“Please. Help me.”
Running his hands through his hair, Brokk exhaled. “As long as we are out here, we are targets. Where can we hide? Somewhere Adair won’t find us.”
Alby croaked, “I can hide us, until we figure it out,”
“No, look how drained you are already! I’m not having your death on my hands as well.”
“I can hide us,” Bryd spoke calmly.
They all turned to her as Brokk whispered, “How?”
She smiled and spoke to Alby, Wyatt, and Jaxson. “Please. Stand still.” She concentrated, and Brokk almost dropped to the ground in shock, as one second he was staring at the group, and the next all that remained were the woods.
Bryd lit up at his expression. “I can cloak anything, for any length of time. I can hide us, if you will have me.”
The group returned, and tears slid down Brokk’s face as he broke down, completely and utterly. The last twenty-four hours caught up with him, and he just cried, raking breaths dragging in as he caved in on himself.
His heart broke as he thought of Emory a world away, and he silently promised himself he would cherish her safety until the day he died. He wouldn’t let her parents’ dream die, no matter how far they had drifted themselves. He saw his purpose sharply then, and he choked down laughter as he stood, legs shaking and taking in the spitfire in front of him.
“Yes. We will have you,” Brokk managed to reply.
“Excellent, as long as you aren’t a group of murderous psychos, this should be great.”
Brokk really laughed now. “You’re safe. We are what’s left of the Academy.”
“Like the Academy?”
“The one and only.”
She nodded, lost in thought, before she whispered, “That’s where we should go, probably.”
Back to the Academy?
He mulled over the thought before nodding slowly. “It would be the last thing Adair would expect. What do you say, should we go back home?”
Their swearing and catcalls were answer enough, and Brokk limped over to Memphis, scooping his still unconscious friend up.
They slowly made their way back home.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Adair
Two years later
Standing on the shoreline, the Black Sea crashed, the mist and salt coating his skin. His hands shook as he clenched the parchment in between his hands, the words branding themselves in his mind.
Marquis Maher was now the King of the Shattered Isles.
Yelling, Adair incinerated the letter in his palm, the scorched paper catching in the wind and floating like ash.
“Calm yourself, our King.”
“Is this what you wanted? After everything? To share my reign with a King from across the Sea?!” he yelled to the open air, to the wind and the crashing waters.
“You know you and your people need his resources.”
Adair paced back and forth, Marquis’s words bouncing in his mind: Go to war with me and lose your trading routes my father upheld with you. Cross our waters, and I will kill you.
Adair sent emerald green fireballs rocketing out from his palms, just to watch them flare, then hiss and die as they hit the water. He envisioned they were Marquis, and it calmed his racing pulse. Wrenching his gaze, he turned, popping the collar on his black jacket, and walked back to his kingdom.
He entered the woods, deep purple leaves and moss creating an illuminating light. The woods circled the Draken Mountains, the beauty here unlike anything Adair had ever seen.
One that captured the essence of shadows.
Hisses and growls followed his footfalls, and yellow eyes flickered to life, watching his movements. The Noctis Woods—better known by his people as the Heart of Midnight—was a refugee for ancient dark magic. It was his reprieve, a place where he could just be. The foliage of leaves casted a brilliant dappled light, and Adair looked up. Across the sea, Marquis thought he had him shackled, backed into a corner.
Adair chewed on the inside of his lip, his answer forming in his mind. Whispers from the shadows pulled at him, but in a flurry of mist and shadow, he was flying.
In seconds, he passed through air and stone and materialized in his court room. His throne was inky black, bones carved into it, and Adair stared at his loyal guards, smiling viciously.
“It would seem we are supposed to show our allegiance to a new King across the Black Sea.” They shifted uneasily, and Adair snapped, “Parchment and ink, now.”
They scrambled, and Adair chewed his cheek. His dark gaze flickered back as he was handed what he needed, and nodding, he started his letter.
“Marquis...”
He wrote eloquently and without hesitation, and knew his old friend would come to trust him again over time. And until the day they didn’t need him anymore, Adair would convince him he had bowed to their agreement.... Only to sink the knife in his back when he dared not look.
His low growl of laughter erupted from him, bouncing around the room, as beneath them, their kingdom grew, because to his people, he was their safety.
His guards bowed their knees around the room, as he wrote, softly weaving lies, sinking his claws deeper into everyone he could. Adair would never live in a world where there was opposition of another resurfacing. He would kill all flickers of defiance against him, starting with Marquis Maher.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Brokk
Six Years Later
Sweat rolled down his spine, making his black armored chest plate feel suffocating over the top of his black shirt. Kieroian steel was an impregnable iron, one they were lucky to get their hands on to fuse in their protective gear.
The night was bleak and all-consuming as Brokk Foster looked to where he knew his best friend and Commander were hidden. Weeks of tactical planning and training brought the soldiers of Black Dawn Rebellion to this moment.
The slight tremor in his hands was the only sign of how he was feeling. Pressing himself closer to the mossy ground, Brokk breathed in the sweet smell of dewy grass. There was a snap of twigs,
