I saw.
“Well.” Her voice echoes around the broken space. “You have been busy, cousin.”
I bite my tongue.
“Kneel.” This time she pushes me to the ground with force.
My kneecaps crack against marble that’s still warm from the people she burned.
She circles me. Heels clicking against charred stone. The old rhythm I still hear in my nightmares.
Click. Click. Click.
The sound of a woman deciding how much of you to leave intact. I’ve seen her do it. Circle a Fae before she decides he isn’t worth the air she breathes.
Her favorite form is incineration, obviously. At least it’s quick.
“How long?” She stops in front of me. Crouches to eye level, her head tilting justso. Her perfume hits me wrong and I choke down a gag. “How long have you been hiding a Treasure of the Fae under my roof, Finnian?”
I can’t lie. She knows this but evasion is worthless right now.
“Since the night I left this court.”
Her features remain impassive. Her eyes? Unblinking. I’m not even sure she breathes crouched by me. But Ifeelher anger.
“The Crown chose a child?” She stands. Smooths her silk with hands that aren’t quite steady. Another thing I’ve never seen. I also was not a child. “An orphan with no court, no allies, no future beyond what I graciously provided?”
“Graciously.” I taste the word, she must be insane. Well and truly insane. “Is that what we’re calling it now?”
“Careful, cousin.”
“We’re past careful.”
Davis shifts beside the throne. The collar gleams at his throat. He watches me with the flat assessment of whether my death will improve or complicate his circumstances. Pure survival math. No loyalty in any direction. Not anymore.
“I made you,” Amarantha says in that quiet broken voice of hers. That’s always been the worst version of her. The loud Amarantha is performance. The quiet one believes what she’s saying. “A boy with nothing. No family, no standing, no power anyone would respect. I gave you the Sword. I gave you purpose.I gave you centuries of protection that kept you alive when every other orphaned noble disappeared.”
“You gave me a leash.” She didn’t tell me about the Sword. And those orphans I’d bet my life she killed them.
“I gave you alife,” she snaps and her composure fractures for a beat. Sconces that are already dead somehow flicker darker. “And you spent it hiding crowns and chasing a woman who will never be enough for what you are.”
There it is. Not the treason. Not the hiding. Not the political betrayal.
Ash.
“You’re right,” I say, and something ugly flashes across her face because she wasn’t expecting agreement. “Ash will never be enough for what I am.” I hold her gaze. “She’s more.”
Amarantha’s hand moves before I register the intent. The slap connects with enough force to snap my head sideways. My vision whites. The Crown bites deeper into my temples and blood runs fresh down the sides of my face.
“Thirty years.” She’s breathing hard. The performance abandoned entirely now. What emerges from Amarantha is the Fae she is to her core. Ugly and cold not an ounce of warmth left in her. “I protected you. Promoted you. Made you the most respected scholar in Faerie.”
“Thirty years you summoned me to your bed and told me I should be grateful.”
She summoned me. Again and again. Shame burns through me as that reality roots itself in my present. I can’t hide from the truth of what she did to me all these years anymore.
But I never fucked her.
Davis looks away. Even the cockroach has limits.
