Page 4 of Wings of Snow
All I knew of the Lochen was that they lived in the sea and called most of the islands in our realm home. They also inhabited a small continent, far south of here, and if they stayed submerged in the sea for months on end, they would turn into fish-like creatures. But on land, they appeared as Drachu did—like all fae with pointed ears and two legs. But Drachu’s teeth were sharper. His two distinct canines were something no Solis had, and he lacked wings, although I could relate in that aspect. And unlike the Solis, the Lochen weren’t bound to white or silver hair and blue eyes. The few Lochen I’d met had varying hair and skin colors, but they all had green irises.
Drachu moved swiftly through the forest, climbing the steep fjord as though it were nothing. Unlike Cailis and me, he wasn’t panting.
We climbed and climbed as the night grew darker around us. Sweat dripped between my breasts despite the cool temperature, and even though I’d been training intensively for the past three months with Sandus, one of Norivun’s personal guards, the climb wasn’t easy.
The fjord finally began to level out as the tip of the mountain neared. Lights flared through the trees.
Cailis and I both stopped, winded, as the fae king halted before a thick curtain of vines.
He draped it to the side, and my eyes widened as the Lochen king grinned. “Welcome to Vockalin, city of sea and sky.”
CHAPTER 2 - NORIVUN
“Where did she go?” my father demanded as I stood before him in the throne room of the Court of Winter. Only hours ago I’d been subjected to the insufferable dinner following the Rising Queen Trial, and now I had to listen to this. All after my mate had fled, leaving me to fight in her stead.
Outside, the moon glittered at the late hour. Magic rumbled through my limbs as I waited at the bottom of the throne’s stairs. Not because I feared the tyrant wearing the crown, but because the next words I spoke were true. “I already told you. I don’t know.”
“My guards said she disappeared from her room when they arrived, she and her commoner sister. And in the past few hours, none of my seers have been able to lock firm visions on her.” The king ground his teeth. “And scrying hasn’t worked either. Nobody can see her.”
My father glared at me, but I hid my emotions behind a steely expression. While I was partly thankful that Ilara’s whereabouts were hidden, since it meant she was safe from the Solis king’s wrath, it also caused a vicious tide of violence to rise within my soul. Because the male who’d sired me was the cause of my mate’s disappearance. He was also the cause of my mate’s fear of her future.
King Novakin seethed as veins protruded in his neck. Gray hairs streaked through his mussed white hair at his temples, and the wrinkles around his mouth deepened in his anger. “She’s to marry Lord Arcane Woodsbury as I commanded. She’s to birth him children to strengthen our race. Shewilldo as I demand.” He leaned forward more, drumming his fingers on his armrest. “And don’t for a moment think I’m believing you. She’s your mate, isn’t she? Can’t mates feel one another? You should know where she is even if nobody else can. You are to bring her to me.”
The dragon inside me roared as his fire heated my blood. Nostrils flaring, I drank in my father’s scent. Not one trace of terror coated his emotional flavor. Instead, smug satisfaction not only rolled across his expression but also drenched his smell.
Fucking tyrant.
I kept my expression carefully schooled, not allowing even a hint of the animosity I felt to leak onto my face. “We’re not fully mated. I can’t feel her. So I’m afraid I’m no more inclined to know her whereabouts than you are.”
His scowl turned glacial as my mother’s back grew rigid. Her fingers curled around her throne’s armrests so tight that her knuckles grew white.
“You lie.” King Novakin’s scowl strengthened. “I know she’s your mate.”
“Indeed she is, but we’re not fully mated, so even you should know what that means.”
He scoffed. “You never bedded her? You truly expect me to believe that she never spread her legs for you after what I witnessed on that dais following her first test? Her arousal ran so high I could have scented it a millee away.”
It took everything in me not to clench my fists. Fury boiled within me as the mate bond sang.
Kill.
Destroy.
Avenge.
The bond vibrated so palpably within my chest that it felt as though I’d channeled a demon who demanded the king’s head.
My dragon snarled in agreement as visions of shifting and snapping the king’s body in two nearly made me smile. But I couldn’t kill him. I couldn’t do anything.
I took a slow, steady breath so as not to let my chest rise too high, then I blew my Outlets open at my back to slightly alleviate the rising magic that was coursing through my veins.
The guards standing near the doors far behind me shuffled nervously. They stood too far away to hear what we spoke of, but they undoubtedly felt my power swirling through the room at my back, but at least my father couldn’t.
I couldn’t blow my Outlets wider for fear of alerting the king to how much his statement had affected me. So I called upon decades of learned practice at controlling my responses as I smashed the mating instincts down that were threatening to consume me.
After taking one last deep inhale, I inspected my fingernails. “So what would you have me do, Father? Would you like me to scour the continent for her? Perhaps fly back and forth over our vast terrain until I spot her black hair? Surely, that won’t take too long. No more than several hundred winters if I’m thorough.”
“Watch your tone, Norivun.” The king’s eyes turned glacial, so cold it was a miracle frost wasn’t nipping his eyelashes.