Peri kept trying to remember if she’d attempted to move the second she realized what happened or if she’d been frozen out of shock. If there had been any hesitation, had it been the seconds needed that could have saved the alpha female? It was a question she hadn’t allowed herself to fully express for fear of the answer. But the truth was, Peri didn’t know. There were times that the battle was a crisp, clear memory in her mind, and other times, it was a blur. She preferred the blur because seeing the faces of those she had lost twisted her stomach until she was sure she’d never be able to eat again. Food was ash in her mouth. Air was like poison to her lungs because she honestly was sick of breathing it. Water, so necessary to life, had become a curse. Three things designed to keep her on this earth, and she wanted no part of them.

  Peri swallowed down the agony and forced herself to stop thinking about Alina. Instead, she was taken back to the moment when she’d contemplated attacking the Order compound. The minute she’d made the decision, peace had filled her. She snorted. “Right, peace. Just keep telling yourself that, Peri,” she muttered. She needed to be honest with herself, but at the moment, she’d rather not. But perhaps it was time to not only be honest but to face reality as well. Peace was not the right word. How in the world could she find peace in killing innocents? Torion’s face flashed through her thoughts as she remembered the minute he’d arrived while she’d been in the middle of destroying the compound with the cold fire. Her eyes had met those of the young boy, and along with him, she’d seen Titus, Thia, Slate, and Hope. Innocent children caught in the chaos of her vengeance. Though it had only been Torion present, she’d felt as if the other’s lives were also in her hands.

  She was damned if she did, but also equally as damned if she didn’t. If she left the Order intact, they might get their hands on the children again. And if she destroyed them, as she had, she took innocent lives down with the guilty. But not Torion. He hadn’t died. No thanks to her. By the grace of the Great Luna, the draheim Ludcarab captured had rescued them. The only supernatural beings impervious to cold fire—a fact she’d forgotten in the heat of the moment.

  Peri remembered wrapping herself around Torion, hoping to minimize the pain he might feel from the cold fire. She’d begged the Great Luna to intervene, to keep Peri’s own choice from taking the life of one so young. The answer had come with the sound of huge beating wings. Peri hadn’t seen the draheim. She’d only felt his large talons wrap around her and Torion. Before the dragon could take off, she’d yelled at him and pointed in Tenia’s direction. Peri had not known if the fae woman was alive, but she refused to leave her body to burn. The large beast had gently scooped up Tenia’s body in his other talon and flown them away from the falling compound. Peri remembered looking down to find a sea of cold fire quenching its thirst with everything in its path. The sight of all the desolation her power caused still sickened her.

  Without thinking about her sudden choice, Peri flashed. Maybe she needed to see what the final result had been, or maybe she wanted to punish herself.

  A second later, she stood on blackened land of the former Order compound, surrounded by craters and ashes. She turned in a slow circle, her eyes soaking in the emptiness around her. There was nothing left to indicate that a compound full of supernaturals had occupied the space around her. She took a deep breath, and the smell of her magic pushed her to her knees. “What did I do?” she gasped. She laid her hands on top of the ashes. She couldn’t have stopped the tears even if she’d wanted to. They ran down her face, dropping onto the damaged ground. Peri let her hands glide reverently over the remains and wondered who had spent their last moments in this very spot. Did they die quickly, or had the agony ripped through every nerve, lasting until there were no buildings left standing? Was it someone the Order had blackmailed into service? Or was it a loyal Order member who deserved Peri’s retribution? Did it matter? They’d been a living being. This hadn’t been an attack by the enemy. She hadn’t been caught up in the heat of battle, fighting for her life. “But I might have been one day,” she said to her unspoken thoughts.

  As she pushed her hands further into the earth, the ashes covered them until they could no longer be seen. If her heart hadn’t been broken before, it was shattered now, seeing firsthand what she was capable of when she let her pain and anger rule. She’d abandoned reason. She’d abandoned her obedience to the Great Luna and taken matters into her own hands. Judge, jury, and executioner.

