Storm Princess Saga- the Complete Series

by Everly Frost

  A sob builds in my chest. “I’m not what you think I am, Cassian. I’m not a gargoyle.”

  “You are to me…” His eyes begin to close. “Take it, Princess. Take it and strike.”

  Gravity returns and we fall together. I hit the ground with Cassian beneath me, my knees knocking the ground, the heartstone rattling between us. He cushions my fall, holding me safe in his wings so I don’t hit my head even though his back cracks against the hard floor and his body finally goes limp.

  His free hand slides away from my hair, stroking down my neck, falling. A final breath sighs out of him. “Maybe in another life… Marbella…”

  It’s the way he says my name that breaks me.

  Sobs tear out of me as his fist opens and the stone remains very still on his chest. Tears pour out of me, blurring my vision. He wanted me to take the stone. He wanted me to believe him. And now he’s gone.

  The Queen’s heart is deadly to everyone. Only a gargoyle of royal blood can touch it. It killed Cassian, ended his suffering, and he was one of the strongest gargoyles I know.

  I reach over to close his eyes, my palms brushing across his cheekbones. Sobbing, I take hold of his left wing and pull it over his body, covering the stone at the same time.

  I’m reaching for his other wing when something slams into my back. I’m thrown forward against Cassian’s chest, the force pushing all the air out of my lungs. Pain rips across my back as if a hook just raked over the top of me. Screaming out the fire in my spine, I look up just in time to see Llion tumble through the air over me, his left wing damaged and dangling.

  It was his wing that clipped me. If it wasn’t for my armor, it would have ripped my back open. But he never would have done that deliberately. He’s hurt.

  Ducking, I slide off Cassian, crouching beside him as the fight rages around me. With a savage roar, Howl takes flight after Llion, spearing through the air, doing everything he can to kill him. Llion reaches the side of the Court and angles left but another bolt hits him. Death bolts. Just like the one that hurt Cassian. Only the Prime Heartstone is keeping Llion alive.

  On my left, Jasper fights three guards at once. Two of the guards who kept him from reaching me before are dead at his feet. As one of the guards dislodges Jasper’s weapon, he ducks, rolls, and grabs a sword from a dead guard, spinning right back into the fight. Welsian and Liliana fight side by side nearby, bodies building up around them, but more guards keep coming. Roar and Badenoch hold position on the far side, and Erit and Arlo fight further away from the mountain side. All of them are cut and bleeding. There are many bodies on the floor and not all of them are guards. The miners are fighting as hard as they can, but the next wave of guards will soon arrive.

  The only way to end this is to defeat Howl.

  Another blast hits Llion right where his hurt wing meets his shoulder. He’s close enough to me that I hear the bone snap. Unable to fly, he loses elevation and drops to the ground several paces away from me, shouting in agony.

  “Llion!”

  His tortured eyes meet mine. He’s trying to heal, but he’s still learning how to control the heartstone’s power. Howl has had much longer to master the deep magic.

  I jolt backward as Howl flies over my head and hovers over me with a sneer, his wings beating the air around me, sending tornados swirling around my body.

  “You will watch all of your friends die today, little doll.” He soars over my head and grabs hold of Llion’s shoulder with one clawed foot and his broken wing with the other. Llion thumps at him, tries to get up, pushing at Howl with all the force he can muster, but Howl doesn’t budge.

  His feet shift, one pulling and the other pushing.

  He’s going to rip Llion’s wing right off.

  Howl’s focus is on me. His threat is for me. “When the Prime Heartstone is mine, you will be too. Watch, little doll. Watch and understand there’s nothing you can do.”

  I can’t let it happen. I can’t let him hurt anyone else. He hasn’t seen the Queen’s heart hidden under Cassian’s wing. He didn’t feel the blast when it awoke because Cassian’s wings sealed it in. It was another gift Cassian gave me—concealing the heart’s awakening from Howl.

