Page 127 of Fallen Nocturne

I’ve read about mammoths in the old histories. Creatures nearly as tall as towers, protected by thick hide and almost impossible to stop once they begin charging. They can scatter cavalry and crush a defensive line beneath their feet.

“And the skies?” Arescaine asks.

Nemarion’s jaw tightens. “Wyverns. Enough to burn this kingdom to the ground twice over.”

Coral releases a low, uneasy sound beside me. I press my palm against her neck without taking my eyes from Nemarion.

I feel the mate bond then. It’s pulled taut as a bowstring, thrumming with pain and fear. I press my hand to my chest, feeling the ache of it. I know Landon is suffering. He’s trapped somewhere cold and dark and he’s terrified.

Not for himself. For me.

“They’re using Landon as bait,” I whisper. “They captured him to draw me out.”

Silence answers me.

No one tries to deny it.

That is how I know I’m right.

“Which is why you cannot go,” Arescaine says carefully. “Rhianelle, whatever they intend to do with you—”

“He’s my mate. The bond—”

“I know what he is to you.” Something flashes across Arescaine’s face, painful and resigned. He turns his face away before I can understand it. “I know what it means to love someone you cannot bear to lose.”

Before I can ask what he means, horns sound from the walls. The warning bells begin to toll. The sound that means one thing and one thing only.

War.

Coral shrieks, spreading her reinforced wings.

“We need to get to the war room,” I say, forcing myself to think.

My people need their queen. I feel the weight of the crown upon my head. I’ve always known that responsibility as surely as I know my own heartbeat.

But everything inside me is screaming to run to Landon, to tear through anything that stands between us and drag him out of that darkness.

“Your Highness!” Another voice, this time from the direction of the castle. It’s Aelfric, running full tilt, his face pale. “The council is assembling! Lord Rainer requests your immediate presence!”

My mate is captured. An army is coming to destroy my kingdom. I feel the weight of it all crash down on me.

“Go,” Arescaine says quietly. “I’ll stable Coral and gather what she needs.”

I want to ask him what he was going to say before Cedwyn interrupted. I want to ask why looking at him sometimes feels like trying to remember a dream. I want to ask why the bond pulls toward Landon, yet something else keeps pulling toward him. But there’s no time.

I follow Aelfric. Cedwyn and Lord Nemarion fall in behind me.

Beyond our borders, an army is coming for Aelfheim. Somewhere in the darkness beneath the Palace of Bones, Landon is suffering.

I do not know how to save both my kingdom and Landon.

I do not know if I can save either.

Chapter 18 Rhianelle

My war commanders are already assembled, along with faces I don’t expect. Hrolf the dwarf stands near the hearth beside several members of Landon’s legion. But it is the figure standing at the window who makes me stop short.

Tall and broad-shouldered, he is impossible to mistake.