Something flickers across her face. Frustration, maybe. The familiar irritation of a cat whose mouse won’t play properly.
“You’re trembling.” Her finger traces my jaw. “You always tremble when I touch you.”
“My queen.”
“Is that fear?” She tilts her head, genuinely curious. “Or something else?”
I don’t answer. Can’t answer.
And the truth? Her touch makes my skin want to crawl off my bones. That I’m swallowing bile right now, that I would let Badb’s claws shred me to ribbons if it meant never feeling Amarantha’s hands on me again.
So I stay silent. And I don’t vomit. And I count the seconds until she stops touching me.
“I remember when you were a boy.” She circles behind me again. I feel her breath on my neck, her hand playing with my hair. “So bright. So eager to please. You used to bring me flowers from the garden.”
“I was eleven.”
“You were perfect.” Her nails drag across my shoulders, catching in Badb’s wounds. I hiss. She smiles, I can hear it in her voice. “Before you learned to be afraid of me.”
“You killed my parents.”
The words fall out before I can stop them. Not technically true—I learned that much from Davis’s broken memories. But she was there. She benefited. She made me watch and then sheclaimedme. Close enough to murder that the distinction doesn’t matter.
Too late.
But I don’t take it back. Can’t take it back. And some small, exhausted part of me doesn’t want to.
Amarantha pauses.
For one terrible moment, I let myself think that she might actually hear it. Might actually feel something. Might look at me and finally, finally see the boy she destroyed.
Then she laughs.
Soft. Musical. Genuinely puzzled.
“I gave you purpose, cousin.” She cups my face in her hands. Her touch is gentle. It’s always gentle when she’s being cruel. “A boy with no family, no future, no power of his own. I made you the Summer Sword. I made you matter.”
She really believes that.
She also never told me. And I never asked how she could summon me.
I never questioned it. She was family.
“You made me a weapon,” I say.
“Same thing.” She smiles, and her eyes hold nothing. No guilt. No shame. No recognition that she destroyed a child and called it kindness.
Same thing.
To her, it really is.
“Now. About those secrets.”
She releases my face and glides back toward her throne. Davis’s expression shifts from jealousy to something like relief as she settles beside him, her hand finding his hair.
“A birdie told me that my predecessor kept secrets from me.” She’s watching me closely. Too closely. “Many, many secrets.”
“A secret?” I answer with a question.
