But the fae shook his head. “Not me, Princess.Youdid this. You burned the skies and poisoned the air and turned the very earth itself to dust. You are responsible for this destruction.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
MAEVE
“Me?” My stomach churned.It can’t be true. I didn’t do this. I wouldn’t even know how to do this.
“Oh, sorry – not youspecifically. I mean the human race.” Blake tossed back his head and laughed, the sound hollow. “Although as High Priestess, you definitely contributed.” He pointed to the glow along the horizon. “I think that might’ve been your handiwork.”
“What is it? Why does it grow like that?”
“Duh, because it’s radioactive.” Blake grabbed my hand and yanked me forward. I let him drag me off in a different direction. In front of us, a towering hedge of briar and brambles jutted out of the field. “If you want to know why the Unseelie King is making his move now, it’s because he too has seen this vision. Although I saved this next bit just for you.”
We pushed through an arch cut into the brambles. On the other side stood a sight so gruesome it sucked the air from my lungs.
The smell hit me first. A familiar scent like BBQ pork invaded my nostrils, all the more horrifying because it reminded me of Arizona summers when my parents were alive and not the grisly sight before me.
Set into the ground were six long, pointed wooden stakes, pointing up toward Briarwood and propped up with small frames. Skewered on four of the stakes were four charred, broken bodies, their limbs bent and twisted. One had their hands cut off and strung around their neck. Black patches on the earth beneath the stakes revealed they had been burnedin situ, while still alive, their faces frozen in open-mouth, bug-eyed terror.
I stood in front of the first – a man – choking back bile as I searched his face for some sign that this was an illusion. Blake’s idea of a twisted joke.
What I found instead turned my heart to ice.
The eyes that stared back at me – their lids burned away – were the same vibrant blue that had laughed at me from the other side of a croquet hoop. How those eyes survived what had been done to him, I could not guess. Probably it was for my benefit. A faint covering of fire-red hair still covered his burned and disfigured skull.
Flynn.
The other faces swirled around me and I recognized them all – Corbin, his beautiful vivid eyes poked out, Arthur, with his hands swinging from a rope in an invisible breeze. And Rowan, my beautiful Rowan, his ears lopped off, his body twisted where the stake pierced his chest.
My boys. My precious guys.
Bile rose in the back of my throat. I tried to turn away, but my body froze. Every grisly detail etched itself on my memory. My head throbbed, my chest tightened.
I choked as the contents of my stomach sprayed themselves all over the dead ground.
Blake pointed to two stakes at the end of the line. “I bet you can’t guess who they’re for?” He grinned.
No. This is just a dream, just a…
But it didn’t feel like a dream. It felt…important. Vital. It was a truth I already knew but didn’t want to see.
And now I was being forced to see it in all its grisly glory.
I fell to my knees. Only instead of hitting the cold, charred earth, I kept fallingthroughit, toppling over myself into the darkness. The world spun around me, and though the stakes and their bodies disappeared from view, the tortured faces of my guys never left me…
I woke with a start, sweat pouring down my body. A hand stretched across my stomach.Corbin.His body cupped mine, his soft lips grazing my shoulder, the sheets tangled around us, cool against our warm skin.
He’s safe.
I stroked his cheek, relishing the smoothness of his flesh, trying to unsee the horror of his ruined face under my eyelids.
I took several deep breaths, trying to get my heart to return to normal.
I stared at the ceiling for a time, wanting to wake Corbin up and tell him about the dream. But his face was so peaceful, I couldn’t bear it. There was not a trace of that dark pain in his expression. So rarely was Corbin granted quiet of mind in this house, I didn’t want to bring him back to reality.
But that didn’t help me. The dream haunted me, and I knew I wouldn’t go back to sleep any time soon.
I slipped myself out from under Corbin’s arm, pulled on my silky robe, grabbed the empty water glass from my bedside table, and tiptoed down my spiral staircase and into the upper corridor.