  Cassian held the Queen’s heart for more than a few seconds before it killed him. If I pick it up, I’ll have that long to use it against Howl before it kills me. All I have to do is make sure he holds it too.

  My gift to Howl.

  I tell myself it’s simple. I push all thoughts of Baelen and freedom out of my mind as I dive under Cassian’s wing, feeling his weight around me for the last time, one last cocoon to keep me safe before I throw myself into the path of danger, before I challenge death to claim me.

  If I had time to find the bag Cassian carried the stone in, I would. If I had time to pick it up safely, I would. But Llion’s scream of agony tells me he won’t be alive long enough for me to find a way.

  I can do this. It’s only four steps, one after the other, simple: pick up the stone, run, jump, shove it into Howl’s harness. It will lock into the place he saved for Prime’s heart. And then he’ll die.

  Don’t think.

  My hand closes over the Queen’s heart. Its surface is smooth beneath my fingers, tingling. I’m ready for the pain, channeling it into speed. My body’s already moving, rising up, muscles firing. Howl is only five paces away. The hardest part will be rising to his height, but Llion can help me there. He’s crouched, one knee bent. It’s the same technique I used to tangle with Arlo: knee, shoulder, up. It’s going to hurt him because of the way Howl’s gripping him but I have no other option.

  “Llion! Up!” I don’t have time to scream anything else. My right foot hits his knee, then my left hits the shoulder Howl isn’t clutching. Llion rises at the same time. He can’t move much, but it’s enough to give me a lift.

  I launch myself at Howl. Even if I don’t place the stone exactly in the harness, as long as I can wedge it against his skin, it will work.

  He thinks I’m trying to fight him, to push him away from Llion. As I slam into his chest, he catches me in his thick arms, the momentum tipping him backward. Mentally, I beg Llion to tip with us because Howl’s feet are still attached to his wing and shoulder and a sudden wrench backward will rip him apart. At the last moment, Howl lets go, releasing Llion from his claws and flying up into the high ceiling with me in his arms.

  I swing my legs around his hips and wrap them tight because the last time he held me in the air—the first time I met him—he drained the air right out of me by squeezing my lungs.

  As my legs wind around him, a chuckle rumbles out of his throat. “Little doll, you surprise me.”

  Yes, I’ve wrapped my legs around you, you asshole. But I won’t have to stomach it for long.

  My chest heaves, my heart hurts, and my hand burns like I plunged it into fire. I’m shaking, rattling so hard I won’t be able to function soon. I only have a moment before everything ends. I have nothing I want to say to him and no time even if I did.

  The Queen’s heart clicks neatly into the harness around Howl’s neck. The sound echoes around and around inside my head.

  Click.

  The effect is instantaneous. Not like Cassian at all. White light shoots through Howl’s chest, through the corded muscles in his arms and shoulders, through his wing bones, and all the way to his wing daggers. It spreads, grows, ripples, and then… it starts shredding.

  Terror fills his eyes and a scream of pain blasts from his mouth. His hands close around my waist, squeezing my rib cage painfully tight. His fingers claw at me while his skin visibly boils.

  “What did you do?!”

  I don’t answer. I’ll never have to answer him again.

  It is rapid and ruthless. Over in seconds. Like acid, the light burns through his wings and cuts them to pieces before my eyes. His bones pop, crack, and implode from the inside. We lose altitude as his wings disintegrate and he can’t stay airborne. It wouldn’t matter if he tried.

  A
final streak of light shoots up his thick neck, reaches his eyes, and lights them up. For a moment, everything he did, everything he is, every cruel act he committed presses in on me. Then there’s a crack…

  … and his neck breaks.

  His head sinks forward and we plummet toward the ground, tipping the wrong way so that I’ll hit the floor beneath him.

  It doesn’t matter.

  I did what I needed to do. Howl is dead. He can’t hurt the gargoyles anymore, can’t threaten, torture, or imprison them. Cassian’s death wasn’t for nothing. I did what he asked me to do.

