“Ididanswer it,” she insisted. “And you keep ignoring my answer and branding me as a liar. I don’t know what else you want me to say.”
His lips flatlined. “I can see you aren’t going to let us do this the easy way.”
Standing, he motioned for the guards behind her, and a bound and gagged Vreis tumbled onto the floor. His mis-matched eyes were swollen shut by fist-sized bruises, and blood caked his chin. Slashes ran along his arms, deep cuts that spoke of torture and pain. He could not even hold up his own head to look at her. Horror churned through Eislyn’s gut. She pressed a hand to her lips, biting back a scream.
“What have you done to him?” she hissed.
“Nothing he couldn’t survive. Though I can’t say the same about this.” Lord Morcant nodded to the guards.
The guard fisted Vreis’s hair, yanked back his head, and sliced an ice glass dagger across his neck. Blood shot from the gruesome wound, coating the floor with a sickening crimson. Eislyn choked. A terrible, excruciating pain carved a hole into the very last remnants of her broken soul. Her body trembled as great shaking sobs tore through her. But she didn’t cry. She just shook. Shook like the very world itself was ending.
“How could you?” she whispered. “How could you do that to him? He was a good male. He did more for me than you ever will, and you’re my father’s own flesh and blood!”
“I did it to prove a point, Eislyn,” her cousin said with ice in his voice. “I’m not asking for your insight. I’m demanding it. I need you to tell me everything you know about Lorcan Rothach and his relationship with your sister, or I will find someone else you care about, and I’ll be forced to have them killed, too.”
“You’re a monster,” she hissed. “I thought the ice fae were good.”
“I am not the enemy here, Eislyn. The shadow fae are. The air fae are. And, it appears, your sister is.” He leaned forward, fire dancing in his silver eyes. “What do you know about the Prince of the Shadow Court?”
Eislyn gaped at him, her heart bursting out of her chest. She pushed up from the chair, this time knocking aside the guard’s hand with a strength she did not know she had. “Did you just threaten my sister?”
Eyebrows raised, Lord Morcant drew himself up tall so that he towered over Eislyn’s frail form. “She is working with the enemy. She must be stopped.”
“And what do you plan to do?” Her lips trembled as she spoke. “Kill her, too?”
“If I must.”
Eislyn’s soul rattled inside of her.
Reyna, who loved her. Reyna, who had never judged her darkness. Reyna, who had thrown herself into danger to save her, time and time again. Her shield, her heart, her sister. Reyna had sacrificed so much for Eislyn. She’d even given up the only life she’d ever wanted to lead, as a Shieldmaiden, all to keep Eislyn safe.
And now her own cousin plotted her death after he’d murdered Vreis, one of the best fae she had ever met in her miserable life.
Fury rose up within her like a vicious storm. The kind that capsized powerful ships. The kind that ripped trees from the ground. Eislyn had never before felt anger quite like this. Like she wanted to kill the male standing before her.
Curling her hands into fists, she narrowed her eyes. “I’m not telling you anything! I won’t let you harm my sister!”
A knife of pain stabbed her gut as the ground beneath her feet began to shake. Her body convulsed, teeth slamming together. Her arms snapped wide on either side of her as a strange, eerie chill swept through her body. Everything was cold. So cold. So brutally, horribly cold.
Ice shot out from her outstretched palms. Great, gleaming spikes of it that exploded out of her body like a mirror shattering from a terrible blow. Shards soared into her cousin’s shocked face and buried themselves deep in his gut.
Blood sprayed the room. Flecks landed on her face and on her neck.
From behind her, she heard the thud of heavy bodies thundering to the floor.
Eislyn stumbled back, jaw slack. She stared down at the body, at the blood. Her cousin was dead.
She had killed him.
“Oh, Dagda,” she whispered. “Oh god, oh god, oh god.”
She whirled on her feet, panic a hollow ache in her heart. The guards were dead, too. They gazed up at her with vacant eyes. Their bodies were littered with ice shards.
She had killed them all. Five fae.
Fiveicefae.
At any moment, more guards would come, and they would find her here like this, surrounded by bodies and blood. They would execute her at once. She was their princess, but they’d happily held her captive, so they clearly didn’t care about her title or her father.
