*Maddox*
These Goddess forsaken kids of mine.
“He pulled a sword on me, Isla. A sword!” I shrug my leathers over my shoulders and fix my mate with a look that mimics her own–something made of steel and ice cold. “It’s been three days since Ella and Maddy took off after him. I’m going. I’m bringing Cassian with me.”
“He had his arm bitten clean off–”
“He is just fine,” I say through gritted teeth, knowing the direction this conversation is about to go. Isla, beautiful and convincing as always, has no intentions of hearing me out. She had no intentions of doing so yesterday–when I showed up at the castle expecting to find her and Ella safe and sound.
Instead, after two days securing a perimeter around Moorn after the battle on the plains that had wiped out half of our territory’s warriors, and left a third of those remaining severely injured, I found her going toe-to-toe with Trinity.
For twenty four years, they’d been friends, best friends, but Isla had murder in her eyes when I found them going for each other’s throats, and poor Rosie sniffling, in a corner of the front foyer.
Isla had decided she was going after our daughter and daughter-in-law regardless of how Trinity felt about it and let her know it with very choice and colorful words.
I hadn’t even dropped my duffle bag before Isla told me her plans as well.
Now, we are in Moorn where small battles are still taking place just outside the makeshift wall we’d erected around the village when we’d taken it back over shortly after Isaac called for a retreat.
“I’m going, Maddox. I don’t know why you’re even trying to convince me otherwise. Those are my kids out there–”
“They’re mine, too. And apparently they take after your side of the family.”
She tilts her chin to the ceiling, staring down her nose at me. I always forget how small Isla is compared to the rest of us. Isaac and Ella inherited my height, and once they came into maturity, the difference was glaring. But Isla’s brute force and sharp tongue is a trait held by both of our kids.
And their apparent desire to throw themselves in dangerous situations with little thought about the repercussions comes from her as well.
“What the hell do you mean by that?”
“Don’t take that tone with me, mate,” I say as I take several steps toward her. I’ll I want to do is bend her over the footboard of the bed on the far side of the room, especially when she has that heated, feral look in her eyes. “That’s a punishable offense.”
“So is running off into battle again and thinking I’ll be your good little wife and mate, sitting back and watching!” Her cheeks flame as her eyes darken on mine. “I’m not asking for your permission.”
“You never have,” I reply, and the smile that’s been threatening to spread across my lips escapes for the briefest of moments, cutting through the tension between us. She takes an audible breath, the icy expression cracking even to show me her true emotions. Those are our kids out there, and she’s terrified.
So am I.
“We’re going to find them.”
“And then what?” Isla takes several steps away from me and toward the window overlooking the village of Moorn. Instead of being full of vibrant markets and families milling about like it had been in the past, it’s dreary and empty save for the warriors patrolling the grounds around the Alpha’s mansion, where Elijah and Trinity live. Elijah is still here doing whatever he can to save his village and pack from ruin, while Trinity paces the castle, our home, standing in for the entire royal family while we deal with this mess.
“Then we go home and try to get back to normal.”
Isla hugs herself with her arms. “Something happened. Isaac and Ella knew this was going to happen, and they didn’t say a thing to us. I knew… I knew something was wrong. Long ago, when they were just kids, we were told they’d be different, especially Ella, that they might be called to do more for this kingdom, but I didn’t ever believe it would be….” She trails off, waving her hand toward the window where those plains rose up in rolling, endless hills of silver flaked darkness over the village. “Whatever this is.I just want peace, for them and us.”
“We had over twenty years of peace. That’s a kingdom record.”
“I’m not joking around right now, Maddox!”
“I know.” I walk to her, wrapping my arms around her waist and resting my chin on her shoulder as we look out the window. “We’ll find them and figure it out from there. Together. We’ll leave in an hour. Elijah is putting together a group of warriors–”
“No, we go alone.”
“Isla–”
She turns to me, her hands resting on my arms. “I don’t want anyone else to get hurt. You can fight. You’re strong. You can defend me, and I can defend you with my powers. I have my powers, Maddox. I’m drained from healing, yes, but I can do this. We don’t need anyone else. We just need to find the kids and figure out what’s going on and find a solution to this as a family.”
I pull her into my chest and hold her there, my eyes glued to the rippling silver plains in the distance.
Why do I feel like we’re already too late?
* * *
*Maddy*
I wake with a start and sit up straight, blinking into blue darkness. Water drips above my head from a stone ceiling, and all around me are furs and blankets, some of them dark and damp with blood. Where am I? How did I get here?
Light burns my eyes, and the acrid scent of a match meeting flame makes my nose crinkle. I press my eyes shut, wincing against a sudden blast of dry heat.
“Open your eyes, darling,” says a soothing, crackling female voice.
I blink rapidly to clear the stinging tears blurring my vision and a stooped, ancient woman comes into view on the other side of a small warming fire that illuminates the cave around us.
Mystica looks up at me with a motherly smile, then back down at the fire she’s tending.
I draw my knees to my chest and hug them, chills running up and down my spine.
“To answer your questions,” she says, “you’re in a cave at the base of the mountains. And you hit your head quite badly trying to run from Kane and his men.”
I reach up and touch my hairline, flinching at the sudden ache and burn from a wound I hadn’t known was there.
“And yes,” she continued with a sigh as she stoked the fire, “I’m dead, woken from my eternal rest to try to guide the king and princess. Not that they’ve been listening.”
I’m too confused to say anything. I watch as the ghost–that’s the only way I can describe the woman now stooping nearby–grabs a pot off the ground and sets it on a stone in the center of the fire. She reaches into her apron and pulls out a handful of herbs and spices, but I can’t smell them at all. I don’t hear the hiss of the water she pours from a glass bottle as it touches the scalding iron pot, either. I feel like I’m watching the scene unfold from outside of my body.
