The Shadow Queen (Ravenspire, #1)(49)

He walked in slow, measured steps, bowed with perfect etiquette, and then handed her the pouch. His hands were steady, but the dragon fire in his chest was blazing and the air in the room felt like it was closing in on him as Irina unknotted the rope that held the pouch closed.

She opened it, and the deer’s heart, coated with Lorelai’s blood, fell into her hands. For a moment, she closed her eyes, and white light blazed from her palm and into the heart. A slow smile spread over her face.

Her eyes snapped open. “Well done. It seems our little Lorelai was no match for you, mardushka or not.”

He took a cautious breath, the band of tension around his chest easing. It had worked. He was going to live, Eldr was going to be saved, and he owed the princess of Ravenspire a debt far greater than he would ever be able to repay.

He waited for Irina to lift the collar and send her magic into Eldr. Instead, she placed the heart on the table, wiped her hands clean on the pouch, and picked up her scrying mirror.

“Mirror, mirror, your depths I scry. Show me the princess Lorelai.” The queen stared at the opaque clouds that swirled across the mirror’s surface, her knuckles white as she gripped the mirror.

The hope that had flared within him, waned as Kol’s hearts slammed against his chest. His knees felt incapable of holding up as the mirror’s surface spun faster.

What if Lorelai had taken off her gloves? What if she’d been wrong about how the mirror found her?

What if he was about to die?

His chest burned with dragon’s fire as he fought to keep his expression calm. If he was going to die, he would face his fate with courage befitting a king.

Moments passed, but the surface of the mirror remained unchanged. Irina gently placed the mirror on the table and picked up the heart again. Kol caught himself before he sagged against the table in relief.

The heart had passed its test. The mirror had been fooled. Eldr was about to be saved, and he was going to be alive to rule it.

“One last test.” She met his gaze as she sliced into the muscle with a sharp fingernail and withdrew a single drop of blood.

The relief that had filled him drained away, as she placed the drop of blood on her tongue. Lorelai had said nothing about a mardushka’s ability to read blood with her tongue. Maybe Lorelai didn’t know. Or maybe she’d hoped the queen would take a drop of the blood that covered the outside of the heart.

Irina rolled the blood across her tongue and looked at him, her smile sharp around the edges. “Do you know how I’ve stayed in power all these years in a kingdom full of people who’d love to see me lose my throne?”

He stared at her in silence, his knees shaking while he clenched his jaw and struggled to look composed.

“I’ve stayed in power because I always expect people to betray me.” She moved closer to him. “And because I expect betrayal, I’m always ready.”

Her smile became a shard of ice. “You are going to pay for your betrayal, huntsman.”

She slammed her hand into his chest, and his blood sizzled and churned with white-hot intensity. Before he could pull away, she threw back her head and yelled, “Kaz`ja. Take what is human, and give me control over what remains.”

The magic in his blood rushed for his hearts as Trugg and Jyn leaped into the room and ran toward him.

He tried to wrench away from Irina, but then the pain hit—an unbearable burning that blistered his chest as if he’d swallowed fire itself. He clutched at his hearts as they beat louder, louder, louder until their frantic rhythm drowned out everything else.

Irina threw out her hand, and the stone floor beneath them shook. Pillars as wide as Trugg’s waist shot out of the floor, blocking Kol’s friends and creating a cage around Irina and Kol.

Pain was a fire-coated blade that kept stabbing Kol with every heartbeat. It stole his breath and turned his knees to water.

He fell to the floor, clawing at his chest, ripping at his shirt and his skin as if he could somehow let the magic out and stop the agony.

Trugg and Jyn threw themselves at the cage, but the pillars didn’t budge.

Irina sank to her knees beside him, one hand on the collar of bone and thistle she’d given him.

Kol doubled over and screamed as the fire inside him coalesced into a single, excruciating bolt of pain that felt like it was ripping him in two.

The queen leaned close to the collar and whispered something to it.

Kol shuddered. His hearts pounded.

And then her hand was against his chest, and her voice was rising above his as she repeated her incantor over and over again.

His friends threw themselves at the stone cage. Kol writhed on the floor as the collar shrank against his skin until it fit him like he’d been born with it. Irina kept chanting, her palm pressed to his chest.

Then his human heart seemed to leap toward her hand, tearing free of its moorings with a sickening lurch that left Kol gasping for air.

Irina smiled, cold and vicious, as Kol’s human heart appeared in her hand, shimmered like a mirage for an instant, and then became solid.

The pain stopped, and in its place was an insatiable need to hurt, punish, hunt, and destroy.

Kol lay on the floor, shaking with the desperate need to shift. His muscles ached to stretch, his bones to re-form, but it was as if his human skin had become an iron cage that refused to allow his dragon out.

Irina reached beneath the table and pulled out a small gold box with a black stone set in the center of its lid. She placed his heart inside the box, sliced her palm with one long, polished nail, squeezed three drops of her own blood onto it, and then turned to him.