Frozen Tides (Falling Kingdoms 4)

Lucia wondered what her father and brother might say if they could see her now, sitting in a tavern, across from the soup-eating fire Kindred. The thought almost made her smile.

“Eat.” Kyan pointed to Lucia’s bowl.

“I’m not hungry.”

“Do you want to wither away and die?” He raised a pale brow. “Is that what you’re doing? Starving yourself so you can be reunited with your beloved Watcher?”

Whenever Kyan said the word Watcher, his expression darkened and his amber eyes flashed bright blue.

Anger. Hatred. The need for vengeance. They simmered just beneath the otherwise genteel exterior of this powerful being.

It was much the same whenever Lucia heard Alexius’s name. The pain of having learned that he, too, had used her for his own gain had faded in the days since she’d lost him. The scar tissue that wound had left behind had grown thicker, tougher, as protective as a plate of armor.

No one would ever use her like that again.

“No,” she replied. “Believe me, I want to live.”

“I’m very glad to hear that.”

Lucia stared down at her bowl and brought a spoonful of soup to her lips. “This is watery and tasteless.”

Kyan reached over and took some for himself to sample. “To you, perhaps. But that doesn’t make it less of a miracle.”

The miracle Lucia wanted to come upon most of all was a witch—the older and more knowledgeable the better. They needed one who knew where to find a very special kind of stone wheel used as a magical porthole leading directly to the Sanctuary, the legendary world of the immortals, where the Watchers had stood guard over the Kindred in their crystal prisons for millennia.

Lucia had wanted to know why neither she nor Kyan—as powerful as they both were—could sense this magic without outside help. He explained that there was no magic to sense, that such magic had been hidden to protect the Sanctuary from outside threats.

Therefore, they didn’t need a witch’s magic to find these stone wheels, they needed a witch who’d seen one with her own eyes and knew what it was.

Once they found one, only then could Lucia use her magic to yank Timotheus right out of his safe haven.

Lucia realized Kyan was watching her and she looked up from her bowl.

“You still want to help me, don’t you?” he asked, his voice softer now.

She nodded. “Of course. I hate Watchers as much as you do.”

“I highly doubt that. But I’m sure there’s no love lost between you after all that’s happened.” He sighed. Suddenly, he looked very mortal to Lucia. Very vulnerable, and very tired. “Once Timotheus is dead, perhaps I can finally find peace.”

“As soon as he’s dead, we’ll find your family, and then you can find peace,” she replied. “And anyone who gets in our way will be very, very sorry.”

“My fierce little sorceress.” He grinned at her. “You remind me so much of Eva. She protected us, too. She was the only one who understood what we wanted—what we needed—more than anything else.”

“To be free, and to be a real family.”

“Yes.”

It wasn’t common knowledge that the Kindred weren’t just magical forces trapped within crystals. They were elemental beings, with hopes and dreams and goals. Yet all who believed in their existence, including Lucia’s adoptive father, King Gaius, thought them to be nothing more than shiny treasures that would bring ultimate power to their possessors.

Once she and Kyan had summoned Timotheus from the Sanctuary, she would drain the Watcher of his magic until he became mortal.

And then Lucia would kill him, just as she had Melenia.

She had taken such pleasure in the death of that beautiful immortal—a woman who’d corrupted Alexius to the point he’d nearly murdered Lucia. She’d used Lucia’s blood to escape her own prison and awaken Kyan, her former lover.

But the pain in Melenia’s eyes, just before her death, when she’d realized Kyan had never loved her back . . .

Such sweet, sweet vengeance.