“We should go.” I stepped forward before things could further escalate, all the while my heart bleated for Scythe to somehow stop this—to talk to his king. To try something.

Yet I knew his hands were completely tied. I knew it was best that he did nothing.

“Indeed,” Rorn said. “We should.” Without looking at me, my husband held out his hand, and I placed mine within his. His skin was cool, clammy, and his fingers bruising as they folded through mine. “But do you not wish to say goodbye?” he crooned, soft and daring.

I merely glared, though Rorn still wouldn’t look at me.

Vordane’s king watched, blue eyes flitting between Scythe and me, as the shadows congregated and split through the dark of night, and we left their land for Wistensia.

Moments later, the familiar yet no longer comforting scent of my paint parlor enveloped me.

The smog cleared to reveal Theenon, who appeared to have been waiting.

Iron manacles were instantly placed around my wrists, their burn burrowing through my skin to my bones. Afterward, Theenon stepped back with his nose in the air. As though he were so displeased with me, he did not care that what he’d done would wound more than my flesh.

I would not be warping anywhere.

Rorn stared at me for endless seconds. I stared back, unwilling to cower and refusing to say a word.

Finally, his ice-struck features cracked with the curling of his upper lip. He made a sound of disgust and turned for the door. “Welcome home, wife.”

PART THREE

TWENTY-SIX

Scythe

Dade stared at me for so long, I was beginning to think it was a new torture tactic of his. “She was your mate.”

“She is my mate,” I corrected.

The shame of what I’d let happen threatened to split my chest in two until it bled out upon the table in the war room, where Dade had summoned me mere hours after Aster was taken.

Astrantia.

Her true name crawled through me like a parasite. An itch I could never hope to quell.

I should have been furious, and I was, but I couldn’t find it within me to feel any more anger toward her. This wasn’t her fault. In many ways, it was my own for not encouraging her to tell me the truth—for failing to make her comfortable enough to do so.

Instead, I’d wasted days being an ignorant, insufferable ass when I should’ve opened my fucking eye to what was truly happening to my mate. I should’ve realized she wasn’t torn between two males—she was fucking stuck with no way out.

I’d known, had guessed, that she was bound in marriage to someone of importance. Someone not so easily deceived and deserted for another. But I’d have never guessed this.