Page 15 of Heir of Broken Souls

Through my own grief, I was a fool to not follow up with Ordelia. Now she’s missing. And after all she had done to help…it would have been kinder for me to plunge a blade into her heart.

Harlow adverts her eyes. “Nothing on her or where she hid the children we freed.” She sighs, sadness creeping into her voice. “The humans we saved from Sector One are accounted for, though. They still remain hidden along the outskirts of Azalea.” The shelter Knox so kindly provided for them, away from the chaos of the city.

He didn’t want to stun the humans too much with such a different world and I had to agree, a slow transition is best for them until they decide where they want to live.

With a nod, Knox relents. “I’ll give you a week before we need to try other avenues. There are far too many lives on the line, and we can’t kill him unless he’s in his original form.”

Once upon a time, that sentence would have wrecked my heart, to hear my chosen family speak of killing my father with such disdain and callousness. But he’s not my father—nor was he ever.

After slicing his throat only to find out that he’s a shapeshifter with dark magic thrumming through his veins, after seeing him murder my friends and family so brutally, after learning of the diabolical travesties he has been inflicting upon Aloriah for all this time, after hearing the plans he has to overtake the Fae lands?—

I will doanythingto kill him.

Knox rounds his desk, coming to perch on the side of my armchair. His hand trails up and down my back, sending an electric current along my skin. “Have Edgar send a message to the royals to warn them of an impending attack on their shores. We’re all vulnerable by the seaside but tell them to be prepared for anything.”

Nolan moves for the door. “Anything else?”

Knox’s weary sigh echoes through my bones. “Have one of the quadruplets send in coffee and dinner. We’ll be here a while.”

And so we stay sequestered within Knox’s study most of the night, poring over maps, planning for the fall of my childhood safe space and the rise of his demonic army along our shores.

All the while, Lenox sits stiff as a board, Harlow stays as volatile and cruel as ever, Nolan gazes upon us all with uncharacteristically soft eyes, and Axel remains passed out cold from liquor upstairs in a guest room because he can’t bear to sleep adjacent to Ace’s cold room.

Chapter5

Delilah

I’m floating in a golden pool of magic. It sings to me, its lyrical voice lulling me into a state of tranquility as blinding white light shines through the canopy above me.

It takes me a moment to recognize the odd feeling humming through my body—magic.

It’s old and yet new, born yet created. Hot, cold, quiet, chaotic.

It pours through my body, consuming my very being. Until a deep timbre voice breaks through, the sound so sudden my body flinches. I wait for my magic to calm me, to soothe the shock the voice created, but it does no such thing. Instead, it ignores me, turning to the voice as if waiting for an order.

The lights recede, leaving my eyes blurring and my vision swimming—until colors explode throughout the space, swarming like a rainbow of butterflies. Then they stop.

I wish I never opened my eyes.

Above me, rising as high as a ten-story building, stands a dome comprised of seven podiums. And what stands atop them makes my heart both drop and soar once more.

Years of wisdom, confidence, and elegance emanate from the Fae-like creatures. Their skin glows, shining with a sort of radiance I never knew existed. They look like Fae, embody the power and grace of one, but they’re far from it.

They’re extraordinary.Gods.

My throat closes, choking on the shock of it all, as loud boisterous voices fill the space, the sound rumbling the podiums they’re perched upon. Yet their lips barely move, as if whispering.

The voices stop, plunging me into silence so startling I lose my breath. My lungs scream their protest, begging me for oxygen that I can’t give, not as colors start to pour from their hands and drift toward me. One by one, the black, gold, pink, violet, blue, green, and white colors encase my entire being, shimmering, opaque. The ones above me begin to speak again, allowing me to part my lips and breathe.

A lone voice draws my attention, the language as foreign as the magic covering me from head to toe. The source of the melodic sound belongs to a woman whose beauty far outshines the six other Fae creatures. Despite not recognizing her tongue, my heart gallops as if in knowing.

“Viren tali tholana, inorath guven thur ashtal,

Uthr vithara sathen, milan zal vethar.

Sor aeldar avel, nega thaerai naorin.

Ith no vashak, inorath milar, a vithar naran.