Page 14 of Shadows of Light
Then, to her horror, she realized this scene wasfarworse than she’d realized. Her jaw fell as she shifted her attention from the queen to what lay ontopof her.
After being removed, the Lord had the king’s head mounted on a wall in his private solar. She hadn’t seen it, but Cole had told her about the awful thing. It remained there for now.
Though his head was in the palace, chains bound his body to the queen’s. The woman was trapped here with the decomposing body of her husband. Alina had failed to mention that part, but Lexi understood why; this wasn’t something the dragons cared to remember.
Lexi swallowed back her bile when a fish darted in to pick away some of the king’s remains. It wasn’t the only one, as dozens of them feasted on the carcass.
The fish had removed much of the king’s flesh. No bones were visible yet, but they’d be exposed soon.
If someone had done this to her with Cole…. She shut the possibility down. They’d be lucky if the queen didn’t smash the palace to pieces once they freed her.
And Lexi would free her. It didn’t matter if the queen turned on them or not; she couldn’t leave her to this fate.
She shifted her attention back to the woman glaring at her and held the queen’s gaze while she vowed, “We’re going to get you out of here.”
Please don’t kill us when we do.
CHAPTERTHIRTEEN
When Lexi emergedfrom the palace, Gibborim and the others had arrived. Sahira, Kaylia, Varo, some dark fae, and lycans had joined them.
They floated in four separate boats a few feet from where Gibborim stood in the water. He would step on his sister and brother-in-law if he walked twenty feet forward.
“Don’t go any closer,” Lexi told him from the balcony, “or you’ll step on them.”
“Them?” Gibborim inquired.
Lexi took a deep breath before revealing the worst. “Your king is down there too… or what remains of him. They’re bound together.”
Gibborim paled as his jaw went slack. “How do you know that?”
“There’s a hall beneath the water. The Lord would go to watch them.”
Gibborim’s lips compressed into a thin, flat line. “I see.”
“She’s going to come up fighting; can you keep her from trying to destroy us? If not…” She didn’t want to say this, not after everything the queen and giants had endured, but she had to. “We’ll have to kill her. We can’t have her attacking the realm.”
Gibborim closed his eye and bowed his head as sorrow emanated from him. “I can keep her restrained. I’m sure she’s been weakened by her ordeal and probably hasn’t eaten in months.”
“We’ll keep her in chains until you’re out of Dragonia.”
“That would be for the best.”
“Then let’s begin.”
Alina took Lexi back to the shoreline as the work to remove the king started. It took dozens of dragons to lift the king’s body from the river enough for more dragons to heat the chains until they broke apart.
Lexi couldn’t see the queen anymore, but she imagined the queen half rising from the water only to fall again. Being severed from her husband was probably driving her more insane and enraging her further, but they couldn’t lift them both from the water at once.
Gibborim couldn’t take her back to Colossal while still bound to her husband; he wasn’tthatstrong. And if they took them both out at once, the queen might become too infuriated to make separating them possible.
The dragons set the king’s body on the shore a hundred feet from where Lexi stood with the others. Lexi gulped, and her nose wrinkled, but she resisted sticking her finger under it to block the smell. It didn’t seem like a queenly action.
Orin’s nose wrinkled in distaste. “Lovely.”
Lexi struggled not to show her revulsion while Sahira weaved a spell to block the smell from them. When Kaylia created another one, the scent of lavender filled the air around them.
Less than half an hour later, they freed the queen from the river. Her enormous body hung in the air by dozens of dragons as Gibborim stepped closer and rested his hand on his sister’s chest.
