Page 70 of Broken Hearted
Dawn’s voice pulled me from my thoughts, and I spun to see her coming down the stairs in Zane’s foyer, as quickly as she could in her pregnant state.
Dawn practically waddled as she descended the last couple of steps. Was she even bigger than the last time I saw her? It had been almost two weeks since we met at the station in Noreum, but her stomach protruded even more. There surely couldn’t be just one baby in there.
When she reached me, Dawn threw her arms around my shoulders and pulled me toward her in an awkward hug because her belly was in the way. I squeezed her back the best I could. Just seeing her gave me a boost of strength that I happily soaked up.
Stepping back, she looked at me with a concerned expression and asked, “Was that Sera I saw being brought into the castle?”
I nodded. When we arrived at the station in Windreum, not more than an hour ago, we immediately headed for Zane’s castle. I traveled with Seraphina in a hired carriage, but one of Adrien’s men secured a horse and went ahead of us to alert Zane.
The moment we arrived, Zane had been there waiting for us with a healer. Although Sera was doing much better, I was still so thankful for Zane’s thoughtfulness. He had some of his staff whisk my sister to a private room where she would be cleaned up and cared for before resting.
I’d given him a very brief version of what had happened with Elisana and how she was holding Adrien. Then he’d left to gather Dawn and Zander, who he hadn’t had time to notify before we had arrived.
I’d been relieved when he told me Dawn and Zander were here. I was glad they weren’t in the Southern Kingdom with the other northern refugees. After boarding the train when I saw them last, they’d only traveled as far as Windreum. They wanted to stay as close as possible to their kingdom to make sure their people were evacuated, which ended up being a good decision since the Western Kingdom was the only remaining place in Ethereum that the curse had yet to cross. And it was good for me because I was going to need everyone’s help to break the soul-tie between Elisana and Seraphina, and save Adrien.
“What is she doing here?” Dawn asked, clearly shocked.
“When I didn’t return with a heart, your mother pushed Seraphina through the portal,” I told her, and immediately Dawn’s features darkened.
“She didwhat?” Anger began to radiate from her.
I didn’t answer because the question was clearly rhetorical.
“I can’t believe it,” she said, shaking her head. “I know my mother is driven and single-minded at times, but how could she have forced an untrained child into this mess?”
There was no love lost between me and Queen Liliana. What she did had almost cost Seraphina her life, but I believed the situation in Faerie was indeed dire and it drove Queen Liliana to do desperate things. Dawn left Faerie when the curse started in her kingdom. She didn’t fully understand how bad things had gotten throughout the realm.
In the carriage ride over, Seraphina had given me even more details about what was happening back at home. The land was uninhabitable. Fae were dying. And those that survived had lost everything. It was as if the world was truly coming to an end. So it wasn’t as if I agreed with what the Summer queen did, but perhaps I understood what drove her to that point.
“We need to talk,” I told her. “Zane said he was going to get you and Zander.”
Dawn nodded. “Yes, we’re to meet in the drawing room. He found me first and told me you were down here. He’ll get Zander and bring him there. Come on.”
Taking my hand, Dawn led me back up the stairs and then down a long hallway, stopping in front of large wooden double doors. She didn’t pause before pushing it open to reveal a sizable room. There was a giant stone fireplace along the back wall and three green velvet couches positioned in front of it. On the opposite side of the room there was a card table with bucket chairs where Zane must entertain guests in the evenings to play cards.
Zane and Zander were already there. Zander came over to give me a quick hug in greeting, telling me that he was glad I was safe, and then we all settled into seats around the circular card table off to the side.
I quickly updated them on all that had happened recently. I started with how Adrien and I had located the belly of the sea and unlocked the crystal. Both Zane and Zander looked surprised and a little confused, as Adrien had when I explained how the Shadow Heart had cracked in two, but they didn’t interrupt. I told them how we discovered that Seraphina was in Ethereum but that she’d been captured by Elisana before I even had a chance to find her. Zander and Dawn seemed to already know that Elisana was a blood witch who was drugging Adrien to love her, so I assumed that Zane had told them.
I explained that we’d tracked Elisana down in a small village in the Northern Kingdom only to find out that she had soul-tied herself to my sister and we couldn’t hurt her. And finally that Adrien had drunk her potion that had kept him captive to her before, but that I didn’t believe it had worked this time.
“In order to defeat Elisana and save Adrien, we have to find a way to break the soul-tie,” I finished, looking each one of them in the eye. “Do any of you know how we can do that?”
The looks on their faces gave me their answers before anyone uttered a word.
“I don’t think any of us know enough about blood magic to be able to break a soul-tie,” Zane finally confessed. “But we do know a blood witch, Rowena, who might be able to help us,” he went on, and Zander’s gaze immediately darkened.
“No,” Zander said forcefully and Dawn laid a hand on his arm, seemingly to soothe him.
Zane looked at his brother. “She helped us before, for a price. Maybe she would again?”
Zander grumbled something under his breath and Zane sighed. “Our brother’s life is on the line, along with the fate of not one, buttwoworlds. I don’t like it any more than you do, but I don’t think we really have an option at this point. Do you have a better idea?”
Zander pressed his lips together in a hard line, but after a few tense seconds he gave a sharp shake of his head.
“Then I’ll send my men to go get her,” Zane said, sounding resigned rather than happy to have won the argument. “She’s actually in my kingdom. They can retrieve her and be back hopefully by tomorrow.”
Zander raised one eyebrow at his brother.