  She wanted to say she was sorry, but her lips wouldn’t move. She didn’t know if it would be true. “What kind of person does that make me?” A sob tore through her as she leaned forward until her forehead pressed against the ashes. Her body shook as she completely released the final reins she’d held on her emotions. “AHHHH,” Peri yelled into the ground until there was no air left in her lungs. Every muscle in her body grew rigid. She attempted to keep herself from splaying out on the ground and begging it to swallow her into the earth. Her hands fisted the remains of all that she’d destroyed. “I should have been with you,” she said. “My ashes should be mingled with all of yours.” But she’d survived. She felt her power growing inside of her, rising with her tumultuous emotions, and she knew she had to get out of there before she did even more damage, if that was possible. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, gripping the remains tighter in her hands. “I’m so sorry.” And she found as the words left her mouth, that she did indeed mean them.

  Peri flashed again, but she didn’t return to her spot on the ledge. Instead, she appeared on a high mountain back in the draheim across a valley from where Torion and his unconscious mother lay. She couldn’t return to him. How could she sit mere feet from them when Peri was the cause of the woman's condition? Tenia’s child clung to his mother every night, begging for her to wake up. That was Peri’s fault. “Damn.” She looked down at her hands which still clutched the ashes from the graveyard that had once been the Order compound. Her stomach rolled, and vomit rose up in her throat. Tenia could have been these ashes. She would have died much too soon because of Peri’s need to destroy that which had destroyed her.

  “Why did you let me live this long?” she asked the empty space around her, forcing her voice to remain soft. But what she really wanted to do was scream. “If you knew this was going to happen, why did you allow me to live?” Peri opened her hands and watched as the contents blew away out over the forest of the draheim realm until there was nothing left. “If you knew I was going to make this terrible choice, why did you allow air to continue to flow through my lungs?” Her questions were for the goddess who created her. The one who held life in her hands. She didn’t know if the Great Luna would answer, but she asked anyway.

  How on earth could one person go on living with all the pain, guilt, rage, and dread that was strangling her? It was too much.

  Peri grabbed the neck of her robe and pulled, ripping the fabric away from her throat, hoping it would make breathing easier. But still, she gasped for air. She raked her nails across her neck and fell to the ground. Her legs seemed to be useless to her for the past few hours. Her knees struck the earth with a jarring pain. But the pain was a release.

  “WHY!” she wailed and pounded her fists into the dirt. With every smack of the ground, her power radiated through the mountain, shaking the bedrock beneath her. The trees around Peri snapped like toothpicks, and birds squawked as they jumped from the falling trunks and limbs. Over and over, she slammed fist and magic, her voice rising to the heavens, carrying every ounce of misery she felt.

  Exhaustion slowed her movements as she knelt, panting, her palms flat against the earth. The skin of her knuckles split, and blood dripped from them. The bright red liquid—a reminder that she still lived while many no longer did. All because of her. “How is it fair?” She asked the question out loud. Her voice was hoarse from her screams. “How many lives will I get to live? How many transgressions must I commit before you will cut me down?”

  Peri pushed up from the ground until she rested on the heels of her feet. She could feel the breeze on her skin where she’d torn her robes. The air burned the scratches she'd left on her neck. And her knees ached from hitting the ground. She welcomed every bit of the physical pain. Physical pain was sufferable. The cut of a blade, the scorch from magic, or the claws of a beast were more acceptable than this. “Is this my punishment? Is death too merciful for all that I’ve done?” The space around her remained quiet. No answers came.

  “What could you do from the grave?” A small voice spoke from behind her. Peri turned her head to see Torion standing a few feet away. His face was streaked with tears, his eyes red from crying. “How could you help if there’s no life in you to do what you must?”

