My ribs ache as I watch. I’m glad they had each other, truly, but it’s clear they have this unreachablethingtogether and I’m right back where I’ve always been—on the outside, in Lydia’s shadow.
And what’s worse is I hate myself for the jealousy when there are so many things that matter more.
I’m supposed to be saving England, and I can’t manage to be anything more than a heartbroken girl, forever jealous of her older sister. Maybe I’ll never be anything but this.
I feel the tug of magic, of the cave asking to take me somewhere else.
“Show me more,” I say aloud.
The garden shifts and the memory blurs. Suddenly, I’m in the dark corner of a revel. Emmett is lounging, glassy-eyed, on a silk love seat. He’s got streamers in his hair and a goblet slung lazily in one hand. The party swirls around him, a blur of bright colors and drunken merriment.
A dark-haired woman, so beautiful it hurts to look at her, appears beside him. She’s got that carved-from-ice quality Faith Fairchild has, but even more perfect, in the eerie way all faeries are. Her eyes are golden, unnatural in their beauty, and they’re boring into Emmett.
“Prince Emmett,” she purrs.
His eyes lock onto hers. “Lady Thalia.” He’s doing a poor job disguising his loathing.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she sneers, and I recognize her as the girl who was sitting on his lap at the revel the first night I arrived here. She was also the girl he was kissing against the wall the night we got into our big argument on the terrace.
“Like what?” Emmett’s voice is a low drawl.
“Like I can’t help you.”
“What could you possibly help me with?”
“You need allies,” she answers curtly.
Emmett takes a sip of something dark from the goblet, ignoring her.
“You can act all aloof, but a regent with no allies is no regent at all.”
“What makes you think I want power?” Emmett tips his head back against the brocade wallpaper.
“I don’t think that at all. But I know one thing with certainty.” Lady Thalia extends her elegant hand and points to the front of the room, where Lydia sits on a throne, surrounded by fawning courtiers. “You want to protecther. With Bram gone, the wolves have come out to play and her position is precarious. It’s easy to undermine her politically. Even easier to arrange an accident for such a fragile,mortal,young queen. You’d do anything.”
“Is that a threat?” he snaps.
“It’s a warning. Without allies, neither of you will last long.”
Emmett takes another sip.
“Together, we’d be formidable,” Lady Thalia drawls.
“You proposed allowing the taking of changelings again in a council meeting this week. It upset the queen quite a bit. Why would I want an ally like you?”
She sticks her nose up in the air, every inch the haughty aristocrat. “I have sway with the council of lords. I could easily withdraw the proposal and push through your agenda instead. What is it you want? Increased protections for humans and the folk who live in the valley below? Fewer bargains?”
Emmett pulls himself upright, looking wary. His long fingers drum on the arm of the silk love seat. The fabric is ripped, revealing the batting beneath. “What do I have to offer you?”
Lady Thalia extends a manicured finger and runs it along theedge of Emmett’s jaw. He shudders, perhaps with disgust, but also like he hasn’t been touched in a very long time.
“You are gorgeous,” she answers. “And so,sosad. It’s delicious.”
Emmett’s eyes drop closed.
“I used to be Bram’s, but I could be yours,” she whispers against his skin. “I bet that would make him very mad.”
My vision tunnels, the darkness closing in like curtains at a play.
