I fucking missed the companionship her presence offered me. When had it changed from sex to more with her? She was quirky and a little spitfire of energy. She fought me toe-to-toe on what she believed, and I fucking respected her for it. She challenged me, and people didn’t fucking do that, but Aria did. She stood her ground and stood for those who couldn’t stand up for themselves.
Shit. I’d gone to stop the separation of the mothers and children coming into the camp, and Aria had gone full battle queen on Bekkah. I’d no sooner told the lord to stop his men from assaulting the witches and their offspring to hearing the men shouting that the witches were fighting. It enraged me that I’d fucking caved to stop what had upset Aria, only to find her assaulting the fucking witches I ordered to remain unharmed.
I’d never noticed the damage inflicted upon her by the guard. The anger that filled me when she’d attacked Bekkah blinded me and forced me to punish her for assaulting someone under my order of protection. The penalty for that crime was death or fifty lashes. I would have had to stand in judgment for Aria’s slight and either whip her smooth, supple flesh or sentence her to death. My word was law. My word as King was my bond to my people. Aria had broken it, and as a result, I had broken my vow to my people to protect her soft skin from the cattail whip. In no world could I whip Aria and be okay with it. That terrified me because she continued to fight me.
It hadn’t gone unnoticed by my men either. They’d seen the favoritism after Bekkah had made damn sure that everyone knew Aria Hecate had broken the law of protection. Luckily, having the men stand as a witness to Aria’s treatment by the guard and me, and relaying those details to Bekkah, provided her with the information to brag how badly Aria was beaten, sparing me from losing face amongst my people.
“You think something happened?” Brander asked, settling beside me as I leaned against the boulder, watching the sun setting over the furthest mountain range.
“I think they should have fucking been here by now,” I growled, unwilling to allow the uneasiness to settle within me.
“Killian is never late.” Brander ran his hand through his hair in worry. “I hope Lord Andres isn’t the reason for their delay.”
I considered his words, acknowledging that Killian had only been late once in the entire time I had known him. He was a warrior, a brother in arms that had been through hell with us. He was dependable and honest to a fault. My stomach flipped while I considered what could have forced the indomitable warrior to be late.
“Aria wouldn’t give Killian trouble. Not with Greer and Lore present,” Brander stated, troubleshooting and eliminating obstacles they may have faced.
My eyes followed the path to the bottom of the pass, and the crease in my brow deepened. “Killian wouldn’t have waited for the army to prepare before leaving. That would slow down their arrival, and I instructed him to leave immediately. He’d have taken King’s Crossing and moved deeper into the forest, but that wouldn’t slow him down. That would have shortened their journey. Even if they’d taken another route to be safe, or because of some unseen issue arising, they’d have still beaten us here.”
“And yet they didn’t,” Brander exhaled slowly, turning to look at me.
I shook my head, throwing the stone I’d been tossing up into the air over the edge. Turning on my heel, I headed for my warhorse. I wasn’t waiting any longer as a foreboding feeling had entered my mind. Pausing at my horse, I whispered a command that sent a raven from my skin into the air. Telepathically, I gave the ravens an order to find Killian.
Mounting the horse, I waited for Brander and the men with us to catch up before starting down the long, winding trail through the pass that took us back to a branch of my army. It should have been entire army. It wasn’t.
A thousand scenarios went through my head. Had Aria escaped? It would make sense why Killian hadn’t shown up on time. I had ordered him to use all resources to capture her if she ran. Had the silver-haired men set a trap and lured them in, capturing Aria to take her to wherever the fuck they lived? Had Kreyton told the truth, and Lord Andres slaughtered his army to prove his loyalty to a witch?
Any of those scenarios were possible. I’d gone back to the cavern beneath the waterfall after leaving Aria to search for any signs of Eva and Aden and found nothing. The entire cavern had collapsed as if Eva held it together with her presence while she slumbered. It was likely a sanctuary spell used by witches, keeping ancient places intact with magic to ensure an undisturbed, eternal rest. Eva hadn’t been in eternal slumber, though. I’d felt the spell outside the barrier that had placed her in stasis.
Whoever Eva and Aden was, they’d vanished with the rest of their men into a layer of the Nine Realms I couldn’t trace, which was worrisome since we knew nothing about the pricks. It had floored us to learn there were more women like Aria out there, but Eva hadn’t excited me. She lacked pretty much everything that drew me to Aria.
Fucking Aria.
She was my perfect ideal vision of what I’d craved as a mate. She was bare-bones, beauty, brains, and very brave, which floored me. She didn’t even realize how stunning she really was. Her innocence was a flaw, but one I enjoyed. Her loyalty was unshakable. I respected her for the way she stuck to her principles and dug her heels into the ground when she believed in something.
Aria Hecate was born to be a queen of the Nine Realms, but the fact that she was born to be Queen of Vãkya made me ill. How was it possible that five hundred years to the day after losing my mate, a woman who was my perfect ideology of what I wanted in one, walked in and shook the shit out of me, rattling my world? Add that she was a Hecate witch and very powerful, making me crave her like opium after a bender in a den, and it made me question everything. Aria was too perfect. Her timing was too fucking convenient. If I had planned to turn the head of the rebellion with a pretty pair of turquoise eyes and rare silver hair, I’d send Aria in too.
She made me want to change shit that I’d never questioned before. Aria made me crave things I’d stopped wanting and thought gone forever. Shit, I got hard at the thought of her swollen with my babe in her belly, and then I hated her even more for betraying my wife with the idea of it. Aria was right. I lashed out hard and fast to protect myself.
Aria had made the image of Liliana fade to nothing. She lessened the pain of Sven’s death with her sweet smiles and shy glances. I needed that pain to fight the war I’d started. The Nine Realms depended on me to keep my shit together to fight for them. As much as I wanted Aria, I wanted to protect the innocent lives lost every fucking minute in this place, besieged by evil and witches that claimed they were the superior race.
My people crowned me King when Aria’s grandmother murdered my parents. Hecate had forced me into this role. She took everyone I loved from me and made me become King before I was ready, and now the one woman I wanted to keep was her granddaughter? No, that was a design in play, a well thought out plan to throw me off.
Brander and I paused as downed trees came into view. I noted the exposed roots pulled from the ground as if the wind or something else had knocked the trees over. Exhaling, I slid my attention around the forest before nodding to the other trail.
“That’s strange,” Brander stated, pointing to the trees behind the fallen ones that were still standing and undamaged.