. That rusted box wasn’t something I ever thought I would see again. It reminded me of a simpler time when I was best friends with the future kings of Avalier.
I remembered the fight my parents got in with my older brother when they chose to send me as the prince to represent us at the yearly retreat with the others. They must have known then that Ansel wouldn’t make a good king. He’d always lacked honor. With shaking fingers, I reached out and took the box from her.
“Our husbands said that if we brought you this, it would show you that we are who we say we are, and we really need your help.”
I nodded, glancing at the dragon queen whose back was now covered in sweat as she continued to blast blue fire at the door. They were all working so hard to free us, to go after Zara and risking their lives when they didn’t have to.
Using the edge of my nails, I pulled the lid off. It was stuck and took several tries but when it finally came free, I burst out laughing.
The note on top was in Raife’s handwriting.
Princes of Avalier only. Anyone else who open’s this will die of rotten diarrhea.
I looked up to see his wife peering over my shoulder, smiling.
“Raife wrote that to scare anyone else off,” I told her.
Her smile grew wider then. I was impatient to get to Zara, especially before my brother could hurt her, but it looked like the dragon queen needed more time.
“Almost there!” she announced as if she too had read my mind.
Pulling off the top note, I slipped it into my pocket and then prepared myself for what I would see. This was so long ago. We were little boys, not yet men. We hadn’t yet gone through a single trial in life.
I thought the box had been Lucien’s idea but I honestly couldn’t remember. He’d said he wanted to bury something that made us happy, something we would remember and bring us back to our childhood when we one day became grumpy old kings.
Like we were now.
I glanced down at the contents and smiled at Drae’s eagle feather, remembering how much he loved flying. As a wolf I couldn’t imagine taking to the skies but it’s all Drae spoke about as a child.
Lucien had placed a women’s hairclip inside. It was gold with a red painted rose on the tip. It was his mother’s, the one person who loved him unconditionally. Lucien struggled with controlling his power and he’d said that his mother was the only one who could bring him back into control. She was his happiness.
My attention then went to the golden arrow tip that Raife had left. I could still remember the sound of his arrows hitting the tree trunks on our yearly retreats. He was never without his bow and took great pride in his skill.
I swallowed hard when I pulled out the seemingly useless ball of wax. It was white and I’d shaped it while still soft. This wax would seem like trash to anyone else, but to me it was one of my greatest memories of my best friends. The candle it came from had burned all night at our yearly retreat that summer, as we stayed up well past our bedtimes and told stories and scared each other and wrestled. That night we’d forged an unbroken bond that neither time nor hardship could tear away. My own brother had been distant and abusive to me so I’d forged a brotherly bond with these boys and rolled all of our memories into this ball of wax to remind me of them.
If any one of them needed me now, I would give them the very clothes on my back.
“Got it!” the dragon queen bellowed, pulling my attention away from the tin box and the emotions they were causing to settle in my chest.
I looked up then to see her booted foot kick the cell door wide open.
I dropped the ball of wax into the tin and snapped the lid shut, looking up at the three women.
“Help me save my mate and I will give you whatever you ask,” I told them.
The elf queen nodded. “We ask that you march an army across the realm and fight to defeat the Nightfall queen and liberate our people. Can you do that?”
Go to war. Pull my people from their peaceful lives and march for an issue that did not yet threaten us? I felt the weight of the tin box in my hands and knew that if Raife, Drae and Lucien had sent their wives, it meant they themselves were currently fighting and I would not let them down.
“You have my word.”
They looked pleased with that and all nodded once. One by one we left the cell and went in search of Zara. That woman was the strongest I knew, but my brother forcing himself on her was not something I could imagine her enduring. The very thought of it called my wolf to the surface and before I could stop it, I was shifting. Zara Swiftwater was the love of my life. Her laugh had been imprinted on my soul since we were fifteen.
Hold on my love, I’m coming.
