“Oh, that was a fun, little trick!” Wil clapped. “Do it again!”
Damien had his hands out, looking at them like they’d hurt her. “I didn’t mean…Amma, are you all right?”
She rubbed a temple, shaking her head.
When no one obliged his request, the fae king clicked his tongue. “Expecting her to die from just a taste of pure arcana—how little you must think of her.”
“I didn’t say—” Damien cut himself off again, the frustration mounting as he tried to contain another outburst. “Even if she’d survived—if—she can’t be exposed to pure noxscura. It will change her.”
“Can she not make that decision for herself?”
“No! Not this! Never this!” He couldn’t contain himself anymore, as close to frantic as Amma had ever seen him, shouting at the fae who stood there, so composed. Black smoke was curling around Damien’s limbs, his own magic, and it sparked off into the night. Around him, fissures broke, and silver swirled in them before closing back up.
“Well, I suppose not as it seems she doesn’t makeanydecisions for herself. Not with that fun, little spell you’ve got on her. But Amma, dear, this is your chance to get whatever it is you want. A blood mage is no match for the entirety of every fae court, and we have a bargain; I must abide by whatever request you make.”
She blinked back behind her, the snow falling harder now, but through it she could see the other fae, gathered at the doors, peeking over one another to watch and whisper. Kaz slipped out from the crowd and scurried up, eyes wide.
“I want to go,” Amma said breathlessly, reining in every angry, explosive, petulant thought. She had to make the right choice—someone had to. “I want to leave, the three of us, together.”
The fae king’s face changed in a flash, suddenly dark and pointed and terrifying, and she swore he grew an extra foot in height. “Leave? You want to leave? With him?”
“You promised me whatever I requested,” she said, shoring herself up, breathing hard but staring back at him as his features twisted. “I have fulfilled my bargain, now you will fulfill yours.”
The king looked like he had been struck, and for a moment she feared he would take it all back. His arm swept down through the air, limb long with too many joints as a freezing wind tore at her, the snow caught up in it blinding. “Fine, then go!” The ground beneath her feet gave way, and Amma’s heart shot up into her throat as her body fell, down, down, and then she slammed into the hard ground.
Amma lay there for a long, brain-addled moment, the breath knocked all out of her, everything dark. Death—this was death, she thought, choking for her breath, but then a speck of light, and then another, and she was staring up at Ero and Lo in the night sky. Two moons, the moons of her plane, shining back down on her.
Aspens, maples, pines. A forest, dense and dark, surrounded them, free of snow but leaves fallen. They’d been returned to somewhere in Eiren, somewhere in the midst of a chilly autumn just as they’d left it, but where exactly, she could not tell.
Damien was beside her, picking himself up with a grunt and rubbing the back of his head. “Fucking fae,” he mumbled. “I told you none of them are good. At least we are finally free of that place.”
She glared at him as she sat up herself, the only words she could think to reply with a jumble of anger in her mind.
“What?” This he spat too angrily at her, but she swallowed down what she wanted to say yet again, simply getting to her feet.
Amma wiped the pine needles from her breeches, the velvet dress and the furred cloak gone, though there was a small pile of snow where she had landed. She felt around on herself, her hip pouch in place and the glass figure from the fae, Rhea, still stuffed between her breasts.
“He was tricking you, you know,” mumbled Damien, checking the straps of his armor, returned to his old clothing as well, tunic still torn up his once-injured arm. “He didn’t care if you were poisoned, if you died. It was just a game to him, like everything is to those fae.”
Amma blew out a frustrated breath, turning away. She did not need to be lectured—she knew what she was doing, and she had made the right choice, in the end. Hadn’t she?
“He only wanted to play with you, to keep you like a doll.” Damien was grumbling to himself more than to her, but he certainly wasn’t being very quiet, and it made her blood boil.
He spoke as if she cared about the fae king, but she didn’t, not really, she only cared about what she had potentially lost in the power he’d offered. The power Damien had taken away.
“That fae would have locked you up had you given him the chance, and—”
“Locked me up?” she exploded, rounding on him. “Is that whathewanted to do to me? To keep me like a plaything to make do whateverhewanted? To not let me make any of my own decisions?”
As she waited for her answer, Damien’s face changed, the scowl falling off of it. “Amma,” he finally said, softer, “this is not the same. You don’t understand—”
“No,youdon’t understand!” she shouted, voice quickly going raw with distress. “You don’t know what it is to be weak and afraid. I just wanted to be powerful, Damien, and I was doing it for you!”
“What?” His hands were held out, face screwed up. “Why?”
“I wanted to be strong, to be something that you would think more of, that you would respect, but you—you couldn’t even keep your promise to me that you wouldn’t use that spell again.” Amma sucked in a breath and pressed a hand to her chest. Her heart beat with an anger and ache that she hated so viscerally, she would have rather it stopped all together than go on like this.
“Amma, I—”