My arms slacken around my knees, and I let my legs lay flat on the ground. Suddenly, a warm sensation snakes between my fingers, and I look down to find a metal mug in my hands, the liquid inside a warm amber color and steaming with heat.
“Drink it. It’ll restore your strength. They couldn’t find you a healer.”
“Who?”
Mystica looks at me from her perch, her skin glassy and speckled with an ethereal glow. “Kane and his friends. He was livid when they found out your mate killed the only healer left in their forces. Now, drink up while it’s hot. Otherwise, it won’t have the desired effect.”
I sip from the mug and watch the ghost as she continues stirring the pot of herbs.
“Am I dead?” I ask before bringing the mug to my lips again.
Mystica’s eyes meet mine, and she smiles, shaking her head. “No, you’re not dead.”
“Then why can I see you, and drink this tea, and feel the heat from your fire?”
“Because I was sent by the Goddess to try to guide the three of you, and I am doing my best.” She mumbles the last few words with a hint of annoyance before tapping a large wooden spoon on the side of the pot. “Your mate should be here very soon, I believe.”
My body starts to unthaw at her words, memories flashing back to me so rapidly I almost lose my grip on the mug.
I remember Kane and his warriors approaching me in the clearing. I remember asking where Isaac was, and he asked me where… where Ella was. Ella, his mate. Ella, mated to the enemy. Ella, who took off and left me in the clearing to begin with.
I remember backing up, whirling around, and running. But I tripped, my ankle getting caught in a tree root that had broken through the forest floor. I remember the pain of my head cracking against something hard and sharp, and the muffled curses and exclamations of the group behind me before gentle hands picked me and cradled me. Then, everything went black.
“Why would the king send for a healer if I’m the mate of his enemy?”
“The king didn’t do anything,” Mystica replies, slipping the spoon into her apron. “The king hasn’t ever stepped foot in this kingdom.”
I furrow my brow. “But Kane–”
“Is not the Alpha King of Eastonia. In fact, he fights against him.”
I curl my fingers around the mug. “What?”
She nods. “He’s not your enemy–or Isaac’s for that matter.”
“Then who is he?”
She sighs heavily and removes the pot from the stone without so much as an oven mit. I guess being burned isn’t something the dead need to worry about. “You haven’t figured it out yet? Well, neither has Ella, or anyone for that matter. If the Luna of Eastonia had just lived for a few seconds longer, none of this would be happening….”
She motions for my mug, and I sit up on my knees, stretching out my arm to hand it to her. She refills it, giving me a skeptical look. “I was dead already when all of this happened, but I watched from afar and sat next to Isla at my grave when she came to try to unravel the situation in her mind twenty years ago now.”
The ghost finally sits down and gets comfortable, a mug appearing out of thin air in her own hands.
“You were right in surmising that the queen was never in the throne room, and Kane was never at the ball, or in Isaac’s office, or in the garden. It was an illusion, a special gift she passed on to her son.”
Ella’s nightmare comes rushing back to me. “The child in Ella’s dream–”
“Her mate, yes. The same child the Queen of Eastonia tried to save when she used the last of her powers to try to tell Isla and Maddox about the threat coming to their doorstep–and the prophecy behind it. She was an incredible witch and healer, Cressandra. Revered in her lands in Eastonia. She was kidnapped by the Alpha King and forced to be his breeder, and they had a son, who was born so powerful that the king decided to make Cressandra the Luna of his Kingdom, hoping that would warm her to him, and she’d give him more sons.”
Mystica tosses another log on the fire and continues, “But no more sons came, only daughters. Seven of them. None of them survived past infancy, and it’s rumored that’s because of the king.”
My mouth goes totally dry despite the tea I still sipped on.
“And Ryatt? He was not the child his father hoped for. Too soft, he thought. Too much like his mother, who did everything in her power to shield the child from the king, so he separated them.”
My heart sinks into my belly.
“She wasn’t allowed to see him for more than an hour a day once he turned five, shortly after her seventh daughter passed away. Then, she wasn’t allowed to see him at all, not until that fateful night she went to Isla and Maddox for help saving her son’s life.”
“The nightmare,” I whisper. “That’s what Ella saw in her nightmare.”
Mystica nods gravely. “Yes, through Cressandra’s eyes. Cressandra had a vision that his mate would come from a land far away, a land cut off from Eastonia during the time of the gods, a land of light. And his mate would save him from who his father would turn him into. It was the only thing she had to hold on to, that knowledge her only peace in the world.”
Mystica pauses and takes a deep breath. “But one day she was brought to the king to witness her son being beaten within an inch of his life for crying when he was told to kill one of the wolves who’d been training with. He wouldn’t do it, even after his father’s warriors beat him and brought him to his father in tears. She begged for his life, promising he’d become the monster the king wanted him to be. The king killed her for giving him such a weak son.”
My eyes burn with tears.
“Obviously, Ryatt grew into his true calling.”
“And what is that?”
“A rogue king destined to overthrow his father.”
My eyes meet Mystica’s in the glow of the fire.
“He tried to warn Isaac. He wanted to get Ella out of here before the war started. He needs her, even if he fights against it. He needs her to help overthrow his father. He could have stopped this war before it started.”
“How?”
“Do you not realize what she is yet?” Mystica asks, but her form begins to flicker, and she turns her head to the entrance of the cave. Her eyes narrow and meet mine as she slowly starts to fade away. “Listen to me, girl. You must stop him.”
“Stop who?”
Mystica disappears, and a voice calls out my name, the scar left behind by Isaac’s mark searing on my breast.