We might still be negotiating the final details of our relationship’s design, but before we’d ever shared a kiss, Leander and I had formed an iron-strong alliance. Like it or not, I had sworn to warn him of any approaching enemies, and even more importantly, I needed to keep the promise I’d made to him earlier: Now that we’d committed to each other, we needed to work through our problems together.

So it was a horrible shock, when I stepped over the final grassy rise before his castle, to look down and see Leander—surrounded by a crowd of heavily armed Larimont soldiers in uniform—stepping into the first of a row of unfamiliar carriages without me.

“What do you think you’re doing?” I bellowed.

The soldiers all jerked around to stare at me, but I ignored them. I wasn’t shouting at them, and my fiancé knew it.

Even from this distance, I could see Leander’s wince as he turned, holding up his elegant white hands in graceful appeasement despite the brutal iron cuffs that held them together. “Don’t worry, darling!” he called. “I left you a message. Just look after my minions while I’m gone, all right?”

“Look after them yourself,” I growled as I broke into a tilting run down that steep, grassy hillside towards him and towards the increasingly agitated-looking crowd of soldiers milling behind him. “Don’t you dare get yourself arrested without me!”

I knew his powers nearly as well as my own. There was no chance that a mere sixteen soldiers could have forced him into going anywhere he didn’t choose. No, if they thought they were taking Leander by force, he had some other, far more dangerous plan in mind—and if he’d done it without warning me first, he was definitely trying to protect me.

Apparently, we wouldn’t be planning our wedding after all, because I was about to be forced to murder him instead. And then, when he rose inevitably from the grave, I would be waiting in the cemetery in the moonlight to tell him exactly what I thought of his actions! In detail!

“Mia,” Leander began placatingly—then whipped around in a sudden, lethally quick motion. “Lower those weapons, you fools! You’re here for me, not for anybody else.”

Those soldiers certainly were getting agitated, waving their rifles around as if they thought me an invading army all on my own. “Halt right there, Miss!” their captain shouted. “If you step any closer to our prisoner—”