  Now I can let myself feel what I need to feel. Sadness that I won’t see Baelen’s eyes open, that I won’t be there when he wakes. Faith that Jasper will find a way to open the deep springs and heal him. Fear for my family and my Storm Command—for the elves who are loyal to me—because I can’t help them now. But Baelen will. He’ll discover the power he now holds and he’ll use it to free them. I trust him to.

  Baelen, I love you. I always will.

  Howl’s dead hands open, releasing me into the air like a butterfly into a hurricane. The Queen’s heart floats up and away from his shoulders as his body plummets down on top of me. At the last moment, my floating finger rises up to tap the stone.

  A glow ripples out from me like dying sunlight and a hiss fills my ears: Choose.

  Choose what, I wonder?

  Choose life or death.

  It’s too late to choose life. My world is already darkness.

  Epilogue - Cassian

  The light shifts. I lift my hand to shield my eyes, squinting into the brightness before I lower my hand to stare at my fingers. I don’t know much for certain, but I know I’m standing upright. My fist is what I remember it to be. Real and tangible. My wings are partially spread. I’m dressed in my battle armor, but I’m not in Crimson Court.

  I don’t know how I got here. Or why. I don’t know where ‘here’ is.

  As the light clears, I make sense of the trees soaring skyward on every side of me. The path I stand on begins on the very spot where I stand, forged into the earth by a scorch mark before it becomes spotless farther ahead, clean pebbles pointing the way through the forest. The only way is forward.

  The memory of battle, of death, makes me shudder as I tuck my wings to my sides and take a step.

  Sunlight glints through the leaves as I head toward the sound of water. I peel off my armor as I go, ridding myself of the heavy reminder of all things in the past.

  I died. Willingly. I know that much.

  By the time I reach the path’s end, I’m bare-chested, wearing only leather pants. I would get rid of those too if it wouldn’t leave me naked. My instincts are basic: wash, breathe, figure out where the hell I am.

  A still lake opens out in front of me. The path leads right up to it, the trees extending to the edge of the quiet water, obscuring my surroundings on either side. I make my way toward it, determined to wash off the memories of the things I can’t change.

  “Cassian?”

  A female rises to her feet at the edge of the lake only a few paces away. I startle. I didn’t see her there, but she must have been hidden by the trees. Another path extends along the edge of the lake, leading away on that side.

  I frown, her voice triggering long-distant memories. She’s about my age—mid-twenties. Her sunset hair is tied back into a loose braid that extends past her waist. Her eyes are a deep cornflower blue. She carries a basket of flowers. Cherry blossoms.

  She drops it to the ground, her lips parted in surprise. Then caution. She ignores the scattered flowers as she approaches me, her white dress diaphanous in the sunlight, barely concealing her curves, her wings so translucent that they fragment the sunlight as she walks.

  Daring to lift her hands to my chest, she travels a path to my neck, my cheeks, one fingertip finally settling on the edge of my lips.

  Her touch is seeking, searching, her eyes studying mine.

  My startled breath washes across her fingertip.

  Her expression clears. “It is you.” She bites her lip, a gesture of uncertainty. “Do you remember me?”

  I breathe her name. “Elaina.”

  A smile lights up her eyes. “Yes.”

  Pain strikes through me. I can’t take any more cruel acts of fate. My voice is a demand. “What is this? How are you here?”

  If she disappears, I’ll turn to darkness. If she’s an illusion, I’ll rage like the Storm. If she’s here to taunt me with things I can’t have, I’ll—

  Alarm crosses her features, her hands becoming firm against my cheeks, forcing me to meet her eyes. “Don’t, please, Cassian. Don’t wish to become darkness.”

  She has grown so tall that her head could rest comfortably in the crook of my neck. She rises up on her tiptoes to plant a kiss on my lips that steals the breath from my lungs and clears the anger from my mind.

  It’s only when the sunlight glints off her wings again that I realize the sun disappeared behind clouds as soon as I let rage consume my thoughts. I’m not sure how, but my emotions changed our surroundings. Or maybe they changed me.

