I flick my gaze up at Kairyn. From beneath the shadows of his hood, I see his brow focused in concentration.Hurry!
“You’re much more like your mother than I thought,” Sira says. “She did always value individuals over the Enchanted Vale. Yet the people worshipped her while she bartered her subjects away for the life of one silly human.”
I bite my lip. It makes me sick, the way she twisted the words of my mother’s bargain, the bargain she now uses to control Wrenley.
All we need is a moment. One single moment to break through…
I walk before the Queen of the Below. It’s eerie how many features of Caspian I can recognize in her: the large eyes, the tilt of her smile, her full lips. A face I’ve loved, but there’s no mercy in her expression.
“Kneel.”
I fall to my knees, hear my mates rush closer, but don’t turn around.
Sira’s voice turns honeyed, dripping with a dark, musical lilt as she speaks. “Repeat after me, little dove. I, Rosalina O’Connell, do solemnly swear to serve Sira, Queen of the Below, without question or condition. I pledge my life and the very marrow of my soul to thee, to be claimed and unraveled at thy whim. In return, I take thy mercy, sparing the lives of my mates on this fateful day. This bond, sealed in shadow, shall stretch across eternity, unbroken by time or will.”
“Rosalina.” It’s Caspian. He’s kneeling beside me, staring up at his mother.
She tucks a curl behind his ear. “Soon, Caspian, you will return to my side.”
He sneers, and I can feel him desperately trying to get inside my head. I don’t let him. My concentration is fully on Kairyn. Gone is the pained expression. There’s an almost smile on hisface, and when I turn to Wrenley, she’s standing straight and still, her eyes no longer dark as a void.
The only magic in the Enchanted Vale stronger than a bargain is that of a mate bond. When I found him in the dungeon, I told Kairyn he could make his way into her mind. All he needed was a crack to wiggle in and break Sira’s hold, even if only temporarily. And by the shocked expression on Wrenley’s face, her mate has done it.
Wrenley looks at me.
I place my finger to my lips before dropping it again to my side. I can’t speak in her mind, but I try to convey everything with a look.Don’t let Sira know you’re awake.
“High Princes of Castletree, you have no choice but to kneel,” Kairyn says, voice deep and trembling. “You have no chance of escape, not when Wrenley wields that bow. Not when Faustrius can break any of your divine weapons with a single strike of his sword.”
“We rescued you,” Farron spits.
But Kairyn is only repeating the words I told him to.
“I saw the Sword of the Protector shatter under Faustrius’s blade like glass,” Kairyn says.
“There is no choice,” Sira says, then grabs a clump of my hair and forces me to look up at her. “Vow.”
“I, Rosalina O’Connell,” I repeat. The shadows in the room stir, twisting in slow, predatory spirals. “Do solemnly swear to serve Sira, Queen of the Below, without question or condition.”
The moment the word “condition” passes my lips, the magic in the air changes. It sharpens, slithering against my body like icy hands, digging into my chest. I feel it writhing beneath my ribs, searching, burrowing, claiming.
“I pledge my life…” My voice falters, cracking. My gaze falls on Caspian. He’s trembling beside me. “And the very marrow of my soul to thee to be claimed and unraveled at thy whim.”
Magic pulls at my hair, stings my skin. Shadows rise higher, clawing at the ceiling, spinning like a storm’s eye centered on Sira.Each word I force from my lips feels wrong, as if it doesn’t belong to me but is being ripped from my soul. But I know one thing.
Sira’s attention is entirely on me.
“Rosalina, stop this,” Keldarion roars. “Do not make this vow.”
“In return,” I continue, “I take thy mercy, sparing the lives of my mates on this fateful day.”
I’ve made fae bargains before, but they’ve never felt like this. The magic around me surges, probing, latching on to the vow. It coils tighter and tighter, a cold, suffocating presence that makes my vision blur and my head swim. One sentence more until I seal my fate to Sira forever.
“This bond, sealed in shadow, shall stretch across eternity?—”
A scream pierces the hall, wild and feral. I turn toward Wrenley. She drops the bow to the ground. Then she seizes Faustrius’s sword from his side.
Wrenley whirls, the blade arcing through the air, and brings it down on the Bow of Radiance.