  Peri pressed her lips together and turned away from the child, ducking her head until her chin touched her chest. She bit the inside of her cheek, not allowing the words she wanted to snap at the boy to come out. Damn his ability to flash. She didn’t want to have a child question her, especially not if his questions made her probe too deeply into her own consciousness.

  She heard his feet on the ground approach. “Who needs you in the next life more than we do here?”

  “There’s more than enough people to step in and take my place,” Peri answered.

  “That’s not true.” Torion sat down next to her, so close that Peri could feel the heat from his body. “Did the creator make another just like you? Skender has told me stories about you. All the incredible things you’ve done. What if you had not been there to do them?”

  “Someone else would have.” She shifted away from him.

  “You don’t know that.” Torion shook his head. “Nobody stepped up to help my mom until Skender came. He says that he has done terrible things. But despite those terrible things, he’s protected me and my mom. If he’d not been there, who would have done it?”

  Peri didn’t have an answer for him. Skender was Tenia’s mate. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for her, no matter his transgressions, past or present. So, no, someone else wouldn’t have done what he has. “That’s different,” she said. “Skender is the other half of your mom’s soul. He couldn't keep from helping her, or you for that matter.”

  “He wouldn’t have been able to if he was dead.”

  Bloody hell, the kid wasn’t pulling any punches. Peri’s gut clenched at the boy’s words. She thought back to the many times when she’d used her magic, or a blade, to fight evil. She thought about the lives she’d protected and been willing to sacrifice for. Would someone else have been willing to do those things? She shook her head. “I’m no one special, Torion. And for me to think so would be hubris.”

  He sighed. “Skender said you were stubborn.”

  Peri almost smiled at the weariness in the boy’s voice, as if he were the adult and she an errant child who refused to obey.

  “Do you honestly believe that you weren’t created specifically to be you? The creator said she has a specific purpose for my life. Does that mean she doesn’t have a specific purpose for you, too?” He turned so he was facing her and scooted forward until his small knees touched hers. “Do you think she created you and then said ‘oops’? Because I’m pretty sure the creator of our races doesn't make ‘oopses.’”

  “That’s not a word,” Peri said dryly. She knew he made a good point, but she didn't want to allow his words to affect her.

  “Yes, it is. Get a dictionary and look it up.”

  She glanced up at him and lifted a brow.

  He shrugged. “What? My mom tells me that all the time.”

  “Are you done?” Peri knew what Torion’s answer would be, but she was hoping he’d surprise her.

  “No.”

  Nope. No surprise.

  “I’m not leaving you while you’re like this, Peri.” Her hands rested on her legs, and Torion reached out and wrapped one of his smaller ones around hers.

  She swallowed hard. “Like what?”

  “Alone.”

  The word reverberated through her mind, deep into the marrow of her bones and straight to her soul. Alone. It’s what she’d been for so long. After everything, she’d begun to believe that it was what was best for her.

  “Sometimes, I want to be alone,” Torion continued. He turned his body so he was once again sitting beside her. Peri looked at his face while he stared out over the destruction she’d caused by throwing her little tantrum. “Every once in a while it just feels good to be alone. But my mom says being too alone is never a good thing.” He reached down and picked up a blade of grass and began to pull it apart. “She says that being too alone can fill the empty places inside with dark things.”

  Peri bit her lip, but it didn’t stop her from asking. “What dark things?”

  Torion kept staring at the area around them. “She said we fill them with doubt. Lies that we tell ourselves, lies that we’ve heard others say about us, and anger that we refuse to release.”

  “Does your mom always speak to you as if you’re grown?” Peri was deflecting, but what else was she supposed to do? Pour her heart out to a six-year-old fae child?

  Torion tossed the mutilated piece of grass to the ground. “She talks to me like I have a brain in my head. Just because I’m young doesn’t mean I don’t understand things.”

  Peri’s lips turned up slightly. “You really do remind me of Titus.”

  “He knows things, too.” Torion grinned.

