“Then you leave me no choice,” he sighed, turning on his heel and making his way to the door. I scrambled to the edge of the daybed as he grasped the handle, turning it and pulling it open without so much as a glance back at me. “Wait!” I shouted, tripping over my own legs as I scrambled to my feet. He stepped out of the room hurriedly, pulling the door closed behind him as I struggled. There was the distinctive sound of a key turning in the lock, and by the time I reached the door, it was too late. I tried the knob anyway, twisting it with both hands frantically before I slammed my palm against the chestnut wood. “What are you doing?!”
“Since you clearly cannot be trusted to prioritize your own self-preservation, I will do it for you. I am not foolish enough to believe you do not have every intention of following Estrella into Tartarus,”he said. His voice was eerily calm on the other side, a distinctive decidedness to his tone that brooked no argument.
“You overstep your place, Etan!” I yelled, banging a fist against the door. The wood rattled but didn’t so much as creak as my knuckles throbbed. A reminder that I was barely a step from human, apowerlessSidhe that could do nothing to help herself in the games of the Fae.
“Do I?” he asked with a chuckle, and even though I couldn’t see him, I could just imagine him leaning his shoulder into the door that served as a barrier between us. “You’re new to our ways, so I will grant you the kindness of explaining what is going to happen now.” I swallowed, pressing my back into the door in response. I hung on every word, waiting as if his voice were the blade prepared to perform my execution. “You became mine the moment your mother and I agreed to this betrothal. In such, she acknowledged that you are seemingly powerless, and until such a time when you come into your own magic, you and your safety are my responsibility as your husband. You may not understand what a queen will mean to our people after centuries without one, but I do, and I have no intention of seeing them robbed of that before they ever even lay eyes upon you.”
My voice shook when I finally responded, swallowing down the panic rising in my throat as I stared at the moons shining in the night sky. My eyes watered at the prospect of moving into just another cage, that in spite of Mab’s words that Etan wouldn’t hurt me, she didn’t acknowledge that there was more than just physical pain. “That can’t be true. Most courts are ruled by equals—why would that not be true of us?”
His voice dropped lower, a near-silent command that shattered any illusions I might have had regarding the type of marriage we might have. “I have no doubt that one day, we will be equals. But until I can trust you not to throw your life away, I will do whatever I have to do to protect you from yourself. Even if that means taking away your freedom to do it.”
TENETAN
I made my way through the halls, unable to bring myself to regret the harsh words I’d given Fallon. While they may not have been fun for her to hear and might have made her regret the future that we would have together, she needed to know that when I said I would do whatever it took to keep her safe, I meant it. I would act against her wishes if it meant looking out for her in the way she seemed unwilling to do for herself. I would lock her in a room to prevent her from putting herself in harm’s way.
And I would conspire to sneak her out of Tar Mesa while her only friends and allies slept, making it impossible for them to try to stop me from removing her from the growing threat of her mother.
A woman who was capable of murdering her brother, the man who had been closer to her than any other I could recall, would not hesitate to murder the daughter she considered a great disappointment. In all my experience with Mab, once someone was out of her sight, they were typically out of mind. She didn’t spare time to thinkof those she could not reach to harm, and taking Fallon to the Summer Court was undoubtedly in her best interest—even if she vehemently disagreed with the sentiment.
I knew where I would find Mab without asking any of the courtiers I passed, their pale faces a good indication of the horror they’d witnessed. None had been present for the Tithe; very few were permitted outside of those who had the magic of the Gods in their veins. Only Mab’s chosen favorites were allowed, unless they were an active part of the Tithe, and the common Sidhe who roamed the hall were not on her list of special pets.
I descended the stairs toward the entrance, curving my way toward the throne room and the screams that came from within. A male Sidhe stepped out of the shadows, his face drawn. “Terence,” I said, nodding to him as I closed the distance between us. Inside the throne room, the woman’s screams reached a new level, the sound of her pain echoing off the stone walls. I shoved my reaction to it down, forcing my face to remain an indifferent mask as I met the Summer Court Fae’s gaze.
“What do we do now?” he asked, blinking his dark eyes as he seemed to attempt to shake off the stupor that Rheaghan’s death had left us all in. He’d been our King for so long, it seemed impossible to know how to move forward without him to guide us.
I clapped my hand down on the male’s shoulder, holding his stare as his nostrils flared. Some of the pallor faded from his deep brown skin, his breath evening out as we stood there. In spite of the horror being committed, we would make a plan between us to guide the rest of our people who had come to the Shadow Court along with us. The ones who may not have heard the news of Rheaghan’s death yet. “Gather the others. Tell them to pack quickly. We leave tonight,” I said, earning his wide eyes.
“Will she allow that?” he asked, swallowing as he glanced through the entryway.
