The shadows. They were his.
“You would dare use your magic against your queen?” she seethed, but wisely removed her hand.
Yanric suddenly appeared on my shoulder and the queen stiffened, for the first time showing a flash of fear. Two of her guards pulled their blades, which illuminated with flames.
The pain…it wasn’t sticking like it normally did. I wasn’t on the floor. I hadn’t blacked out.
I looked down at the tops of my hands to see the healer marks spinning and that familiar balm to my wounds coating my skin. A flash of panic seized me as I wondered if this was somehow siphoning time off of my life, or worse, Ariyon’s. And at the same time a lump formed in my throat, I missed him. Light, I missed him so much.
“Did you kill my nephew, Ariyon Madden, heir to the throne of The Gilded City?” The queen spat her accusation at me, and I felt her truth-telling magic slither over my skin.
‘She doesn’t need two eyes,’ Yanric taunted.
‘Quiet or you’ll get us both killed.’Now that she thought Ariyon was gone, she wouldn’t hesitate to kill me. There was no more fear of igniting the curse Marissa had put over her.
“No, I didn’t kill him,” I said, and she growled.
“Did you attempt to kill him?”
“No.”
“Did you help someone else kill him?”
“No.”
“Did you—”
“He’s not dead!” I screamed and her brows knotted.
She reached out and pulled a fae blade from one of her guards. The metal from the Elysian Mountains glinted in the light, casting a slight rainbow across the blade, and I swallowed hard. One slice to my neck and my head would come clean off. “Tell me every single thing you remember about tonight. Withhold nothing and Imightlet you live,” she growled.
Master Clarke wasn’t here to stick up for me. I knew I had to tread carefully.
I could feel her magic tighten around me like a snake, constricting my breath for a moment. The pain from her earlier touch, which should have incapacitated me, was barely an ache as the healing marks swirled on the tops of my hands.
“I was in the courtyard of the school, dancing with Ariyon when—”
“Why were you with him? I thought my other nephew was taking you to the dance?” She looked at me skeptically.
I swallowed hard. “Ayden accidently touched me on the way to the dance and…we broke up.”
She rolled her eyes as if bored with the drama of my teenage life and then moved her hand, indicating I should hurry up.
“So, Ayden fetched Ariyon and…” I paused, not wanting to share the beautiful private moment we’d shared, that kiss. Not with her.
“He asked me to dance, to be nice. When we were dancing, we heard a scream coming from the mansion across the street.”
“You called your mother and her Nightlings to attack,” she declared.
“No!” I yelled. “She’snotmy mother. Well, she is, but I don’t call her that. I don’t know her.”
She tipped the blade in her hand upward and pressed the point against my throat. There was a slice of pain and then a small dribble of wetness.
I gasped at her brazenness.She cut me.
Yanric suddenly flew from my shoulder, right at her face.
“No!” I screamed.
