Gathering Darkness (Falling Kingdoms 3)

It all made sense. On the maps she’d seen her father studying, the Imperial Road terminated close to the temple.

“There’s been no disaster there,” Alexius said. “No blood has been spilled. And yet you believe this is the place.”

“I’m certain it is,” she said. But then a shadow of worry clouded over her confidence. “I shared this information with Cleo, to get a reaction. To see in her eyes proof that she’d been the one to betray us.”

“And if she does, and her rebel friend, Jonas, claims the crystal?”

“Then I’ll steal it back.” As soon as she said it, she felt the truth of her conviction. Her doubts disappeared again.

“Good.” A smile played at his lips before his gaze grew pensive. “The Temple of Valoria is an excellent place for other important events as well, I think.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s the perfect place for us to be married.”

She couldn’t help but laugh at his persistence. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Of course I am. Unless you were waiting for an official betrothal to a lord, that is. I’m not sure a lowly tutor could ever compete with that.”

She wanted Alexius more than any lord who’d ever existed. “You’re impossible.”

He took her face in his hands again. “Say it. Say we can run away to Limeros today to be married and claim the last crystal as ours, and no one has to know until we want them to.”

Today? She stared at him, a million thoughts racing through her mind. A million doubts, a million questions, all swirling about into a storm of confusion.

But there was one thing she wasn’t confused about.

“Yes. Yes, I’ll marry you, Alexius.”

CHAPTER 27

MAGNUS

AURANOS

“The king summons you.”

Cronus stood at the archway of the palace library like the looming shadow of a mountain. Magnus was there to search the shelves for more information about the Kindred and, due to his father’s recent claims about his true birth mother, he was also researching quite a bit about witches.

“Does he, now. Immediately, or at my leisure?”

Cronus crossed his arms. “Immediately.”

“I was joking, Cronus.” Magnus threw the book he’d been flipping through onto a large pile in the center of a long oak table. The librarian—a strange little woman with bright red hair and high arched eyebrows—would put them back where they belonged eventually.

“Of course. Shall we, your highness?”

“Oh, you’ve been officially assigned to usher me to him today, have you? That must make it extra important.”

Cronus eyed him. “You’re in a rare mood today.”

“You think?” Actually, Magnus was in an apathetic mood. He’d boiled with anger for two full days about getting to the temple, only to find the treasure gone.

Now he was trying to focus on what he could control. He’d sworn to keep an extra vigilant watch over Alexius from that day forward. He knew the exiled Watcher was responsible for the missing crystal—it had to have been him. Who else could it have been?

Perhaps the king still trusted Melenia and the boy she’d sent in her stead, but Magnus didn’t. Not for a single, solitary moment.

“Lead the way,” Magnus said to the captain of the guard.