“She will if she wants her daughter to be queen,” I said, smiling slightly. His mouth pressed into a line, his disapproval of my pending marriage very clear in the drawn lines of his face. No one would approve of Fallon until they knew her, because unknowns were not welcome in Alfheimr. I’d known I would face an uphill battle in endearing her to my people when we returned home, as all any of us knew about her was that she was the daughter of the Queen of Air and Darkness herself. There was no reassurance that she would be a kind queen when all that my people knew of her was her lineage,and it would take time to reframe her from Mab’s daughter to Rheaghan’s niece.
That was not an easy hurdle to overcome, I admitted. I’d thought I would have time to conquer that without the pressures of a crown weighing us down. She could make the people adore her while she maintained an irrelevant position as the wife to Rheaghan’s second-in-command, something that few would concern themselves over.
“This was her plan all along, wasn’t it?” he asked, his voice going soft. “The moment she betrothed her daughter to you, she had already decided to kill Rheaghan.”
“I don’t know,” I admitted, shaking off the guilt that clung to my chest. I’d been the one to put the idea in her head of Fallon and I marrying, and if that was true, I didn’t want to think of the fact that I’d also inadvertently made her decide she would rather see her daughter on the throne than her brother. The guilt of that would swallow me whole, and even as an unknown, it was something that would be with me for the rest of my life. “It doesn’t matter much now. All we can do is stress that Fallon and I need to return home to be crowned before one of the Gods decides to try to take advantage of an unruled court. Make sure our people are ready quickly.”
I moved into the open doorway to the throne room, not bothering to spare a glance for the woman who knelt on the stone floor before the dais. I didn’t know her name, didn’twantto know it. It was far easier to sleep at night when the victims were faceless, when they didn’t have names to accompany their screams. “My Queen,” I said, kneeling to the side of the dais. I knew better than to get between Mab and her latest plaything, instead choosing to hang my head forward in complete subjugation and wait for her to acknowledge me.
She withdrew her shadows from the woman, and I saw the woman’s quivering mass fall to her stomach on the floor. I still refused to look at Mab, keeping my eyes pinned to the stone. “Etan,” Mab said, her steps echoing as she made her way toward me. She descended the stairs slowly, the click of her heeled shoes deliberately paced until the pointed toes of them came into view. “Have you come to scold me, too?” she asked, her voice laced with honey and warning, with seduction and menace.
“Of course not, my Queen,” I said, shaking my head. It made me sick to my stomach, but I sank into that well-practiced space where Rheaghan had often sent me tohandleMab when she’d been difficult as a girl. To give her the approval she wanted in veiled comments, to lend her my support, all the while attempting to guide herto more… kind decisions in the future. “I am certain you did only what you felt you must.”
“He asked me for permission to marry!” she said, stepping away from me. I raised my gaze from the floor, staring up at her in surprise as she spun in an aggravated circle. “Do you know who tempted him to do such a thing?”
“I do not,” I said, swallowing back the feelings of betrayal that surged within me. He’d spoken nothing to me, given me no signs that he’d found someone he wanted for more than even just a single night. “He mentioned nothing to me, but then he knew my loyalty lies with you. If he wanted it to remain a secret, I do not believe he would have spoken of it to me.”
“He said I would not have noticed her absence, so it is highly unlikely she would have been worthy of his hand at any rate,” Mab said, as if she found the thought of her brother marrying beneath his station particularly distasteful. “I offered to find him a suitable bride. Hedeclined. Do you believe that?” She waved her injured hand, wrapped in fabric to disguise the truth of what I’d only seen hints of beneath. Even still, the misshapen bulk of it curled in unnaturally, like the bones had never set properly when it healed.
I wondered if this occurred before or after Mab had betrothed Fallon to me. It couldn’t have been Fallon herself that she planned to wed to Rheaghan, but I also couldn’t put it past Mab entirely. A marriage of convenience didn’t need to be consummated, and it would be the easiest way to see her daughter on the throne without giving up her own.
“Perhaps whoever this person is, Rheaghan wanted to marry them because he loved them,” I explained, watching as Mab’s eyes narrowed in disgust.
“Love,” she spat, making her thoughts on the emotion clear. She wanted nothing to do with anything that might weaken her, and that was entirely how she saw the emotion. I couldn’t fault her for it, not after having seen the way she used loved ones against her enemies.
“On that, we agree, my Queen,” I said, forcing myself to smile up at her. She returned the sentiment, lowering into her throne and raising her good hand to signify that I should stand.
“If I were inclined, I just may have taken you for my own husband, Etan. You are one of my most loyal charges,” she said, running her nails over the bare skin of her chest. She’d mentioned it several times, particularly when we’d been children, to the point that I worried she would follow through one day. That I’d be forced to marry awoman I had once seen as a sister, and now only saw as a monstrous damnation of everything she had been once upon a time. But it had never come to pass, not even after she’d rid herself of the husband who gave her the Shadow Court.
