The Rejected True Heiress (Liora and Callum) novel Chapter 541

Liora’s POV

Every corridor we tore through hit me with a hundred smells at once. Candle wax. Fresh paint. The sweat of servants flattening themselves against the walls as two wolves the size of horses thundered past.

And over all of it, burning like a signal leading us straight to her, was the trail Belinda left behind her. Scorched air and fizzling magic.

And fear. The witch was afraid of me.

“Good,” my wolf said. “She should fear our wrath.”

“Patience,” I thought back. “I’m enjoying the hunt.”

My wolf chuffed in agreement, and it was such a wonderful sound that I might have cried had I had human eyes and not wolf eyes. I looked over and met Callum’s gaze, his wolf’s eyes yellow and full of anger, and I briefly pressed my flank to his, a silent signal that I was still here—not overtaken by some beast forged in hate, but still Liora. His Liora. No one else’s. Even if my mouth tasted like Ambrose’s blood.

Belinda threw spells over her shoulder as she ran, without aiming, without looking. A chandelier came down, forcing us to swerve around it. A wall of light sealed the archway ahead of us, so I went through the wall beside it instead, stone and plaster exploding across my back. Being enormous had its advantages.

She fled upward. Past the state rooms, past the aviary, up the tower stairs that scraped my shoulders on both sides. It made no sense to me until it did.

There was no crowd above us. No hostages, no shields, no furniture to hide behind.

She wanted room to kill us.

We burst out onto the highest parapet in the palace, into the wind and the open night. Flags snapped overhead. Far below, the whole city glittered with wedding lanterns, thousands of little lights for a marriage that was never going to happen.

Belinda stood waiting in the center of the stone, her hair whipping loose around her face. She didn’t look like the King’s composed advisor anymore, nor his sultry bedroom mate. She looked like what she’d been underneath the entire time.

A hag.

“Little mouse,” she said, lifting both hands. “Look how you’ve grown.”

Callum went left. I went right.

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