My hand is still reaching for fingers that aren’t there and the absence of Orion’s warmth against my palm is so sudden and so complete that for a moment I think I’ve lost the hand entirely.
“On your knees.”
Amarantha. She’s summoned me, stealing my last breathe of hope.
But everything is so much worse than I thought. Her eyes are now pure white. The once violet bled out all over her eyes like lightning strikes. There’s something fundamentally wrong with her.
“I said on your knees.”
I focus on her. On what’s behind her. The Seelie Court that used to gleam like captured sunlight is gone. Charred walls where golden arches stood. Marble cracked and blackened. The perpetual twilight replaced by a kaleidoscope of colors from a failing sun.
And thebodies.
I count them. Because I can’t not. I count and I catalogue and I file because that is how I have survived every terrible thing that has ever happened to me. I stop counting at thirty. Not because there aren’t more but because somewhere between twenty-eight and twenty-nine my mind just quietly saysnoand refuses to go higher.
She killed her own people.
“On your knees,” she breathes for a third time.
The lack of venom in her voice is somehow worse.
Hands behind me shove and my kneecaps crack against marble that’s still warm. I don’t think about why it’s warm. I can’t afford to think about why it’s warm.
When I look up it’s to Davis standing beside Amarantha like he belongs there. Like he’s always belonged there.
I wish I were surprised. I’m not. The man is a cockroach in a suit and cockroaches always survive the fire. That’s the whole point of being a cockroach.
“Finnian Willowheart.” Amarantha’s voice shifts into the formal cadence of court proceedings and the absurdity of it almost makes me laugh.
A trial?
She’s holding a trial. In front of thirty bodies on a floor still warm from burning them.
“You’re on trial for treason.”
That’s not good.
Especially because the only one left to judge me? Is her.
52
Ash
He’s gone.Just.Gone.
“No, no.” I rush to the spot where his scent lingers. But the man is gone. I look at Orion and Kieran, their expressions a mirror of my own. “Where? Where?”
“Amarantha.” Tiana reaches down and pockets her Stone.
“How would she even know?” My voice comes out level. The last level thing I’m going to manage for a while. Because right now everything just imploded.
He’s there, Finnian, through the bond. Distant, as though I’m listening to him underwater.
I push harder, demanding the bond to take me to him, to bring me to my mate. But all that happens is the floor cracks beneath my feet. And blooms explode out of me, scenting the air with the sourness of my emotions.
“Ash.” Orion’s hand on my arm.
“Ash.” Kieran. The glass on the bar fogs over. “Breathe.”
