Something shifts in my stomach. Earlier, he refused to show me his true form, and now the moonlight is slowly stripping him of that defiance. Why, I don’t know—whether shame, or pride, or something else altogether—but it’ll buy me time.
I simply do nothing.
I stand and wait.
“I am failing to see the complexity here,” Vale snaps, the vibration of his frustration crackling in the air between us. He lifts his hand, leveling a finger at my face to punctuate the command. “Speak the words, Elara, or I will rip them from your?—”
The wind kicks up, tearing the final rag of cloud from the moon’s face. A beam of silver light hits him mid-threat. It strikes his outstretched hand, and the illusion doesn’t just falter, it evaporates, elegantly tapered fingers dissolving to sinew and bone.
He freezes.
Vale stares at his hand, at the skeletal claw protruding from the rich velvet of his cuff, stark and horrifying against the night.
He jerks his hand back as if burned, clutching it against his chest. “Next time, little queen.”
Vale spins on his heel, the velvet of his coat seeming to lose its solidity, melting into the surrounding darkness. Shadows curl around his boots, rising like smoke, weaving through his form until he’s nothing but a smear of ink against the night, vanishing completely and leaving me alone in the silent, freezing dark.
Chapter
Four
Elara
Daron breathes like someone poured soap water into his lungs and forgot to drain it. Each inhale is a wet rattle, each exhale a thin, exhausted pop that makes his ribs show beneath the blanket like a cage struggling to hold in life.
I sit on the edge of his bed and pretend the damp cloth I press to his forehead is making a difference. We both know it’s not. “Hang in there just a while longer.”
How long, I have no idea. Weeks? Months? Every time I seem to take a step closer to breaking this curse, fate stripsdays from my brother’s life and seemingly turns them into new hurdles for me.
What do I demand of Death?
“Broom queen…” Daron struggles his eyes open. “You smell like…dirt.”
“I’ve been around it.”
He tries to smile and fails halfway, pupils catching on the gold rimming my forehead before they disappear behind wax-pale skin again. “Always wearing that thing now.”
The crown on my head hums faintly as if it enjoys being mentioned. It bites where my hair parts, a constant reminder that no matter how I sit, no matter how I lie down, I’m tethered to this mess.
I could give it to Daron.
Crown him king.
The thought has been chewing my guts since last night, since meeting Death in the graveyard. If I place this thing on his head? Put the knife in his hand? If he slits my throat and bleeds me over the crown in one swift, deep slash?
The idea is so hungry it almost tastes like hope. Until he winces, blue-veined lids trembling, struggling to open, only to fold under pain.
If he can barely lift his lids, what are the chances that he can lift a knife? And I’m not allowed to help with the rite—that much I remember Kael saying—rendering this idea as useless as all the others. Unless I demand Death restore his health?
That still leaves Mother rotting, though, the wish potentially wasted. If I swap the roles? Crown Mother queen, and wish for Daron’s health? But then we’re back to Daron potentially falling sick again.
My arms turn heavy enough to make my shoulders ache. No matter how I twist and turn this, there’s no true solution. It alsogoes against what Kael wanted…whatever the fuck that might’ve been.
“Elara?”
I jolt, blinking away the various contemplations of my own murder. “I’m here, Daron. Right here.”
He tries to turn his head, a grimace of effort twisting his lips. “Itches,” he rasps. “Cannot…reach.”
