“I don’t need to,” he says, eyes bloodshot. “They are your punishment.”
I flinch. He flips me, my bare stomach sliding against carpet, pain blooming in my abdomen. Bile threatens as his length presses against my backside. But before me is another horror.
Lila. Stiff, damp legs sticking straight out, spine bowed. Stiff, like an animal found after a snowstorm.
“You did this,” the king hisses in my ear.
“No.” I thrash. “No!”
I search for that fluttering pulse and there—I see it, at the base of her throat.
“Lila!” I shout. “Lila, please—”
“I am not my father,” he mutters like a child with a toy. “I am not my father. I am not my—”
I am not my mother, and still, we act out their roles in a play a thousand years old. All I can do is weep for the faeries in my life that I have failed. I cannot carry Lila through that door with me. I cannot get to her. I have run out of options. I have run out of strength. But I have not run out of friends. It is a decision that could either kill or save her. But anything may be better than the fate he promised, and in this, I do believe him.
“I will do it,” I say to him, ceasing my struggling. “I will do what you need, but you have to trust something first.”
He stops. “What?”
“Trust that I will return to you.”
Then I kiss his cheek and lace into the plane.
Chapter Thirty-six
Knees slam into stone, thenpalms. My lungs drag in nothing. I scrabble for purchase, my magic depleted with the lacing outside my room. I need to tell someone. Anyone. I need to get someone to Lila, while there’s so little time left.
I crawl. Dragging my exposed torso and legs across stone. As I gasp for air, little comes. The servants’ hall stretches before me, a scaly dragon I scrape my body across but cannot conquer.
A hand grabs my shoulder.
“Please!” I scream.
“Avery?” Benji gasps. “What—”
“Lila is—”
Pebbles fill my mouth. I try to wedge the words through the Reign oath because if an oath can be sworn with blood, perhaps it’ll take blood to break it.
“From the game, you know her. She needs—”
I gag as the stones tumble down my throat, drop deep into my stomach. My belly button aches as it distends with pain, as I push and push the words:Lila needs help, Lila—
Blood sprays from my mouth.
Benji screams for help.
Footsteps pound.
“A Night Crest!” a voice calls.
“Gone mad, I think!” another says, somewhere behind me.
“No,” I wail, ripping off my golden ring and offering it up. “Lila n—”
My tooth cracks.Help her! Help her, for planes’ sake, help—
