Reign of Ice (Forever Fae #4)(59)

Her eyes glistened with tears and her lips trembled when she cried, “Brayden, I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to hurt you.” Hearing her voice was all it took to tear me apart inside.

Rushing to her, I grabbed her around the waist and held her tight against me, so tight that I almost believed if I held on hard enough that she wouldn’t be able to get away. “Please don’t do this to me, Ariella. You don’t have to do this alone,” I pleaded.

She sobbed in my shoulder and held me almost as tight as I held her. “Yes, I do. I am the only one the sorcerer will trust, and if you come in and attack him we will lose. I will miss my chance. We might triumph in the end, but at what cost … the lives of our people? We would risk and lose so much if we did that.”

“I don’t understand. How are you going to get the sorcerer to trust you?”

Before she could answer, the dream realm shifted and things started to fade. What was happening? Sorcha ran toward us and exclaimed, “She’s waking up! She shouldn’t be waking up now!”

“What?” I shouted.

That couldn’t be so. We had only been in the dream realm for a matter of minutes. There was no way it could be over. Ariella closed her eyes and agreed, “She’s right. I can feel myself trying to wake up. Merrick said he would wake me up if someone comes. There must be something going on.”

“Wait … Merrick is with you?” I asked angrily. “He better be glad he’s a ghost because if I could hurt him right now I would.”

“He’s helping me,” she claimed. “And at least I’m not alone.”

Sighing, I breathed her in and crushed her lips with mine, tasting the sweetness of her Winter essence on her tongue. I took in the scent of her, my court in every fiber of her being. She was my lover, my queen, and … my wife. I was never going to let her go, I couldn’t.

“You will never be alone,” I told her.

She gripped my arm, her eyes blazing. “Promise me you won’t come for me, Brayden. Promise me!”

She began to fade, her body slowly disappearing before my eyes, while the grip she had on my arm started to loosen. I wish I could promise her, but that would be a lie.

“Promise me,” she repeated more forcefully.

Shaking my head, I gazed into her tear-filled ice blue eyes and responded, “I can’t promise that, angel. Can you honestly say you wouldn’t come for me in this situation?”

She lowered her gaze and sighed, knowing very well that I knew her answer. When she lifted her head, the tears had streamed down her cheeks, and she was fading faster. Before she was completely taken out of the dream realm I did promise her one thing.

“I will always come for you, angel. That is what I promise you.”

Then … she was gone.





“ARIELLA, WAKE UP,” Merrick demanded, shaking me by the shoulders.

I gasped and opened my eyes. Immediately I wanted to go back into the dream realm to be with Brayden. Merrick breathed a sigh of relief and took my hand, lifting me up off the ground. “I tried waking you up for over a minute. It was like you were somewhere else, but you were crying.”

“I was somewhere else,” I said, wiping away the tears with the back of my hand. “I was in the dream realm with Brayden.”

Merrick frowned and squeezed my hand. “I’m sorry I had to wake you and take you away from him, but we need to get out of here.”

“What’s going on? How long was I out?”

Quickly, he pulled me to our horses and lifted me up onto mine. “You only slept for about an hour when I started to hear noises out in the distance. I can hear someone coming and it’s not just a couple of people I’m talking about. By the sounds of the vibrations on the ground we’re looking at a whole army. I don’t know if they are our allies or if it’s the sorcerer’s army, but I don’t plan on sticking around to find out. Glamour yourself and let’s get out of here.”

Taking a deep breath, I concentrated on making myself look like a male Winter warrior and grabbed onto the reins. “Let’s go,” I ordered.

We set off at a brisk pace through the forest, going in the opposite direction from the unidentified army marching toward the courts. As long as our people stayed behind the gates they would be protected. At the moment, it wasn’t them that needed protecting, but me. A quick glance behind me showed not only one, but two riders following our trail and gaining ground.

“Faster, Ariella,” Merrick shouted. He couldn’t be seen or heard by anyone other than me, so basically I was out in the woods alone with two riders chasing me down. I pushed my horse faster, but it was no use. The others were quicker and more agile than the horse I was on. If I was on Lennox there was no way anyone could ever catch me.

The second I heard the arrow zip through the air I knew it was over. My horse cried and bucked—throwing me off in the process—as the arrow stuck into her backside. She flung me up against a tree and the breath whooshed out of me, leaving me breathless and gasping as I fell to the ground with a hard thud. My traitorous horse whinnied and galloped away into the darkness, heading straight back home.

“Merrick,” I choked out on a whisper. My head took a nasty hit and my vision was going from blurry to dark and back again. I tried to get up, but the pain in my head from hitting the tree was too much.