Eventually, after we’d lain tangled in the sheets for far too long, Alandris rose from the bed and made his way to his desk. I followed him with my eyes, tracing the angles of his muscled back I’d grown so wonderfully familiar with. I was too content and sated to question what had prompted him to stir, so I waited.
He turned back towards me after pulling a dagger from the drawer, and I propped myself up on my elbows to get a closer look. Once he moved into the light, I recognized it immediately. His gift to me so many years ago. A beautiful dagger with the pommel crafted into a flower and vines decorating the hilt. I’d given it back to him to protect in my final moments.
“You held onto it for me.”
The corner of his mouth lifted. “Are you surprised?”
I returned the smile. “No. No, I am not.”
“I sat with it in my hands often. It was the only thing I had left of you other than my memories. I wanted to give it back to you sooner, but I couldn’t find a reasonable excuse, and I was worried it may trigger you to remember more than you wereready to.” A certain sadness overtook his eyes. “So, even once you were back at my side, I continued to sit there and hold it. It served as a reminder of what I was fighting for when I thought I’d die if I had to pretend for another second that I wasn’t madly in love with you.”
Alandris moved to sit on the edge of the bed and ran a hand along the curve of my hip. He held the blade out to me, and I sat up to grab it. “It’s yours again. Forever, this time.” He said the words with as much masked confidence as he could, but the wavering in his voice was unmistakable.
The meaning behind his words was glaringly clear. He didn’t need to vocalize it, because I felt exactly the same. For better or for worse, this was the last time.
Sweet berries, freshly lain soil, and crisp rain flooded my senses. All around me, plants sprouted from the ground in brilliant shades of green, broken only by even more magnificent flowers in a spectrum of vivid colors. This world was so different from my own blanketed in ice. So pure and full of life. If I asked the beauty before me tending to her garden, she might disagree. We often covet what we do not have, she’d say.
Amorphael was equal parts wise and beautiful. It was one of the reasons I loved her, even knowing I should not—could not—love a Lady of the Seelie court—not as I was. A lowly Unseelie, title-less, with no accomplishments to his name. She deserved much more than I did—us, opposites. But oh, how we covet what we do not have.
A tilt of her head brought her smile to my eyes, stopping the heart beating in my chest as it always did. Rays of sun danced along her dark skin, tinting it with a warm, honey glow. And when her eyes met mine, those impossibly green eyesflecked with spots of molten gold, I knew I would do anything—sacrifice everything—to be worthy of her light.
“Have you come here to escape your brother’s ire again, Zaelos?” Amorphael chuckled, still focused on pruning the leaves of the shrub in front of her. “You are always welcome, of course, though I recommend you remain in his good graces. He is hardheaded, but he has your best interest at heart.”
Hearing her speak of Jyuri made my stomach turn. He didn’t deserve the praises leaving her lips. “He is the Queen’s dog. For him to hold my best interests, he would need to have a heart. His has long since frozen over.”
Amorphael frowned. “You speak of his inability to promote you to the Queen’s court.”
Ever wise, she was, but I was wiser. I heard the words unspoken—read between the lines she’d crafted to spare my feelings. I was weak. I had not earned my place on the court, nor the lands or title that accompanied the honor. My magic was but a bud compared to the bloom that was Jyuri’s. He would not even approach the idea of offering my name. It’d be an insult to the Winter Queen, he’d said.
“Inability implies an attempt was made.”
Amorphael’s frown deepened, and I turned away. I did not intend to upset her, but the longer I spent in Jyuri’s shadow, the more my disdain for him grew in turn. He was enough for her. Their Queens would bless a union between the two of them. Further proof of the hard-fought and growing—albeit fragile—peace between the Seelie and Unseelie courts. A Lord of the Unseelie and a Lady of the Seelie.
Did she know how much it wounded me to feel so inferior?
I looked at her again, letting go of the anger and self-loathing that our conversation had sparked. I could not remedy it yet. “We need not discuss it now. I only wish to be in your presence for a while.”
Finally, her smile returned as she plucked a flower from the ground and moved to sit beside me. She twirled the stem between her fingers, the blue petals catching the light in a way that made them glitter. Lifting my hand from my lap, she curled my fingers around the stem, hers over the top, featherlight. “You are always welcome here, Zaelos.”
“May I keep this?”
“Infuse it with a piece of yourself, and it will bloom eternal.”
“My magic is not powerful like yours.”
She pulled her hand away and pressed mine, still clutching the flower to my chest. “Life gives life. It is not magic, it is an offering—a fragment of your soul.” She stood at once. “Return it to me when you are ready. I will wait for you until then.”
When I was ready. No, when I was worthy.
Amorphael had given me something precious, and I would place a shard of myself within it that very night, but I would not return it to her until I had become the most powerful Fae in the realm.
Except—she’d betrayed me, hadn’t she? I’d returned to her with power unimaginable, and she’d named me a traitor. She’d helped the Queen’s dogs exile me. She’d helped them force me to the mortal realm with nothing but a failing body and a ravaged heart. In their eyes, I was not worthy of a quick, honorable death. Better to let me perish amongst worthless Humans.
AMORPHAEL BETRAYED ME.
YOU BETRAYED ME.
“How could you? I loved you!” I screamed, my hands clawing at her neck in the darkness. Magic—the magic I’d sacrificed everything for—seeped from my fingertips, staining skin with cursed black marks.
