LightFall by Elsa Jade

Author:Elsa Jade
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy Romance Romantasy
Publisher: Red Circle Ink
Published: 2024-05-13T07:00:00+00:00

What became of the first king who united the Living Lands? No one saw him depart the High Keep, not his court, not even his queen. But the fate of all the demon dragon’s victims is known: to be dreadmarked is to be damned.

~ From A History of the Living Lands

CHAPTER 20

AFTER DARK, HE TOOK ME down to the palace.

I didn’t know it was nighttime—did it even matter?—until we left the obsidian spire and crossed the terraced colonnade of arched windows on the way to the library. I imagined the arches of blackness had seemed like a blessing to the little boy fleeing the demon dragon.

Looking out, I stumbled to a halt, just staring.

From his usual princely place a half-stride ahead of me, he backtracked. “What is it?”

“What is that?” I pointed.

He followed my gesture. “Dark and fog and… Ah, that.”

Eerie argent-white lights flickered through the swirling streamers of fog, like slow-breaking, silent lightning. It was almost impossible to gauge distance from where we were, but it felt like the spears of light were reaching toward the palace itself.

“Sevaare has fog and lightning,” I said. “That is neither.”

The prince leaned in the window beside me. “It is, but it’s not just fog and lightning. Sometimes there is a surge of auric residue that accumulates in the foothills, like stormwrack washing up with a high tide. I’ve never heard a reason for it, but it’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

Without moving my head, I cast a sideways glance at him. He was so close, the heat of his body warmed that side of me, leaving my other half exposed to the night chill. The auric lightning glimmered in his scarred eyes. “I’m not sure beautiful is what I would’ve said.”

Mesmerizing, maybe. Ominous, definitely. The sort of impossible diamonde jewel no thief, no matter how bold, foolish, or desperate, would ever dream of taking.

My fingers twitched with the memory of his jaw clenched tight against my palm then softening as his lips parted under mine…

Blade to bone, there was bold, foolish, and desperate, and then there was just pure madness.

Annoyed with myself, I pulled back from the window. “Come on. I don’t want to miss my friends.”

Not complaining back that I was the reason we’d stopped, he fell into step—beside me, for a change. “It’s late. What makes you think they didn’t give up already?”

“They wouldn’t leave.” But even to my own ears, my voice wavered uncertainly. “If they aren’t there, we’ll just go to the Sevaare quarters.” We could just wander around the High Keep until we found them. I was with the prince, after all, and no one would try to stop us.

Unless we’d been marked for execution or something.

Now it was my stride carrying me ahead of the prince.

But when I burst through the library doorway, my friends were there, wilting somewhat over their books though the aroma of kavé hung heavy in the air. They all looked up at once and exclaimed in overlapping voices, though I’d only been gone a day.

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