The Shadow Queen (Ravenspire, #1)(50)



“What have . . . you . . . done to me?” His voice was raw from screaming. His tongue felt clumsy, his words foreign things he struggled to speak. Rage was the strength that got him to his feet.

She lifted the box, and he could hear his heart—his human heart—beating within its golden walls.

“I’ve made you the perfect predator.” Irina ran her fingers lightly over the stone on top of the box. “Now nothing stands between you and your dragon’s instinct. Just don’t try to shift. The collar won’t let you do anything more than use your talons. I can’t be worried that my huntsman will become a dragon behind my back and try to destroy me. You’ll be able to track Lorelai and kill her easily enough in your human form. If she uses a harmful spell against you in self-defense, the magic in your collar will end her.”

He seethed, the dragon’s fire in his chest burning like an inferno, begging for release he couldn’t give.

She leaned close. “I command you now. Your dragon heart obeys mine. Hold up your end of the bargain, and I will be bound by our blood oath to hold up mine.” She placed the heart box on the table and for the first time seemed to notice the other Eldrians who had shifted and were trying to destroy the pillars with fire and the spikes on their tails.

Irina slammed her hand onto the tabletop and branches shot out of the wood, wrapped themselves around the Eldrians, and forced them away from the cage.

“He’s beyond your reach now. His collar is warded against all who have dual hearts. If you touch him, he’ll die. If you come too close to him, you’ll die. He is mine now.”

Trugg roared and strafed the branches that held him with fire.

Irina turned away. “I grow tired of you. Leave my castle. Stay away from my huntsman. If you come back, I will rip your hearts out, but unlike the king’s, I won’t keep yours safe.”

“Safe?” Kol had to force the word out. It was as if without his human heart, he was nothing but dragon—all instinct and violence with no spoken language. His memories—of his parents, of Brig, of everything he loved about Eldr—were slipping through his fingers like water, receding behind a thick gray curtain that blocked him from everything that used to matter, leaving nothing to hold back the well of violent anger that had replaced his second heart. He grabbed for the memory of his mother’s laughter, for his sister’s smile, for anything that could give him a weapon to keep the rage at bay, but the images faded into darkness, and Kol was alone with the terrible beat of his dragon’s heart.

Irina flicked her fingers and the branches that held Jyn and Trugg wrenched them into the air and hurled them from the room. Turning to Viktor, who stood silently on the far side of the room, his mouth set in a tight line, she said, “I’ve seen the face of the man who is helping Lorelai. He was in my huntsman’s blood memories. Get me an artist. There’s something familiar about this man’s face. I want a name to go with it.”

Turning to Kol, she said, “Find the princess. Bring me her heart, and I will restore yours.”

He wanted to resist. To refuse to be her predator.

But the collar sent tiny shocks of power and pain into his skin, and his thoughts felt clumsy and far away. Irina waved a hand and the cage crumbled to dust.

“Go, huntsman.”

He went.




TWENTY


IT TOOK FOUR days for Lorelai and Gabril to reach the eastern edge of Duchess Waldina’s estate. They traveled hard, pushing themselves from dawn to dusk as they hiked through thick stands of dying evergreens, climbed rocky ravines, and hurried through meadows of rotting grass. The strain was showing as Gabril’s limp became more pronounced, the lines of pain that bracketed his mouth digging deep. Still, he refused to allow Lorelai to heal his leg, arguing that if the deer heart trick had failed, Irina could be coming after the princess herself. Lorelai needed all her energy just in case.

She stopped arguing with him on the second day. If his heart wouldn’t submit to hers, she’d be exhausted from the effort, and he was right: she needed all her energy.

Just in case.

The Waldina estate rose above another long meadow of brittle, yellow grass. Fences of weathered oak hemmed in the enormous property, and horses already wearing their winter coats were scattered throughout the pastures, munching on piles of hay. Beyond the house, the village of Baumchen clung to the side of the first of three western mountains, but Lorelai had eyes only for the mansion at the end of the long cobblestoned road that bisected the meadow.

The mansion was enormous—an elegant monstrosity of marble columns, stone trim, scalloped shutters, and a hundred windowpanes gleaming in the afternoon sun. Multiple chimneys pierced the slanted roof, nestled between narrow gable windows, which were open to let in the fresh mountain air. Smoke rose from each chimney in thin ribbons of gray. The entire house was painted a bold yellow that reminded Lorelai of an egg yolk.

“We can’t exactly walk up to the front door and knock.” Gabril leaned against the fence that marked the border between the pastures and the forest they’d just hiked through.

“The horses look well fed.” Lorelai scanned the pastures and then stared at the village beyond. “I wonder if the Waldinas are feeding their peasants as well as their livestock.”

“I wonder where they’re getting the hay for the horses since the ground here is just as bad as it is in the east.”

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