How she would escape, Valerion didn’t know.
“You,” Windscoure repeated. The king descended onto the steps of the throne dais. “Valerion . . . Equilumos.”
His voice was no longer deep and fluid—now it was halting and broken. Valerion laid his ears flat. He couldn’t put a claw on it, but something about Windscoure had changed. His solid black eyes began to glisten. He hacked a wet cough and stretched a trembling hand toward Valerion.
“Where were you?” he rasped. “You could have saved us.”
The words, so jarring and unexpected, struck Valerion with the force of a physical blow.
“What are you talking about?” he growled, though in the depths of the cavern where his soul had once sat, he knew. This was the question every mortal should have been asking him.
Where were you, Valerion Equilumos
