“Don’t do it,” a male voice pleaded, drawing my gaze away from Estrella and Mab and the spectacle they made. Rheaghan raised his hands placatingly, as if he could convince his sister that he was no threat to her. Etan winced at my back, stilling in his retreat as his King’s gaze collided with his. Rheaghan gave him a look that said not to intervene, that no matter what happened, he was to stay out of it. I felt Etan shake his head at my spine, his grip tightening on me asRheaghan’s gaze dropped to me for the briefest of moments before he swung his attention back to Estrella. “It cannot be undone. I don’t think you understand what an eternity of servitude will mean.”
“I consent. As long as he lives,” Estrella said, the words torn from the depths of her soul. Caldris’s horror was palpable in the air, striking me deep in the chest with an anguish I hoped I would never understand. I didn’t want to love anyone that completely, not if it meant feeling pain like that.
Mab wasted no time gliding the edge of her blade along Estrella’s skin, cutting through the muscle and sinew to create a gash that leaked blood on her dress in a steady stream. She carefully avoided Estrella’s heart itself, unwilling to lose the weapon she’d only just claimed for herself. For any mortal, the wound would have been fatal within seconds.
But Estrella stayed standing, her silence ringing through the cove as she refused to give even a whimper of pain. I didn’t know how she did it, how she survived and endured endlessly without ever giving in.
I would have given up long ago.
Mab raised her other arm, the one with the torn hand—a small snake twined around her wrist. It hissed at Estrella as Mab guided it to the hole she’d created in Estrella’s chest, iron-teeth flashing as it slithered inside.
Her wound healed over, and Estrella’s entire body shuddered as those iron-teeth sank into the flesh of her heart and turned the key to the prison of her body, shackling her in chains that we couldn’t see.
“What have you done?” Rheaghan asked, running a hand through his hair.
Estrella turned to face him, her face distinctly devoid of life. There was no emotion in it during the moments that Mab made herself at home in Estrella’s skin, only a blank mask of mindless obedience.
Mab’s iron blade lashed out so quickly that I thought for a moment she would go back on her word and take Caldris from Estrella after everything. It would be a small mercy in the end, with the knowledge I possessed that Estrella would go with him.
But it was Rheaghan’s throat that parted beneath the blade, his blood trickling down the front of it as his mouth dropped open and he choked. He pressed both hands to that line, that unnaturally straight line that marred his fair skin. Blood poured over his hands in a thick, viscous ooze as he looked to Etan.
I didn’t dare to look at the man behind me, at the man who hadjust lost his King. I didn’t know the truth of Etan’s allegiance, of what he might feel for Rheaghan even as he betrayed him with Mab, but there was no mistaking the anguished gasp that rattled in his chest or the tightness in his body.
There was no denying the outright devastation on his face as Rheaghan bled.
Everything in me stilled and then rattled, vibrating with fury for the opportunity she’d taken. I’d thought we’d have time to get to know one another outside her watchful gaze. I’d been so sure we would have that opportunity.
I’d been so sure the man at my spine was Mab’s ally and my enemy, so determined to keep him at a distance because of it. But he’d been the first one my uncle looked to in his last moments.
He’d been the friendly face he sought out.
Rheaghan fell to his knees at Estrella’s side, and Estrella reached out to take his hand in his final moments asemotionflooded her once again. Her face was no longer a carefully controlled mask, but one of anguish.
I hadn’t realized she’d known Rheaghan that well, hadn’t seen them together but a handful of times, but there was no mistaking her grief as Mab drove her knife into his heart, silencing him permanently. Estrella moved as if she might give him her blood, and I knew she intended to save the King of the Summer Court, even though she’d already greatly weakened herself. She hadnothingleft to give.
Mab abandoned her blade to squeeze her hand, forcing Estrella to halt and preventing her from interfering. Estrella fought against it, against that hold on her as her body refused to move. Rheaghan bled out before us, and none so much as dared to attempt to save him.
It wasn’t his sister he looked to in his final moments, nor was it Etan as his second-in-command. He looked to Estrella as he died, as if he saw her for the first time, and his eyes filled with sorrow.
He dropped onto the sand face-first, bleeding out upon the white silt. There was no movement in his chest, not a breath in his body.
Because the King of Summer was dead.
EIGHTETAN
I stared at the space that Rheaghan had once occupied, his body nothing more than flesh on the sand. I knew he was gone, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to grasp the reality of a world without him in it.
He’d been there for every moment of my life, an echo of my own heartbeat that came from the type of friendship that spanned lifetimes. Only Fallon held within my grip kept me from surging toward him, from revealing just how much I still respected Rheaghan.
Revealing everything we’d worked so hard to keep hidden from Mab would only attract attention that would get us both killed, because Mab would not tolerate the knowledge that I’d been loyal to anyone but her—not when her hatred for the way her brother was loved was a deep, festering wound that she could never heal.
Caldris raced for his mate, anguish and relief mixing on his face when he was able to draw her into his arms. I couldn’t help thebitterness I felt, knowing that if Estrella had only been willing to let Caldris go, Rheaghan would still walk the land of the living.
I wouldn’t need to keep the surge of emotions hidden behind a carefully controlled mask—always holding steady to the role that Rheaghan had given me so long ago.
Instead, I watched a daemon emerge from the tree line to grasp him by the ankles, hauling him into the cove as Mab stared passively at the brother that had once meant so much to her. He’d been her protector as a child, the two of us doing everything in our power to keep her safe from those who would use her to get to her mother. But the Mab of this day didn’t seem to care that she’d killed him. She didn’t care that Rheaghan hadlovedbeing her brother as a child, taken to that role as if he’d been born for it.
She’d never deserved it. Not since the moment that crown touched her head and claimed her for cruelty. Now more than ever, I knew there was nothing worth redeeming left in the woman who stood before me.
