“Honestly, I didn’t even know I had a shut-off switch from her accessing everything.” Eva was about to be my best lesbian . . . best friend. Fucking Ember.
“Aria apparently wants to be your best lesbian now, Eva. But if you teach her how to shut me out, I’ll fucking eat you.”
“Probably not the best retort after the previous statement, Ember. Plus, I enjoy both men and women. So, if you want to eat me, I’m not opposed to meaningless sex.” Eva’s words caused my head to snap toward her, even as my eyes thinned and my lips tipped into a deep frown. My nose revealed the deep, scarlet color that spread from my ears to my chest.
“Um, thanks, but no thanks? I like my meat, Eva,” I squeaked, which caused those around me to snicker.
“Am I missing something?” Killian asked, a frown line deepening between his brows. “Do you need me to hunt for you, Aria? I know Knox would if he were here, but I can do so if you need me to.”
“I can take it or leave it personally. It isn’t worth the heartache caused by what’s attached to the other end of that pole. Meaningless sex, on the other hand, I can leave before they wake, which bypasses them becoming clingy bastards.” Eva’s words caused my shoulders to shake.
“What the fuck?” Acheron’s angry shout jerked our focus from Eva’s rant to where Siobhan, Avyanna, and Soraya were hitting him with large sticks. “Fucking stop hitting me! Fucking banshees!”
“You were trying to eat her!” Soraya scoffed, kicking his knee, finally sending him to the ground.
“And that is why we didn’t eat her, Ember. Because friends are not food,” I chirped.
“You should probably stop them,” Esme muttered.
“I will in a moment. He deserves it for calling us women as if it is a slander against us.” Crossing my arms over my chest, I laughed at the sight of the girls all whacking Acheron. Even as he threw his arms up to cover his head protectively from the branches they used to belt him with. Laughter threatened to spill from my lips at the sight of the large dragon prince on the ground, getting walloped by my girls.
“This is what you wanted to retrieve for a fucking fight?” Eva asked, horror gripping firmly to her tone.
“They’re witches, Eva. Not monsters. And, yes, because if it goes down as I think it will, we’re going to need to a few people with the ability to portal out of the Kingdom of V?kya.” Strolling forward, I felt Ember’s uncertainty. “You have an issue with them, too?”
“My issue isn’t with them, Aria,” she breathed. “It’s with you doing this while we’re well . . . pregnant.” Ember had whispered the single word, and it sent me spiraling down into a dark, horrid void of fear.
I stopped dead in my tracks as bitterness roiled in my belly, scorching the back of my throat as I leaned over at the waist, throwing up. “You fucking asshole,” I whispered thickly. “Damn it, Ember. Goddamn it! I told you no, didn’t I?”
Everyone around me stopped, staring as I up-chucked what little I’d managed to eat this morning. Fear pierced my heart as Ember’s words echoed through them, repeating what she’d just disclosed. Pregnant? Now? Fuck! Glancing around, I met the pitying stares before groaning with horror and embarrassment.
“I’m sorry. But I promised Lennox I would so that he didn’t force you to open our womb for him. Honestly, I didn’t think it would happen so quickly after we’d lost the little girls.”
“Don’t. Don’t even say it right now. It changes nothing. The rest of you listening? I swear to my soul that I’ll rip your fucking heart out if any of you mention it to Killian or Esme. For now, we aren’t going there. I’m staying the course. Without Knox, I don’t want to be a mother. Not in the middle of a bloody, brutal fucking war.”
“Avyanna, Siobhan, and Soraya? It isn’t nice to beat the welcome party,” I called, before wiping my lips off with the back of the cloak I’d worn, and rinsing my mouth with water. My eyes drifted back, finding those who’d overheard Ember’s confession peering at me, with both worry and pity clear on their faces. The sound of the girls’ happy squeals forced me to turn toward them as they barreled over the clearing, racing right for us.
“You’re finally back!” Siobhan said, hugging Esme to her. “I feared you and Aria had ended up trapped there. You’d never believe what’s been happening here.”
“Yeah, well, we lost track of time, I guess you could say.” Esme grinned widely, tightly hugging her sister to her.
“It wasn’t Knox who attacked you,” I admitted, cutting their reunion short.
Soraya stepped beside me as Avyanna moved to the other side, observing the sisters still clinging to one another.
“I saw his eyes,” Soraya snorted. “I’m so sorry, Aria.”
“He isn’t dead.” I argued in a cold, angry tone. She turned, staring at me. “If we can reach him in time, I think I can try to remove the darkness before she can fully claim him.”
“Aria,” she said as her head tilted. “You don’t know if that witch would’ve survived. No one knows how it would have ended. I’m sorry.”
“Well, I have a better shot if I try than if I don’t. Besides, I have a plan to get Knox away from Hecate. It’s not an easy one, and it’s going to be dangerous. If he engages Zyion, I can get close enough to attempt drawing out the darkness. I think I can force her darkness to release him. The issue is that he’s not exactly aspiring to be rescued. He’s under her control. If that doesn’t work, we’d need to find another way to trap him. One that would hold him long enough for me to figure out how to force it out.”
“You didn’t think I might need to know I was the bait?” Zyion aked, as his and Eva’s eyes rounded with shock.
“I intended to once we’d actually discussed the details.” His head lowered, then elevated with an anxious look over face. Scoffing at my plan, he dropped his attention to my middle, frowning.
“You want everyone to risk their life for Knox, who may or may not already be gone? Aria, he could literally be a corpse and you wouldn’t even know it.”
“I saw the blue in his eyes, Soraya,” I snapped, glaring at the ground while slowly counting inside my head for patience. “Knox took control of a warrior’s body, then rode through the palace gates while driving it earlier today. He told me he was in there, and I need to see if it’s true. I have to know he’s not trapped in there, waiting to die.”
“Okay,” she whispered with a short exhale. “I’m in. However, Avyanna and the kids need a safe place to go. We’ve gained a few since you left six fucking months ago.” Hurt was buried in her tone.
“For us, it was only a couple of days. We did not know we were gone that long. I’m sorry for not foreseeing it as a possibility. Trust me, no one is as sorry about it than I am right now.”
“How is that even possible?” she countered as her forehead puckered in confusion.
“That’s a longer conversation than I’m prepared to endure right now,” I muttered. “Let’s get the urchins to the library, then we’ll head out from there.”