Page 61 of Broken Hearted
“The curse has struck the Southern Kingdom?” Adrien asked,his voice laced with confusion. But then he looked down at me and his gaze cleared.
“What?” I asked, seeing that he’d figured something out.
“We assumed the curse would hit the Western Kingdom next because we thought you were Zane’s mate, and the curse seems to be following the lord who finds his Faerie mate. But—”
“I’m your mate, not Zane’s,” I finished for him, filling in the blanks myself.
Adrien nodded. “But even so, it’s weeks earlier than was expected. The curse must be speeding up.”
A look of determination settled over Adrien’s features, and he turned back to his spy. “And the people?”
“Okay for now,” the spy reported.
“Prepare a contingent of two dozen men to ride north with us and get Isolde’s sister back,” Adrien said. “And send a letter to my brother Zane that we need to see him.”
The man nodded. “And the curse on our lands?”
Adrien sucked in a deep breath. “I will not sit by as things get worse and risk lives. Evacuate the northern refugees first. Send them to Windreum. Once they are safe, begin sending waves of our people west as well. It might take a week but I want everyone out before the real damage starts.”
My heart bled for him. As a leader, to make such a decision was so hard. But it was the right thing to do.
“Hopefully just a precaution,” I told him, indicating my bag and the vial inside for Zane.
He nodded but didn’t seem fully convinced.
Adrien then reached out and grasped my shoulders, determinationetched into every feature. “Zane’s trains don’t run to the border where Elisana’s village is. If we skip taking a carriage and ride on horseback as fast as possible straight through the Midlands, we can reach Elisana in just under two days. We can leave right away.”
He was choosing to help my sister first over his own people.
I nodded, feeling relieved. “Thank you.” I was tired from all that had happened on the sea, but of course I wanted to leave as quickly as possible.
Adrien jumped into action, sending a messenger before us to the castle to ready the horses and prepare travel packs for us. By the time we returned to Soleum, two horses were already saddled and ready, loaded with supplies. We mounted immediately and rode through Soleum as quickly as possible. We rendezvoused with the spymaster and the two dozen he gathered outside of the city.
Adrien didn’t bother dismounting his horse as he spoke to the group, quickly telling them where we were headed and why. I was such a ball of nerves I barely heard what he said, really only catching the part about how we were only going to stop when we had to in order to rest the horses and ourselves for a few hours at a time. We were trying to cut a four-day trip in half in order to reach Seraphina as quickly as possible.
My heart softened to him a little more in that moment, seeing him work so hard to help me find and save my sister. He was a good man. And so were the other Ethereum lords I’d met. Queen Liliana was so wrong about them. We all had been.
A swell of thankfulness that I’d found him rose inside me, threatening to destroy the mountain of fear I had built up aboutthe future of our relationship. But I’d carried the trauma of my parents’ divorce for too long to let it go easily.
After that, the whole group of us took off, galloping through Adrien’s kingdom at a breakneck pace for as long as the horses could. Eventually we had to slow, and then long after the sun had set we stopped to rest, although only for a small handful of hours. We were up again before dawn, racing through the sandy terrain.
There was a stark beauty about Adrien’s kingdom that I could appreciate. The sand, the palm trees, the small blooms that managed to spring up despite the lack of water. I found myself comparing his land to my own court. Most fae would consider the Winter Court a harsh environment as well. But the one big difference here was the heat.
The sun was unrelenting, and seeing me struggle around noon on the second day, Adrien insisted I drink part of his ration of water as well as my own. I would have refused, but there was a serious chance that I might pass out, and I didn’t want anything to slow us.
“We’ve made good time,” he said as he watched me drink and our horses walked next to each other on one of our rare breaks from traveling at top speed. “The temperatures will drop soon since we are leaving the Southern Kingdom. We should be well into the Midlands by late afternoon and then with luck, the border of the Northern Kingdom by nightfall. Elisana’s mother lives in a small town just beyond the border.”
I didn’t miss how Adrien’s eyes hardened when he mentioned his ex-fiancée.
I handed him back his canteen and our fingers brushed. Eventhat small touch sent a thrill through me, and the hardness was wiped from Adrien’s gaze and replaced with heat. Heat that we could do nothing about because we were riding to save my sister with an audience of over twenty of his men.
“How did you even meet Elisana?” I asked because I was both curious and needed a distraction from the desire growing inside of me and knew that nothing would douse the fire in both of us as quickly as talking about Adrien’s ex.
I could see that it worked on him as well as it did on me. His mouth pinched, and I suddenly felt bad that I’d brought it up. Of course he didn’t want to talk about the blood witch that had kept him under a love spell.
“I’m sorry,” I started. “I shouldn’t have asked. Just, never mi—”
“No, it’s okay,” Adrien said. “It actually has to do with where we are going, her home village. I met Elisana when I was traveling through the Midlands to get to the Northern Kingdom. The Midlands can be a hostile territory, especially for Ethereum lords.”
