Well, almost everyone.
A presence at my back, warm and steady and alive. Vibrant in a way nothing else in this entire cursed realm is.
Callum’s fingers brush my waist, a silent promise he’s here. A promise I’m not alone.
On her throne, the queen opens the letter.
She scans it quickly, black eyes bouncing back and forth over the words once, then again, and once more before she half-crumples it in her fist.
“A forgery,” she whispers. “He wouldn’t have… he promised me… This is a forgery!”
She finds her full voice on that last bit—echoing and terrible, like a violent storm through a skeletal forest—and I try not to flinch.
“I promise you it’s not.”
The queen sits higher on her throne. Her vines writhe and grow, stretching, uncoiling, whipping ominously out into thespace around her. Even her courtiers seem disturbed as they shift minutely away to avoid being caught in the tangle.
I don’t know what else to do, what to say. How can I convince her we really did get this from—
“The ring,” Callum says softly. “You gave it to him on the first solstice you spent together. It’s made of your own heart’s blood. Elijah told us that when he gave it to us, along with the letter. You told him it meant you’d always be true.”
For a moment, something shines in the fae queen’s eyes that almost looks… human. Regret, maybe, or sorrow. A soul-deep longing, painful enough I look away.
But I look right back when I catch a flash of green out of the corner of my eye.
The fae queen is transformed.
It only lasts a few heartbeats, but within those stolen seconds the world around her blooms. Verdant vines and vibrant flowers, even the sky above clears into a breathtaking robin’s egg blue.
Her hair—a tangle of branches and leaves and dead things just a moment ago—is long and curly, a lovely, soft brown, dotted with unfurling spring buds. Her eyes, too, have changed. From the endless black of an abyss to a deep, rich tone which shifts impossibly between freshly turned earth and rain-damp moss. On her head sits a crown of flowers in a hundred shades of blue and purple and pink.
My breath catches in my throat and Callum tenses behind me. Through the court, a collective inhale as everyone marvels at what we’re seeing.
A flash of what her realm might have been.
A flash of the beautiful force of nature Elijah loved.
It’s gone as quickly as it came.
The queen is as she was. Caught in her bower of death, all that springtime faded to the deepest dregs of autumn.
“So you’ve brought me my heart,” she murmurs, almost too quietly to be heard. “I suppose I owe you a treasure now. To whom do I owe the honors?”
She looks back and forth between the two of us, again waiting to see where she needs to direct her deadly focus.
“It was a joint effort,” I say. “We did it together. Equally. As partners.”
A ghost of that same humanity in her expression, gone so quickly I might have only imagined it.
The queen sniffs disdainfully. “I find that hard to believe. Your magick is stronger than his. I can sense it. A seeker, yes? And you give credit to this demon?”
I reach for Callum’s hand and find it immediately. “Not all the credit, but I couldn’t have done it without him.”
He meets my eye, and we share an unlikely smile.
Maybe not all that smart, given the fae queen’s ever-volatile temper, but fuck it.
If we go down, we go down together.
