Page 128 of Mate of a Monster

“They’re on Exile.” She doesn’t look away from the projection. “The dragon soul stones. If the Siren magic reads frequency, if it needs something older than itself—” She stops. Her temple jewel pulses, red, steady, like a second heartbeat finding its rhythm. “The stones predate everything. They predate Argent magic. They predate whatever Arabella triggered.”

The map flickers.

And across the pale blue projection of Valeryth and its surrounding sea, a thin wet-black stain bleeds outward from the dark water border, slow and spreading, the same way it did here in the royal garden.

Rathe as we know it is at risk here, even though everything I gave a fuck about was already.

I turn my attention from the map to Haide. “How the fuck am I supposed to protect you if you don’t fucking listen?”

“You aren’t,” she whispers, soft but I know better. “You fight beside me.”

My kingdom. My mate. The dragons, one of which she’s already lost. The trap she’s willing to walk into with her eyes open because that’s the one dance she knows every move to.

“She’s right. The land holds what you need,” the Nightkin says again. “The power that the island contains is unrivaled, just as our mate is meant to be.”

I exhale.

Every god in existence has to be laughing their fucking ass off right now, waiting to see what we do next.

“If we go to Exile,” I tell her, because this is the first of many arguments I’m bound to lose against her, “and what we need isn’t there. And the fucking place clings to you like a stage ten curse, then what?”

She lifts her chin. “It won’t.”

My brows lift. “Yeah? How are you so fucking sure?”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Haide

“Yeah?” Legend pushes into my face. “How are you so fucking sure?”

I get where he’s coming from. If it weren’t our lives at stake here, it might even be kind of hot.

Well, it still is.

But he needs to fucking trust me.

The answer is simple—to me. The others might need a while to catch on.

Because I can hear it now.

The island doesn’t feel like a prison when I think of it anymore, not fully. It feels old. Hungry. Waiting. The soul stone at my temple throbs, and with it comes that same low awareness I felt in the vision: like the land itself is no longer some distant memory but a friend turning toward me. Reaching for me, yes, but not as a trap or missing piece to its curse.

Salvation. That’s what it feels like.

My first home needs me.

That prison now feels so fucking precious, it’s almost confusing. Like part of me can’t recognize what I saw it as my whole life, with what I now know it to be. But the deeper, less bitter part knows it with every nerve in my body.

“Because I understand it now,” I say quietly, and the room goes still around the words. “Or maybe it understands me. Either way, it’s the only thing that’s made sense all damn night.”

Knight drags a hand down his jaw. “That’s not reassuring.”

“It wasn’t meant for you.”

Sinner snorts.

Legend doesn’t laugh. His eyes stay locked on mine, searching, probably trying to decide whether that answer calms him or pisses him off. Going by the hard set of his mouth, I’m guessing both.