“Arran does not understand.” I said it without expecting a response. Mya did not know me. She owed me nothing. I did not want to know what conversations she and Evander had endured on the subject. But I still could not stop myself from letting the words out, from saying them to the one being in the entire realm who had a chance at understanding.
Mya exhaled slowly. “Does that surprise you?”
“Yes. When he first came to Baylaur… he accused me of being lazy and selfish. He told me I’d failed in my duty to Annwyn. And he was right.” The worlds spilled out of me, and I began to realize how afraid I’d been to say them, but how desperately I needed to. Everyone around me was so intent on saving me, on protecting me. I could not be honest. My hands curled to fists, sand squeezing out of them as anger sharpened inside of me. “How can that same male ask me not to do my duty? To be selfish and choose my own life over the very existence of my kingdom?”
Mya waited. I thought she might reach for me, to try and use her power to find an answer for the questions that were unanswerable. But after several loaded moments passed, she only shrugged.
“You changed,” she said quietly.
So did he,my heart finished.
“How can you be so calm?” Because she was. I was the Queen of the Elemental Fae, a race famed for our ability to control our emotions even to a fault. And yet I was coming apart at the seams, while my Aquarian counterpart was the picture of composure and grace. It made me like her just a tiny bit less.
“There is no other option,” Mya said.
“Ha! I am anything but calm.”
One corner of her mouth lifted into a slight but still lovely smile. “Fulfilling the prophecy is the only option. It is the only way to save my kingdom. I never imagined that my queenship would end like this,” Mya admitted. “But if this is my one real act as queen, then it is enough.”
Yes, I understood her perfectly. I’d never imagined ruling at all. First, because there was Arthur. Then later, because I’d planned to leave Annwyn rather than saddle the kingdom with a powerless, dangerous queen. Now… now I would die to save my kingdom. And somehow, it was enough.
Except for Arran. There would never be enough time with him. Not even if we had a thousand years. But less than one seemed like a cruel bargain.
“I don’t want to die.”
“Neither do I,” Mya admitted. “But I am not thinking of it as dying. The prophecy refers to a sacrifice. Perhaps it will require something else. Something other than my life.”
I laughed, because the idea she posed was preposterous. Of course, our lives were the price. The carving on the standing stone had been clear, even if the words of the prophecy were not. Those two queens depicted on the stone were there, and then they were gone.
“That is quite a risk to take,” I said quietly. Not with her life, but with her heart.
She smiled and I recognized it for what it was—the lie she told herself to make it okay, to give herself the courage to go through with it. She knew. Of course, she knew.
That sad smile lingered as Mya turned back to the sea, quickly blending with the sky in an endless black expanse. “Your Arran will not want to trust Evander. I have heard the history between them and seen your own mistrust. But I am intimately familiar with the depths of my husband’s soul.” There was that slight change in the blue of her cheeks again. “He can be trusted, Veyka. I promise you.”
I swallowed the lump of emotion in my throat. Hearing her speak of her husband made me long for mine. I’d been gone long enough. “I will tell Arran.”
I pulled my feet through the sand, leaving deep channels that filled with water as I stood. Mya made no move to leave. Part of me hesitated to leave her here alone. But the sea was her home. She was much safer here than I.
“Veyka.”
I paused, boots in my hand.
“I… I can help you, if you wish. It is what I do… what I did, before I became queen. I helped people. By laying hands on them, I was able to see the emotions and fears they could not articulate for themselves and help them sort through them.” She turned to look up at me, blue eyes turned almost black by the night. “I can help you, before… before.”
Before we died.
Instead of waiting for her to touch me, I reached out and squeezed her shoulder. “I know who I am, for better or worse. And I know what I want.”Who I want.
Mya nodded in understanding. “In two days, we will go.”
I huffed a sigh. “I suppose we can use those two days to figure out where and how. We do not even truly know what to do, how to make this sacrifice.”
“No,” Mya agreed, her eyes already back on the sea. “But I know who to ask. We must go back to where this all began. Avalon.”
61
GUINEVERE
