Lea was confused, but she did as she was commanded. It was hard for her to go from seeing all of her friends die to shoving the one that had healed beside her after a near-death experience into a cage, but she was too exhausted to question her Alpha’s orders.
Another Ironborn came up without being asked and handed Nick some clothes, ragged and blood-stained as they were, but Nick put them on and managed a nod of gratitude as he stepped up onto the platform.
As he looked around, he was comforted to see Reston and Marina, though both were bloody and Reston had one of Nick’s Ironborn tending to a shattered leg, putting a steel cast in place. Marina had an arm in a sling. Balthazar was there beside Veronica, but he had bandages all over his body and was looking almost ill. Veronica was beside him with Candra close by under a stone enclosure in the shade, Veronica’s watchful eye over all those near her.
There were half a dozen Stoneborn behind Veronica’s throne, and Nick could only guess at why, but he didn’t spare them a second look. Mitch was lying on a stretcher with Beatrice next to him, looking more or less unscathed as she tended to her mate. His chest was moving, but he was unconscious, and obviously in bad shape from all the bandages over his body and the several casts he was already in.
As he looked around for the rest of the leaders, Lea went to stand next to William, and she wrapped her arm around him to keep him standing as he so obviously wanted to do. She rested her head on his shoulder, which was unharmed, unlike most of the rest of him. Osvald and Sedovin were obviously missing, and William reported to Nick in a trembling voice that Osvald was dead, and as far as he knew, Sedovin was presumed so but not yet found, along with both of their mates.
Just when he looked around for Kit, the last of the Princes and Princesses of the New Council, a younger-looking woman, one with light brown hair, freckles and eyes the same shade of light blue as Kit’s, stepped forward. She had some gashes across her face and neck and her hand was bandaged, but she didn’t look nearly as bad as some.
“My sister was lost in the fight, Prince Nickel.” The woman’s sad voice carried easily enough through the air, and it was much gentler than Kit’s had ever been. “My name is Karie. I was her second, and for now at least, I shall represent our people the best I can in her place.”
Nick nodded, still unable to speak friendly words, and crossed the Court platform to his own throne, sitting on it heavily and closing his eyes for a moment as he rubbed at his face. He had a few cuts and scrapes, and he was still limping in his human form from the initial attack, but he hadn’t done enough. He hadn’t been there enough for his people. He hadn’t seen…everyone had shown him, but he still hadn’t seen…
“Bring forward the Speaker of the Council. Let him answer for what happened here today.”
Coren was bound in chains as they dragged him across the ground from where they kept him, with the spike still lodged in his body. His blood still pooled around it with each breath, and it was clear that he wasn’t going to last much longer, but he was an old wolf, and it took more to kill them than most.
Nick didn’t get up when Coren was dragged before him and put on his knees, but he looked at Coren with eyes colder than the stony thrones the Speaker was accustomed to sitting on in Geneva. “Feels a little different on the receiving end, doesn’t it?” Nick said without any real trace of gloating in his voice. He was drained in every possible way by the day’s events, and he didn’t even have the energy to enjoy the moment of Coren’s destruction. Too many had died that day for him to take the pleasure he wanted in another death.
Coren knew he was finished, and struggled to breathe, though every breath was painful to him. “My death will only infuriate the rest of the Council, Princeling. You know that.”
“Yes. I do.” Nick stood up from his throne to cross over to him, hiding his limp. “Let them rage. It makes no difference to me.” He stared down at Coren for a moment, then kept walking to stand behind him. “Bring up his mate.”
Coren’s face lost all trace of dignity with the word, and he twisted around to look up at Nick, but the knife in his chest cut even deeper with the flinch, and he was reduced to a human howl of pain as he gritted his teeth against it, looking around wildly for Zara.
A few of their new Fireborn friends came out with the cage that Zara was trapped in, even though she had shifted back into her human form. She gripped at the bars, sobbing instantly at the sight of her mate, bloody and bound in chains. “Coren!”
Nick fused her cage to the steel of the Court as soon as they set it down, and put a hand on the chains binding Coren at the same moment, little by little solidifying them until he was webbed in solid steel and similarly bound to the Court beneath their feet. There was no trace of humanity in Nick’s eyes as he stared at Zara, naked and helpless in a cage, just out of arm’s reach of her bound mate.
Coren struggled against his bonds, but he’d been weakened by the fight and the amount of blood he’d lost. Nick’s iron was too strong. “Zara, I’m sorry…I’m