  I frown in confusion as she speaks quickly. “This is a place of deep magic. It is the place of choice for those who triggered the deep magic when they died.” Her expression becomes deeply sad. “You’re here because you gave your life for something greater than yourself.”

  My lips burn where she kissed me, not a painful burn. A burn I want again. “I don’t understand.”

  She gestures to the sun. “The Elven Queen gave her life to become the sun. The Gargoyle Queen gave her life to become the moon.” Elaina lowers her hand to my heart. “I gave my life for you. And now you gave your life for your people. We triggered the deep magic, Cassian.”

  “But what does that mean?”

  She attempts another smile. “It means we get to choose what we become.” Her hand rises to the sun again, gesturing to the path, then the flowers. “Sunlight, pebbles, a tree. Or… we can choose to stay here and remain who we are.”

  I inhale a sharp breath, but she hurries on, “Please don’t become darkness, Cassian. There’s already a storm. There’s already night and shadows. I don’t need more of those. I… need… you.”

  She lets me go, sliding her arms away from me, lowering them to her sides as if she’s leaving me free to make a choice.

  The full meaning of what she said is slowly sinking in. Stay here and remain who we are.

  I don’t reach for her. Not yet. “How are you still here after all these years?”

  The breeze presses her dress against her body, the outline of her breasts and hips becoming clear before the material puffs in the other direction. It scatters my thoughts, not only because she’s gorgeous but because she’s completely vulnerable, her heart open to me as she waits for me to make my choice.

  She says, “Because I waited for you.”

  If I could go back to the first time we kissed and change the course of the future, I would run with her as far as we could. I would never become Howl’s General, never fight my own people, never descend into darkness. But I can’t change any of that. All I can do is choose my future.

  I cross the distance and pull her to me, encircling her waist to plaster her against me. “You’re older.”

  She tilts her head back, a surprisingly sultry smile on her lips. “I decided to age at the same rate you did so that when you arrived, I wouldn’t be a girl anymore.” The corner of her mouth twitches into a smile. “Even if you arrived here as an old man, I wanted to be the same age as you. Although… I’m not sure you would recognize me with gray hair.”

  “I would know you, Elaina,” I say. I mean it as a promise that I would know her no matter what she looked like, but the way her lips part, an intensity growing in her eyes tells me she heard something much more provocative.

  Her gaze falls to my lips. “Are you still as polite as you used to—”

  “No.”

  I crush my lips against hers, explor
ing the curve of her mouth. My hands seek to know the shape of her back and shoulders, her waist, her hips, all the way back up to her slender neck. I thought I’d lost her forever. I never thought I’d see her again.

  Now she’s here, but the past—my life—weighs heavily on me. I’ve lived a life without her, fallen in love with another, made choices that horrify me, done things I’m ashamed of, and tried to find redemption. How can I put all of that behind me?

  She moans against my lips, but I force myself to pull back, not pushing her away but breaking our kiss. I stroke the soft curls at the side of her face. “I’m not the same gargoyle you knew.”

  She presses her hand to my heart again, easing the pain in my chest. “You’re hurting and I won’t ask for anything you can’t give. I don’t expect you to forget everything you felt. All of it makes you who you are. But I want you to know that I accept that. All of you. Good and bad. All I ask is that you let me in.”

  She looks up at me with a question in her eyes.

  My voice breaks. “How can you still love me?”

  She lowers her head to my chest, turning her ear as if she is listening to my heart. “You think you’ve changed, but you haven’t. Your heart is still true, Cassian.”

  “How can you know that?”

  She tips her head back. Her smile becomes gentle, serious. “Because you found me.”

  I pull her close, kiss her, and inhale the scent of freedom.

  Storm Princess 3

  The Princess Must Reign

  The Princess Must Reign

  Storm Princess Saga

  Book Three

  Everly Frost and Jaymin Eve

  Copyright © 2018 by Everly Frost and Jaymin Eve

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the authors except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.