Sasha settled onto a branch and watched them as if waiting for one of them to make a wrong move.
The boy turned to face Lorelai, wearing nothing but a strange collar of thistle and bone. The breath left her body as the sun glinted against his wild hair. His amber eyes locked on hers, and the empty space carved into her by Leo’s death filled with fury as she stared at the Eldrian king she’d rescued from the mob in Tranke.
“You!” She spat the word at him as she raised hands that shook with anger, power sparking in her palms and begging for an incantor that would send her magic into the boy and kill him where he stood.
“You’re the princess?” He sounded shocked and horrified.
Every part of her trembled, and there was a buzzing in her ears that made everything but the need to hurt him seem inconsequential. She stalked toward him, her eyes locked on his. “I should’ve let the villagers kill you. Or let you break the treaty by shifting into your dragon so that Irina would have nothing to do with you.”
“I didn’t know when I agreed to hunt down the lost princess that it was you.” He held his hands up in a placating gesture as if somehow his words would make amends for anything.
“You were with Irina in Nordenberg.” Magic burned against her skin, and incantors designed to punish and destroy balanced on the tip of her tongue, desperate for release. “You were hunting us there.”
“I didn’t know who I was hunting—”
“Leo died there!” Her hands slammed into his chest and sent him to his knees. “My brother is dead, and you were there helping Irina to kill him.”
The black dragon roared, smoke pouring from its nostrils, but Kol held up a hand to stay it. His eyes were stricken as he stared up at her.
Lorelai leaned down. “Oh, you’re going to want his help. Not that he can save you from me. You owe me your life, remember? And now you owe me for Leo’s, even though it was Irina’s spell that killed him. What do you think my brother’s life is worth, Kol? Is it worth the life of a king who would enslave himself to a monster and kill the innocent?”
“I’m so sorry.” He breathed the words, every syllable full of pain and regret.
Lorelai’s heart pounded, and magic seared her veins with the power to make him truly sorry. To make him pay for his part in Leo’s death.
Behind him, the black dragon began shifting to his human form, but Lorelai ignored him. Let him plead for the life of his miserable king. Let him threaten to kill her for laying a hand on Kol. Lorelai didn’t care. The terrible pain that had filled her when Leo died had found a purpose in hurting the king of Eldr. It would be justice, and Leo deserved that.
No one is going to give you what you want, Lorelai. You have to take it for yourself. Use your power and take it. Take it!
Irina’s voice, quiet as a breeze but hard as iron, filled Lorelai’s memory as she flexed her fingers and held Kol’s gaze. Beneath her anger, beneath the awful need to make him pay for Leo, a voice whispered that she was on a precipice. If she took the leap—if she used her magic to take the life of a boy simply because her pain begged her to without first making sure that it was justice, how could she look Irina in the eye and say that the queen was wrong for doing the same thing?
“Nothing I say can make up for the loss of your brother,” Kol said with quiet sincerity. The grief in his voice matched the pain that lived inside Lorelai. “Or make up for the fact that I was trying to kill the girl who saved my life.”
“No, nothing will ever make up for losing Leo,” she said, and though anger still shook her, she slowly curled her hands into fists, ignoring the burn of her magic. “My first mistake was to rescue you. My second was to believe that you had honor.”
“I didn’t mean to violate the debt I owe you. As soon as I recognized your bird, I put my human heart back in control and shifted. I don’t want to be a killer.” There was desperation behind his words. “I don’t expect you to believe me after all that’s happened, and I have no right to ask you for mercy—”
“No you don’t.”
“I don’t ask mercy for myself. Only for Eldr.” His amber eyes held hers as the black dragon finished shifting and became the enormous boy—Trugg, if Lorelai remembered correctly—who instantly started running toward them. “You’re a mardushka, like Irina. You could save Eldr. You’re a good person—you wouldn’t have helped us in Tranke if you weren’t. Please, do what you want with me, but say that you’ll save my people now that Irina won’t.”
She frowned at him. “What are you talking about?”
“Don’t hurt him.” Trugg threw himself between Lorelai and Kol, his arms held wide to block her from being able to touch his king.
“He tried to kill me.” She glared at Trugg. “And he is part of the reason my brother died.”