When the fae’s soft skin sears in the bindings, he hollers behind the gag.
Yet why is he callingmyname like he believes that I will still save him?
Lanlin, Lanlin, Lanlin.
Yet I don’t even knowhisreal name.
I ball my hands into fists. The windows shake, under the pressure of my magic.
My moths stream into the hall like the ghosts of my animalist ancestors, answering the silent call of my distress. When my rats and scarab beetles also swarm through the open doorway, the masked guests gasp and scream, knocking over the food tables and falling over in their scramble to escape Diamond Hall.
To escape me.
To escape the unthinkable: the blood sacrifice of my own Blood Lover.
Yet the fae betrayed me first.
Despite that, why do I want to break him free from my tutor, tend to his burns, and fly him back to the desert where I trusted him to protect me from the sun?
I can’t look away, transfixed.
The moths circle Freya, while she sobs but still bravely refuses to back away.
“You said,” she rasps through her tears, furiously pointing at me, “if we do not protect our partners but instead, abuse them,then that makes us monsters and not Alphas. Don’t you see? It doesn’t matter what happens…what you see…who… All that matters is that you act like the Alpha I know you are and not the monster they’re trying to make you become.”
Freya’s words are overwhelming, pulsing through my blood.
I can taste the truth of them in my mouth.
I avoid Freya’s gaze, unable to look away now from the altar and the ancient magic being performed.
Agonizingly slowly, the fae’s wings change color from dove white to raven black.
Then the fae’s snowy hair becomes as silver as his cursed mask.
He looks beautiful but he is not the same fae.
Nothing has been real.
Everything between us has been built on lies.
He has been hiding behind a disguise.
My eyes burn.
“I only know one powerful, elemental fae with lavender eyes, silver curls, and raven wings,” Isis declares with a dark triumph.
So do I.
But it can’t be.
I’ve gifted this fae daggers.
I’ve killed my High Priestess for him.
He has become my honored bat rider.
I’ve had this fae in my bed.
