My brow puckers in confusion, because Marco was a Regio.
“I imagined myself rising from this loathed throne and treading freely over stone and water. Sailing to Shabbe and groveling to the Cauldron and to my people, earning their forgiveness. Being pardoned.” Emotion thickens her voice until it’s no more than a quiet rasp I must strain to decipher. “What delusions I had, Fallon.”
No fucking kidding, you crazy witch.I try to step back, but Justus keeps me rooted to the spot.
“I only found out that A. had a blood-heir after M. returned to fetch me, crown glittering on his head and a brash smile gleaming between his lips.”
When her gaze settles on the prince I made king, who in turn made me his prisoner, my eyebrows knit. Is she saying that M. was not A.’s true son?
“We do not have all night, Meriam.” Justus’s voice jerks her gaze back our way.
After holding his stare a beat too long, she lowers her eyes back to the whorls of blood she’s painted on my chest. “Please release her and step back, Generali, or you’ll hamper the course of my magic.” She must read my intent to run because, the second Justus frees me, she says, “If you move out of my reach, Fallon darling, not only will you not get your magic, but you won’t learn about your mother. Don’t you want to know what became of her?”
What a low blow, Meriam.Of course I want to know what befell Zendaya.
“I heard my guards babble about the unrest in Luce, about your mate’s crows falling left and right. I knew that my daughter would seek refuge in Shabbe, but to do so, she had to return to the Holy Temple to remove her ward rune. I struck a new bargain, this time with J.”
She dots blood across my collarbone, and I cannot help but wonder if she’s doodling or if the sigil is that intricate.
“I revealed where he’d find your mother in exchange for carrying me to the Holy Temple and sitting me amongst those golden idols the Fae revere.”
My skin crawls with goosebumps. Here I thought Justus and Dante were evil, but in comparison to Meriam, the two Faeries are choir boys.
“My intent was not to trap my daughter but to help her.”
I scoff. Is she truly expecting me to believe that load of serpent shit? The gold must’ve breached her brain.
“I understand if you don’t believe me. After all, I isolated my people, abandoned my daughter, gave magic that wasn’t mine to give, and let slip secrets that ended a great king’s reign and instigated an ignoble one’s.”
Her bright-pink eyes, the hue a perfect replica of Minimus’s sunlit scales, firm with a resolve that I find more unsettling than heartening.
“I may have been punished for all of it, but so was the rest of the world, and though I deserved my curse, your mate, your mother, your father, the Shabbins—none of them deserved the misery I brought about.”
Her speech is so impassioned that it draws a frown to Dante’s face.
“Twenty-three years ago, I failed to make everything right. I failed to give my daughter the chance to end me. I’m done failing, Fallon darling, but to succeed, I need you.”
Is she asking me to . . . is she asking me tokill her? Is there some loophole where if I end her life with magic, it doesn’t end mine? Is this why she’s freeing my magic? So that I can use it to snuff out her life? I mean, I’m all for her death. It would solve many things.
I hear Dante mutter something to Justus about the time it’s taking. I take advantage that his attention is on the general to murmur, “Wouldn’t killing you kill me?”
“It would.” She smiles, and the curve of her lips is filled with such melancholy, that my heart trips. Did I misinterpret her demands?
Will she killmenow?
She drags her thumb across my mouth, painting my lips crimson. “That day in the Holy Temple, the day I’d planned to have my daughter end my life, she took one look at me and cast that spell that tied our lives together. Ourthreelives. So if you kill me, you’ll also kill her.”
Eleven
My stomach churns and churns until it’s as knotted as the ruby design on my thudding chest. Yes, Meriam said my mother was alive, but now, I’ve proof she lives.
I’m so shocked and relieved that I gasp. Or attempt to. My lips don’t part. Oh my Gods, did she magick them closed? The godsdamn witch paralyzed me! I bet she’s about to start cackling; I’d deserve to be cackled at. After all, I walked right into her web of blood.
But Meriam doesn’t cackle; she sighs. “Forgive me, darling, but I’m not done with my tale or with your unbinding.”
My lids lift a fraction higher. Goodie. I’ve not lost control of my entire body.
“My grandmother used to say,when immortals make plans, the Cauldron laughs. I finally grasped the meaning of that saying that night in the Temple when your mother bound us. When she realized her mistake, when she realized I wasn’t her enemy, it was too late to alter the spell because she’d propelled you into her friend’s womb, and your blood was now tied to your Faerie carrier. My stepdaughter now knows the truth. My new husband explained what he could when they met to negotiate the terms of your capture.”
