“I was,” he answered, his voice a shade quieter.
“Get it away from me.”
He lowered himself to the floor so he was sitting in front of my cell. He looked so odd sitting there in his fine silk jacket, a crown on his head. With surprising tenderness, he reached for the finger and tucked it back in his cloak.
All I could picture was her body, the same body I’d held and worshipped, bruised and broken against the grass. Had she suffered? She must have. It would have been a horrible way to die.
I leaned over and retched into the corner of my cell.
Bram just watched as I sobbed and heaved until there was nothing left in my empty stomach to come up but burning bile.
“Is this fun for you? Are you having fun?” I looked up at him through the damp strands of my hair.
Bram watched me like a parent watches an unruly child throwing a tantrum. “Are you quite finished?”
“Finished mourning Ivy? How dare you.”
“I’ve got business to attend to. Would you rather me leave you down here?” he answered in a bored voice.
“Is there another option?”
“I have a bit of a problem I need your assistance with.”
“My assistance?”
“Now that I’m king of both England and the Otherworld, I’m finding myself stretched rather thin. Previously, while I was away, my most trusted advisers acted as regent in my stead, but now they’re all in England with me.”
My blood turns to ice, thinking of more fae like Bram running wild over my beloved homeland. England isn’t perfect, but they don’t deserve this.
“I need someone here, a regent to do my bidding while I’m away.”
“And you want me to act as their personal punching bag?” I half joked.
“I want you to be my regent.”
I sat up straighter, wary of a trick. “Me?”
“Despite the incident with Ivy, you really did have my best interest at heart. It was your plot all along to see me on the throne, and now you’ve done it.”
He was right. In an awful sort of way.
“We were brothers, once upon a time,” he went on. “Are you ready to throw all of that away for some dead mortal girl?”
Yes.But I was of no use to Ivy down here. I couldn’t avenge her if I was locked away in the dark. I wouldn’t last much longer. If I wanted to get out, this was my chance.
“There are always other girls.” I choked out the words, false and bitter. “But I’ve only ever had one brother.”
“That’s what I hoped you would say.” Bram grinned, and for a moment he looked so much like the boy I once knew it was heart-wrenching. “I think you’ve been punished enough for the Ivy-of-it-all. You’ve been down here for, what, a week?”
I glanced to the tick marks I’d carved into the stone wall with one of my cuff links. “Two months.”
“Whoops.” Bram pushed himself up off the floor. “Dinner tonight?”
“I’d be honored,” I lied. It didn’t seem much of a choice.
He disappeared out of the shadowy dungeon, and a guard came to free me from my cell a few minutes later. I was taken to my new rooms, washed and scrubbed and bathed. The giggling faerie maid smeared all sorts of foul-smelling potions on me to remove any trace of my imprisonment. But there are some scars that even magic can’t heal; the damage is set too deep.
I was shocked when I saw Lydia at Bram’s side that night in the dining room. For one heartbeat, I thought I was looking at Ivy again, before the light shifted and I recognized her sister. It was the night that everything changed for me.