  “He knows too much.” Peri snorted. “That’s his uncle Gavril’s fault. And his aunt Jen’s.”

  “He told me about his aunt Jen. I don’t think I want to meet her.” He shivered as if the thought was enough to cause him discomfort.

  “Nobody does, kid.” She took a deep breath and slipped down to the ground so she could fold her legs in front of her. “You need to get back to the cave. Skender will be worried about you.”

  He titled his head and pursed his lips. “Is that your way of telling me to get lost?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Are you going to keep destroying the mountain?”

  Peri glanced around. It wasn’t the first time she’d leveled a forest. Probably wouldn’t be the last. “I’ll try to refrain. For now. But I refuse to make promises that I won’t be able to keep.” She could practically feel the disapproval rolling off of him as he stood and brushed off his pants.

  “I suppose that will have to be enough for now. Please, come back.” His voice cracked on the last word. She didn’t look up at him. Her emotions were still not entirely under control, and Peri was afraid she might completely lose it if she met his gaze.

  “I’m not going anywhere, not while your mom is vulnerable, and not until I know what Skender’s plan is.” Peri was still trying to come to terms with the fact that Skender was Tenia’s mate and that she couldn’t kill him. At least not yet.

  Torion placed his hand on her shoulder and gave it a pat, then he was gone. And she was alone again.

  “Why do you insist on destroying our land?”

  “Dammit,” Peri growled. “What does a high fae have to do to get some peace and quiet in this place?” Peri glanced over at the female draheim who’d landed next to her. For a beast so large, the dragon had hardly made a sound.

  “You can have peace and quiet when you stop causing chaos,” Serapha replied.

  If humans ever found out about supernatural beings, Peri had a feeling talking dragons might be the one race that their mortal minds simply wouldn't accept. “Your offspring should have left me in that compound to die, then I wouldn’t be here to cause chaos.”

  Serapha shifted her massive form and settled onto her haunches. “Your actions freed him from the elf king's clutches. He was indebted to you, just as I am.”

  “I’m releasing you of your debt.” Peri waved a hand at the beast. “You've provided sanctuary for me and my charges in your realm. That is enough.”

  The draheim was quiet for a few minutes. Peri could feel the dragon's gaze, which was nearly as hot as the fire it could breathe.

  “What?” Peri finally snapped. “I’ve already had a fae child put me in my place. You might as well continue the theme.”

  “The Great Luna visited my son while he was held captive,” Serapha said.

  Peri’s head snapped around to look at her. The draheim's scales shimmered a pale, iridescent white in the afternoon sun. Her large eyes glowed a bright blue, nearly matching the sky above. “When?”

  “The night before you arrived at the Order,” she answered.

  “And what did the Great Luna say?” Good grief, was she going to have to pull every bit of information out of Serapha's big snout?

  “She told my son that the time had come for his purpose to be fulfilled. She said that his capture by Ludcarab allowed him to be where she needed him to be. The goddess wanted him at the Order compound so he could help you and the others he rescued.”

  Peri’s mouth dropped open. She jumped to her feet and glared at the draheim, even though it wasn’t Serapha she was angry with. “You’re telling me your juvenile son had to be held captive by a mad man so I could live?”

  Serapha’s eyes softened, and she lowered her head so her eyes were level with Peri’s. “No. I’m telling you your creator, my creator, and my son's creator, knew in eternity past that this day would come. That his life would serve a greater purpose than flying through the air and diving into our sea for fish. He saved a fae child. He saved a mom. He saved a mate. And, yes, he saved you. It is not the first time your life has been saved by one of mine, though your mind doesn’t remember.”

  Shock radiated through Peri as the draheim’s words penetrated the fog of bitterness. She’d been saved by a draheim? When? Peri wanted to stomp her foot, but she’d done enough damage to the draheim realm. She began to pace as Serapha’s words rattled around in her head. How long ago had that been? And why didn’t she remember something so monumental?