Escape the ice and cart the Terran princess to safety. Kill a combatant named Zion, and claim his magic wand. Use the wand to heal my shoulder. Attend the next Assembly of Combatants, slay everyone. Perform Nolalee’s Blood Rite. Kill Aveline. Join Meredith.

Why continue on? Never again would he allow himself to fall in love. He would not marry, or start a family. Would not give anyone authority over him. Would not serve another malicious queen.

Obviously, time had not healed Bane’s inner wounds. Every day, the desire to mete revenge threw another log on the fires of his rage. Will take everything from Aveline, the way she took everything from me. He lived for no other purpose.

The next assembly kicked off in three weeks. A mere three weeks until his plans and schemes came to fruition.

Craaack.

The noise came from his left, the warriors within his sight line awake and aware, exuding a feral kind of hope as they observed the newcomers.

An unspoken question wafted through the air. What happens next?

They’d all suffered, their bones and muscles constantly aching with fatigue, their blood like sludge. At some point, every warrior had died, only to revive and start the process again.

Must fight my way free. Now! Nolalee and Vale had reinvigorated everyone’s determination to escape.

For Bane, a five-inch gap separated flesh from frost. He’d often let the beast pour flames into his throat, so he could spit fire and melt the ice in front of his face. The action had done so much more, warm water drip, drip, dripping down to free parts of his body, too. Now, he could rock backward, ramming his shoulders into the ice, then push off his booted heels and ram the front of the ice.

He winced as his level of pain jacked up. Like his inner wounds, the gash in his shoulder still hadn’t healed, the cut raw and angry, a symbol of his emotional state. Did he stop, though? No. Rock back—rock forward. Back, forward. Ram, ram.

One of myriad cracks lengthened and widened, and he grinned, his heart thudding against his ribs. Closer than ever!

Nolalee flitted about, going from pillar to pillar before stopping in front of Zion—the one who’d supposedly impregnated her with a glance. She traced a heart on Zion’s pillar, and every muscle in Bane’s body knotted.

Why did she focus on the male? The enemy. If she bore an attraction to him...

Unacceptable! Bane required her cooperation and loyalty.

“We survived,” she said. Survived what? “We’re close to civilization, rescue a probability.”

Rescue?

He’d known the day she was born, had felt it deep in his bones. He’d known the day she reached adulthood and they established a link, weakening his ties to Aveline.