“You’retheOrean royal,” he corrects, making me pause. “The Colier bloodline consists of the longest-ruling monarchs in all of Orea.”
“I know that,” I snap. “You think I don’t know my own family history?”
The twins walk around the newly constructed castle, their long black hair giving off an ethereal shine. “What we think is that you were a fool, Cold Queen. Easily tricked with illusion and compliments,” Friano tells me.
A hammer of guilt slams into me, because he’s absolutely correct.
“Are you going to trick me again now?” I challenge, my tone full of sharpened ends. “Use your magic to make it seem like this place is something other than what it really is?”
“You would only see through illusion now. Your eyes are open.”
A part of me wishes they weren’t. Wishes I could still scent the drugging blossoms and hear lilting music and let the lieslull me into a false sense of peace. Anything but this crushing, fatalistic failure.
“Blood matters when it comes to magic, Queen Malina. Just as sacrifice has always been the price for our own tandem power, willingness has always been the price for the bridge.” Friano smirks at me as he eyes my restraints. “You aren’t willing right now, are you?”
The two of them laugh together as they walk out, leaving Dommik and me behind. Leaving us caught.
With Dommik still unconscious, I have nothing but the sounds of the army to accompany me.
Only that, and the twins’ lingering words.
For long minutes, they repeat in my head. Over and over again. Like a defeatist mantra left to stifle me.
Except…as I go over what they said, a dawning realization starts to rise within me. All because of one single word.
Willingness.
Like a bucket of water poured over my head, the truth is there, soaking right into my skin. I stare, though I’m not seeing. Breathe, though not feeling the air.
You’retheOrean royal.
Blood matters when it comes to magic.
Willingness has always been the price for the bridge.
I cannot say I’ve ever felt what I feel now. I never knew Icouldfeel such opposite emotions at once. Such heights of empowering certainty that have risen inside of me… With such depths of devastating understanding.
“Malina?”
My head jerks to the right as Dommik wakes, already trying to strain forward.
“I’m here,” I reassure him. “We’re alone.”
His head moves, gaze probably roving over the building so he can gain a sense of his surroundings before he looks over his shoulder to me. “Are you alright?”
I swallow the lump in my throat. Swallow the truth.
“Yes. I’m alright.”
He tries to use his magic, cursing when he realizes he can’t. He starts tugging at the gray cuff at his wrist. “What the fuck is this?” he hisses, his hand losing blood flow as he strains to shove it down his hand.
“You’re going to hurt yourself,” I say in light reprimand.
He growls. “Can you use your magic at all?”
“No,” I say, trying to lift my wrist. “It’s these gray cuffs. I don’t know how, but they’re blocking our magic.”
Dommik lets out another curse as he looks around the new castle that the king erected. It’s a slap in the face, to have taken ancient Orean stone and made it into such a perverse show of fae power.
