“That was the Summer Sword and the Crown of Destiny working as designed.” Tiana sags against a tree. “You are the most dangerous being in all of the Seelie Court, Finnian Willowheart. And Amarantha has been using you to intimidate courtiers and warm her bed.”
Bile rises in my throat.
All those years. All those summons. All the times I told myself I was surviving by being indispensable. By being too valuable to discard.
I wasn’t indispensable. I was just there.
Thirty years of her hands on me. Her tongue in my ear. Her voice telling me I should be grateful.
And I had this the whole time.
She was too stupid to know what she was wasting.
“She doesn’t know what she has,” Tiana continues. “She inherited the Stone but not the knowledge of how to use it. My mother spent her entire reign trying to keep that information from her.” A bitter laugh. “Seems it worked.”
The bond goes cold. Then hot.
Ash just killed someone. I know it the way I know my own name. Something that’s been hunting her for a long time just stopped breathing.
I should have been there.
The thought arrives with surprising force. She faced something alone, and I was here playing with my new power like a child with a shiny toy.
“We should go.” I look off into the forest. Somewhere out there is my mate. And the need to see her compels me to walk through the exhaustion.
43
Ash
The clearing stinksof ozone and copper with a tinge of the flowery sweetness of death that lingers at the back of your mouth.
My guys are close. I can feel them in a visceral way that pulses just under my flesh.
The goddesses are still cleaning up. Badb’s laughter carries through the trees. Macha’s silence is louder than that.
I can’t look at any of them.
The man on the ground isn’t a man anymore. The thorns did their work with the patience I asked of them.
It’s the lack of feeling that has me frozen. I feel nothing.
I keep waiting for it. Some crack. Some flood. Fucking something that would allow me to grieve this man.
Except all I feel is disdain. All I feel when I see him lying on the ground is all the thousands of little cuts he enforced of me over the years.
The moments he made me feel small while looking at me in the face and telling me how well I did. The paradox nearly fucking mentally destroyed me.
Until now.
The wind catches the edges of him. Dry skin flaking away from bone the way dead leaves let go of branches. The thorns accelerate what the poison started, breaking him down into something the earth can use.
“Ashes to ashes.” The words leave me before I mean them to. Quiet enough that only the dead man hears them, and he’s past hearing. “Dust to dust.”
The soil beneath my bare feet hums and groans. Almost wanting to reject the offering. It could if it wanted to but see, the soil is hungry, starved even.
So, it accepts his remains the way a furnace accepts fuel.
It doesn’t forgive. It just consumes.
