by Kate Kelley
Adara stepped out of the shadows to the left, eyeing me with disdain. “As I told you before, your majesty, she knocked Baal, Aiden, and Wolfram back with a gust of wind that had come out of nowhere.”
I opened my mouth to defend myself, but the Queen held up a hand. I bit my tongue, drawing blood. “You deliberately lied to me. I defended you against the Air kingdom when they claimed you were Air. I told them they were mistaken, and sent them home. And now they are probably planning a siege on my land.”
Shock choked me. “I didn’t--it wasn’t my intention--”
The Queen walked toward me, and I steeled myself. “You are under suspicion of conspiring against the throne--”
I gaped. “I haven’t conspired against anything--”
Adara barked out a laugh. “Luring Wolfram into an extramarital affair to claim the throne against his rightful mate and princess, one day to be Queen, isn’t conspiring?”
“It sounds like you’re the only one counting down the days until you get the crown,” I muttered.
The Queen closed her eyes and held up a hand. “Another witness needs to be here to claim the incident before your arrest.” She flicked her hand and four guards came toward me, and I panicked. I whirled around, looking for Thalassa, but she was gone.
“I can attest to her Air magic,” a voice from the side said. I whipped around to see Aiden coming toward his mother, his face dark, his eyes razor sharp as they glared at me.
What’s with everyone coming out of the shadows like this is a damn play?
“Really, Aiden? I knew you were a miserable bastard but I didn’t think even you could stoop this low.”
The Queen nodded her head at the guards and they advanced on me.
I raised my hands. “Wait, wait. Where’s Wolfram? Let me speak to him first.”
Adara scrunched up her pretty little face. “He’s gone! Out looking for you!”
The guards came closer, and I backed up, my arms immediately twisted and wrists clamped tightly with iron clamps.
Shit.
The Queen sighed, her brow creased with trouble. “It seems you’ve excited all of my boys in one way or another. Brand, Baal, and Wolfram are out searching for you. Ra knows where they are now.”
Fear pierced the outrage, and I hoped and prayed they weren’t headed to Wildfire that very moment. They would meet a very angry, thawed Babs. “Wait. Queen Tungsten. Please. Wildfire is experimenting on people from different elemental kingdoms! They’re mixing the blood of elementals to come up with combined powers to use in their army!”
The Queen’s brows notched lower but she didn’t say a word.
Doesn’t she care? Does she think I’m lying?
Her face got farther and farther away as the guards dragged me out into the foyer. “Listen! MacKay and Babs are my parents. I killed MacKay. You need me to go after them!”
The Queen stared on, unperturbed.
I wracked my brain for something to convince her that I was on her side. Suddenly it hit me. “Alfie!” I shouted, and noticed the Queen sharply turned her head to the side, finally listening. “Alfie is working with them. He’s betraying you--”
An explosion of sound busted at the heavy wood of the front doors, and everyone ducked. I fell, my head cracking against the marble floor as my iron clamps held my hands back from breaking my fall.
Men in black robes crossed the threshold, spreading out in formation. The Fire Queen appeared, risen to her full height, a ball of fire in her palm at the ready. “What is the meaning of this? Guards, why have you allowed these scum into my castle?”
“They’re no match for us, your Majesty,” a small man said in the front. With shock I realized it was the small Air elemental man who’d knocked me out at the transporting stone, the one who’d called me an abomination. Now he was pointing to me.
“We have you surrounded on all sides. All we have to do is give the word and your castle lies in a pile of rubble.”
Queen Tungsten snarled, the fire in her hand rising to heights as to reach the lofty ceiling. The Air elementals backed up a tad, sweat dripping off their brows. “I could kill you all now.”
The small man smiled nervously. “That wouldn’t bode well for you, or your little daughter. She’s what, four now? Such a precious age.”
Daughter?
The Queen stilled as if he struck a nerve, and she doused her flame. “What do you want?”
The small man smiled and patted his shiny forehead with a white handkerchief. “Give us the girl who killed our Queen, and we won’t attack your castle. Your little Nuria will live.”
The Queen glanced back at me and I stared at her in blatant fear. If she gave me over, I would surely die a horrible death at their hands. “Please,” I whispered.
Her eyes held a regret that I knew meant I was doomed. She turned back around and nodded her head. “Take her and leave. Don’t return.” The thick words were meant as much for them as they were for me, and her cold eyes held a faraway look as she watched them haul me away.
A second set of iron chains clasped cold and heavy on my forearms as I was hauled upward, singing my skin as if with dry ice. I mouthed a scream, but as soon as the pain was there, it was gone again, and an emptiness took over in the cavern of my chest, a numbing that rubbed my senses until they were only bits of dust, of marled granite remnants on blank paper. I knew what the iron did--it took away my magic. All of it.
Movements slowed around me as if I was watching a playback of a memory on an old projector. I blinked into the sun as I was wrenched out into the clear day, and there above me, was the moth. She flew by me gracefully, flitting about with not a care in the world until she flew too high for my eyes to follow, and she disappeared into the white-hot sun.
As I was lifted high into the air, clasped on both sides by two guards, I had a thought float through my head, that maybe the moth wasn’t real after all, maybe it had never existed. That maybe I was the moth.
I was the moth, and Wolfram was the flame I was drawn to, and somehow, I’d always find a way back to him.
Even if it burned me.
Next in Series:
Breaking Onyx (2) Coming soon
Bleeding Tungsten (3) Coming soon
More by Kate Kelley:
Gem Kingdom Series
Birth Stone (1) Available now
Diadem (2) Available now
Paragon (3) Coming soon
Novella
Alabtross, a Fantasy Romance novella coming out for a charity anthology in May 2018.
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