Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 105132 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 526(@200wpm)___ 421(@250wpm)___ 350(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105132 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 526(@200wpm)___ 421(@250wpm)___ 350(@300wpm)
“Where is Adira?” Dravic demanded with worry, though relieved to hear the fighting dying behind him.
Fiora hesitated, a rare tear appearing in the corner of one eye.
Dravic’s heart slammed against his chest. “Tell me, Fiora.”
“Adira tried to escape.”
Tharne was suddenly beside Dravic, blood streaking one sleeve, his blade red. He stared at Fiora, waiting.
“She fell, hit her head, blood pooled beneath. She hasn’t moved.”
Dravic let out a savage roar that froze everyone in the room.
“Take me to her,” he ordered Fiora.
“I go with you,” Tharne said forcefully.
For the first time since entering the Great Hall, neither king nor warlord stood against the other.
Together they followed Fiora.
Chapter Thirty-Five
A Life Lost
A Power Awakened
Dravic followed Fiora into the forest at a run.
Branches whipped at his cloak and caught at his sleeves, but he barely noticed them. He heard Tharne behind him, keeping pace without effort, the heavy strike of the warlord’s boots never far away. And somewhere behind them, his warriors followed.
Neither man spoke. There was nothing to say.
Adira lay somewhere ahead of them, bleeding and unmoving. That knowledge had stripped everything else from Dravic’s mind. Ernach. The crown. The mercenaries. The attack on the High Council. Even the truth about his parents had been shoved aside beneath one overwhelming need.
Get to her.
Fiora’s golden light darted between the trees, disappearing for a heartbeat behind thick trunks before reappearing farther ahead.
“Hurry!” she called.
Dravic’s jaw clenched. As if anything in this world could make him move faster than the thought of Adira lying hurt somewhere beyond his reach.
The ground began to slope.
Fiora suddenly dropped lower. “There!”
Dravic saw the men first.
Three mercenaries stood near the bottom of the slight incline. One was bent over something on the ground while another looked as if trying to decide whether to flee or fight. Beyond them stood Ernach.
Spotting Dravic, the men stepped away from whatever lay on the ground.
Dravic saw it then… Adira.
Everything inside him went cold. She lay crumpled beside a jagged rock, one arm thrown awkwardly across the ground, her dark cloak twisted beneath her. Blood stained the side of her head and the snow beneath her.
She did not move.
Her name tore from him in a heart-wrenching roar. “ADIRA.”
The mercenaries went for their swords, one barely having time to raise his sword.
Dravic reached him first.
His blade swept aside the man’s weapon and drove deep before Dravic wrenched it free and continued forward. The second mercenary lunged toward him, but Tharne intercepted the blow and answered with one that sent the man sprawling.
The third ran.
Neither Dravic nor Tharne went after him.
Ernach stood several paces from Adira.
Dravic spotted the dagger in his hand, saw the blood on the blade from where it had nicked Adira’s throat earlier, and then he saw nothing but Adira.
He ran to her, dropping his sword, and went to his knees beside her.
He barely got out her name, his throat choked with fear. “Adira.”
He touched her face carefully. Cold air had chilled her skin, but she was warm beneath it. That should have reassured him.
It didn’t.
Her eyes remained closed. Blood matted her hair near her temple, and she lay lifeless, not a stir or twitch to her.
Dravic slid one hand beneath her neck, afraid to move her and equally afraid not to.
“Adira, open your eyes.”
He got no response. His heart hammered so violently that his chest hurt.
He brushed the hair away from her face. “Wake up, Adira.”
Still nothing.
Behind him steel clashed, but Dravic barely registered the sound.
Tharne had gone for Ernach.
The warlord did not shout nor did he threaten. He simply attacked with a fury that required no words.
Ernach staggered beneath the first blow.
Tharne growled like an animal bent on revenge. “You should have kept your hands off my daughter.”
Ernach caught the next strike barely in time. “She was nothing but a means to an end.”
The foolish words unleashed Tharne’s fury.
That was the last mistake Ernach made.
The fight was brutal and brief.
Ernach had cunning enough to manipulate kings and patience enough to wait years for a crown, but neither served him against a warrior who had just found the daughter he believed lost and now saw her lying motionless on the ground.
Tharne drove him backward with violent thrusts of his sword.
Ernach could not withstand the onslaught. He slipped and recovered too late.
Tharne’s sword entered beneath his ribs.
Ernach let out a gasp as his eyes widened in shock.
Tharne leaned close. “You were nothing more than a means to an end.” He shoved the blade deeper.
Ernach gagged, fighting for breath until there was none left.
Tharne ripped the blade free and ordered, “Take him.”
Ernach fell to the ground and roots rushed up out of the earth, coiled around him, and yanked him down beneath the snow and soil until he was no more.
Tharne hurried to Adira.
Dravic was still on his knees beside her.
“She’s breathing?” Tharne asked, not hiding his fear.