I press my knife harder to her throat, ignoring the stinging twinge I feel at the front of my own. “Not a fucking thing,princess,” I growl right back. “I’m exactly who all of you abandoned me to become.”
“Fine!” she concedes as she throws her hands up with panicked exasperation. “But take it out on the ones who wronged you. Hunt them until their blood paints the entire village red. I’ll help you, but there are innocent people here. Fae like you once were. They don’t deserve what you’re condemning them to, and you know it. Gut everyone who looks at you sideways, tear the culpable limb from bloody limb, but leave the rest alone!”
Her admonition swirls in my mind, the sound of metal on metal clanging through the foyer as the Igeeyin engage the Scorpions. I watch my mates move with lethal precision, cutting down every guard who tries to stop them. I marvel at the brutal beauty of it all while trying to sort through the need for pain and the call for vengeance that’s singing in my blood. I weigh it against Neith’s petition on behalf of the innocent.
She’s right.
I hate it because all I want is for them to hurt and suffer the way I have for ages, but I’m not like the ones who’ve tried to ruin me. I don’t sacrifice the innocent to slake my own gluttonous savagery. I am a monster, but I won’t bethatkind of monster.
I growl with frustration and narrow my gaze at Neith. “And how am I supposed to know who’s guilty or innocent here?”
Relief washes over her at my question. She presses her hand against her chest, her gaze adamant. “I’ll help you. I know.”
“And why would I trustyou?”
“Because they are my people, Auset, and whether you want to accept it or not, you are too.”
I scowl as her declaration falls to the floor between us. “You’re not even strong enough to lead them. You’re letting yourself be played by powers more clever and conniving than you, and it’s going to get all ofyourpeople killed. You might draw it out, thinking you’re saving them, when really you’re delaying the inevitable. But if you keep going like this, itwillend on a bloody battlefield with the kings passing you around until you beg for them to kill you too.”
“I know that,” she yells at me. “I’ve been planning and waiting for the right time.”
“There is no right time! Are you daft or just a coward?”
“Fuck you, Auset! You don’t know anything about me! You want to know why you can trust me?” she snarls, the rage in her eyes now matching mine perfectly. “You want to see why you’re safe with me? Because I could have donethisthe moment you walked through my door, but I didn’t!”
Neith drops the knife in her hands as though it’s useless and in the way. She lifts her arms, the crescendo of panicked yelps and scared screams rising with her movement. In a snap, as though every fae fighting in the room has been lassoed around their waist, an invisible force yanks them all back and slams them against the walls. I stare open-mouthed and aghast as my Scorpions are left standing in the middle of the room, their heads wheeling around as they try to make sense of what just happened. Blood drips from their blades as they spin and search until their black eyes fall on me and Neith.
“What the fuck?” Bones demands as he gestures with a sword to the Igeeyin who are all plastered to the walls and unable to move.
My startled stare bounces from the completely incapacitated fighters to Neith. “How…how are you doing that?” I ask, bewildered.
“It’s why they wanted the Nalrora line destroyed,” she whispers, her soft declaration tainted with loss. “Our thura allows us to control anything with a mere thought.”
I blanch at that, unable to tear my eyes from the monster I now see lurking within the princess. With a simple thought, she pulled every one of their strings at the same time, like they were nothing more than marionettes and hers was the hand that would make them dance.
“Are you at all related to a Verus Hathwait?” I ask cautiously as I recall the way he moved a knife without touching it, just to shove it deep in his throat.
“The impel?” she asks, her tone light and curious as though she’s not currently holding an entire room full of fae captive by their puppet strings. “I’m not an impel, Auset,” she assures me, and I feel a warm trickle of relief fill me before she douses it in ice. “I’m infinitely stronger than an impel. They can only move objects. I can control anything and everything I want.”
I’m tempted to rip her heart out, just to be sure she never tries to pull my strings simply because she wants to, but the fact that she left the Scorpions untouched, that she has that much control of her terrifying gift, it gives me pause.
“If you could dothatthis whole time, then why in the stars have you let these piss heads order you around and disrespect you? Beva should have had her neck snapped a long time ago with the way she spoke to you,” I point out.
“Like I said, it took time for me to realize that everything going on here wasn’t what I thought it was. They raised me.” She motions toward the robed figures that are now plastered against the stone wall. “I swallowed down the rhetoric because that’s all I was ever fed. When they wouldn’t listen about you, even though you were one of them. When I saw the lengths that they would go to, and understood who they would sacrifice in the name ofThe Cause, I started to question everything. People I knew to be family suddenly looked like fanatics to me, but this was all I’ve ever known, and I had nowhere to go. I was safer here under the watch of some of the loyal Igeeyin than I was outside of our wards. I didn’t know what to do.”
With a flick of her wrist, the people pressed against the walls are split into two groups. I stare in awe at a power I don’t understand, controlled by a princess who’s wearing my face and pleading for my mercy. She could have fucked me up at any moment; the fact that she didn’t doesn’t make me trust her, but it does help me to see that just like me, she’s been wronged in all of this too.
“They’re the guilty,” she announces, pointing to the group that’s closest to us. “There are a few others I’ll round up from the village, but that’s it, Auset, I swear.”
I look over at the condemned. Rage-filled stares meet my perusal, and their lips move as though they’re screaming threats and expletives, but nothing spills from their enraged mouths. Their features are pinched as they try to access thura and weapons to fight back, but they can’t lift a finger from the stone no matter how hard it looks like some of them are trying.
“So why now? Why fight today?” I press as the Scorpions move to surround me.
“Because I can’t let you kill everyone,” she answers simply. “And you’re right, I haven’t been strong enough to lead, but it doesn’t mean I can’t change that. I’ve been waiting for an opportunity, and I decided that you’re it.”
I realize suddenly that Neith is allowing me to continue to hold a dagger to her throat. In all the shock and astonishment, I didn’t realize that I was still threatening her and she was content to pretend she couldn’t snap me like a twig in less than a blink. I drop my hand and step back, hitting a large body behind me. I would normally revel in the welcome contact, but the strong body at my back just pushed the bolt deeper into my side.
Neith and I both hiss and fold over.
