“That’s enough,” Rheaghan said, stepping forward until he stoodbeside me. Magic rose on his hands with the brightness of day, chasing away the shadows of his sister’s magic. I’d only met him once, at the dinner Mab had hosted after the royals from the other courts arrived for the Tithe a few days prior.
The shadows shrank back from his light, and Mab didn’t bother to fight him as he drew me into his side and supported the weight that felt too heavy for me to carry alone. Another figure took the side of my broken arm, carefully avoiding touching it but offering a supportive hand at my back. I turned to find the man from the day before standing there, his warm eyes searching my face as if he could judge my level of pain.
“I think we should all take a step back for the night. Perhaps we can acknowledge that this has gone too far,” he said, his voice quiet. I expected Mab to bristle at the condemning words that insinuated she had been in the wrong for torturing me, but instead she only grimaced and reached out a hand to take the stranger’s in hers.
“I was only having some fun,” she said, her lips twisting into a pout that felt far too childlike.
“Fallon is your daughter, my Queen. Not one of your playthings. Choose another to entertain your more… vicious urges,” he said, a one-sided smile curving his lips.
“Oh, very well.” Mab laughed, a childish giggle spilling free as she turned away from me with glee. The two men took advantage of her distraction to guide me out of the throne room and help me to my room, leaving me with a singular question pounding in my brain.
Who the fuck was he, and why did Mab listen to him?
I stripped the remaining fabric from the dress off my shoulders after they left me at my room, ignoring the Sidhe woman who attempted to help me out of it as I shredded it in the process. My throat burned with the threat of tears I would never let fall with an audience, the emotion of the night threatening to consume me.
Watching Mab torture Estrella had been bad enough. Watching her toy with her and threaten to whip her in a way that I just knew would leave permanent scars had threatened to tear me in two,and the amount of pride I felt when Estrella stood her ground and shocked Mab was immense.
Until Mab had sent her to the dungeon and turned her attention to me, focusing all that anger on my skin. She hadn’t relented once since, determined to draw some semblance of power from me.
Thiswas my mother. This was the woman who had brought me into the world and created my very soul. If this was what she was capable of doing to her own flesh and blood, then I shuddered to think of what she would do to strangers, or those she considered her enemies. Imelda had never kept secrets from me. While she hadn’t known whether it was me or Estrella who was Mab’s daughter, she’d told me stories of Mab’s cruelty—knowing it would likely one day affect me either way.
The knock that came at the door had me snatching the blanket from the bed and wrapping it around my chest. Nudity did not bother me in the slightest under normal circumstances, but the very thought of being naked before someone who came to do me harm was a different concept altogether.
“Fallon,” Imelda’s soft voice called from the other side, making everything within me deflate and relax. I nodded to the Sidhe woman, Pax, and she returned the gesture, hurrying to the door in silence. She waved Imelda inside, quickly closing the door to shut me away from anyone who may be lingering in the hall. Even in those brief moments of looking through the cracked door, I hadn’t missed the guard stationed outside it.
Meant to protect me, he’d said.
Meant to imprison me sounded more accurate.
Imelda closed the distance between us in a rush, cupping my cheeks in her hand and staring down at me as she weighed the extent of my injuries. “Leave us,” she snapped to the Sidhe woman, but she smiled softly as if it would take away the sting. “Please,” she added, the word soothing the uncomfortable lines on the woman’s face.
Pax nodded, clasping her hands in front of her. “I’ve already prepared a hot bath for you, Princess. I’ll be in the adjoining room if you need anything,” she said, making her way to the door on the side wall. The bedroom within was tiny compared to the opulence of mine, a mere bed and single cabinet for her belongings. She brought one of the candles with her to illuminate the space where she disappeared, and I couldn’t help the surge of guilt I felt that she was relegated to what was practically a closet.
Tomorrow, I would care. Tomorrow, I would tell her she was welcome to stay with me in my room. Today, I just needed the space to be with Imelda in private.
I needed the space to break, and finally having the one constant in my life at my side was the best way to do that.
The moment Pax closed the door, Imelda tugged me into her embrace. Her skin was familiar where it touched mine, cool and comforting in a way that reminded me of the snow I now knew the feel of. A chill ran through me, but I couldn’t seem to tear myself away as she ran her hands over the cuts Mab had left behind. They’d already begun to heal, the odd nature of the Fae making itself known now that my entire being had shifted.
There hadn’t been time to even consider the implications of that. I’d still been reeling from it on the snow when Mab and her men had stormed in and taken Estrella and me to Tar Mesa. My hands involuntarily moved to my ears, trembling as they touched the pointed tips.
The people I’d lived with, the family I had known for as long as I could remember, hated everything to do with the Fae. They hatedme.
A strangled sob caught in my throat, but I wouldn’t let that unfamiliar sting of tears become anything real. I would not cry for the things I couldn’t control. Instead, I let the chill of Imelda’s skin soothe my wounds, acting like ice and numbing them as she held me.
Eventually, she separated from me long enough to drop the bag she always kept strapped across her body to the dining table, hauling open the flap and pulling out herbs and vials and all manner of things.
“Sit,” she ordered, using her foot to push out one of the chairs. I did as I was told and lowered myself into it, hating that there was no point in arguing with her. I would heal in time, and it wouldn’t even be an extended period. She grabbed a clean cloth from her bag, then opened a vial of water I knew she’d placed outside under the last full moon and poured some of the liquid onto it. She used that to wipe the dried and fresh blood from my arms, giving her a better look at what remained of my injuries as she tended to me.
“I’ll be okay, Imelda,” I said, stilling her hands when she set to work frantically tearing herbs from their stems and putting them into the mortar that would have weighed down any normal person with an average bag. She added a drop of oil I’d watched her press fromthe stem of a rosemary plant from the hidden gardens we tended to in the summer months.
“I know you will,” she said, her voice laced with steady determination. She added a drop of full-moon water to the mortar, grinding the herbs into the oil and liquid with her pestle. Her entire arm moved with the motion of it, determined to grind it into a paste I’d seen her use to heal the humans and prevent infection.
I knew the cost that came with her healing, understood it after seeing it for myself countless times. It wasn’t necessary here.
“Imelda,” I snapped, finally getting her to look at me. “No magic.”
Her head rocked back, her mouth parting in shock as she stared at the thin lines covering my arms. Already the bleeding had slowed to a stop, the skin working to knit itself back together as we watched it. Imelda dropped her hands at her sides, the reality of what I was striking her as hard as it had me.
