I look.
Green eyes. Hazel going forest.
“Don’t let her get under your skin,” Ash says. “You are smarter than her. You have always been smarter than her. She knows it, too, that’s why she has to use magic to keep you. Because she could never keep you any other way.”
“Ash—”
“You’re coming back.” Not a question. Not a hope. A command. “You’re coming back to us, Finnian. That’s not negotiable.”
“I don’t know if I?—”
“Say it.”
The summons burns. My chest is on fire. Badb’s claws are the only thing keeping me corporeal.
But Ash’s hands on my face are steady. Her eyes are steady. And I?—
“I’m coming back.”
“Damn right you are.”
She kisses me.
Not gentle. Not tentative. She kisses me like she’s trying to leave a mark, like she’s branding me with something stronger than Amarantha’s claim. Her mouth is warm and fierce and tastes like the forest, like wild magic, like everything I’ve spent centuries pretending I didn’t want.
I kiss her back. Try to tell her with my mouth what the binding won’t let me say out loud.
She kisses me like she heard every word.
When she pulls away, her forehead rests against mine.
“Come back to us,” she whispers.
“Five seconds,” Badb says, and rips her claws from my shoulder.
The summons takes me.
I hit crystal floor on my knees. The impact sends pain shooting up my thighs. Good. Pain is clarity.
The Seelie Court bleeds into existence around me. Gold light, summer flowers, the particular perfume of a place that’s never known winter or honesty. My shoulder is bleeding freely. Badb’s claw marks are already bruising.
My lips still taste like Ash.
I file that away. Bury it deep. Amarantha can smell emotions, can taste lies, can read the surface of my thoughts if I let her.
She won’t find this. She won’t find them.
“Morning, cousin.”
Her voice slides over me like honey laced with arsenic. I’ve heard it in my nightmares since I was eleven. I’ll hear it until I die.
I lift my head. Arrange my face into something neutral. Not defiant. Defiance is a luxury. Not submissive. She’d smell the lie. Just...present. The Summer Sword, reporting for duty.
I’ve had a lot of practice.
She’s draped across her throne like a cat in a sunbeam. Silk chiffon flows over her body, pale pink that matches the roses woven through her platinum hair. Her bare feet are tucked beneath her. Casual. Relaxed.
Like she hasn’t just ripped me across realms against my will.
