“Everything I did,” she continues, as though I hadn’t spoken, and she genuinely cannot hear it. Cannot process the accusationas real. In her mind, she loved me. In her mind, I was lucky. “Everything I built for you. And you hid this from me.”
She reaches toward the Crown. Her fingers get within an inch of the thorns before the artifact sparks, gold light searing across her knuckles. She hisses, snatching her hand back with a pout on her face.
“It doesn’t want you,” I say.
And because I can’t help myself and I need to know. “How?” I ask her, looking for some semblance of the girl I once knew. She isn’t there not anymore. “How did you get me to agree?”
“Dreams,” she whispers, giving me a sacred truth.
It doesn’t soften how I feel toward her. Nothing ever will.
“Dreams,” I parrot. “You came to me in my dreams. And there you got what you wanted.”
I feel nothing anymore. Not surprise. Not from her. She doesn’t know any better and it’s past time that I keep expecting her to know better.
“The sentence for treason against the Seelie Crown,” she says, and her voice has gone formal again but the edges are ragged, “is death.”
I expected that.
“By your own hand.” Her smile spreads. Vicious and so gods damn proud of herself. “The Summer Sword will execute its bearer. A fitting end, don’t you think? The weapon I gave you, turned inward.”
She’s going to make me kill myself with the blade she carved into my chest in a fucking dream. That I don’t remember.
“I invoke the binding.” Her voice is cold. “Summer Sword, hear your queen. Draw forth.”
The pull starts in my sternum.
I know this the way you know a scar. The binding reaching into the place where the Sword lives and pulls. My hand riseswithout my permission. Fingers close around a hilt that forms from golden light.
I fight. For what it’s worth I fight.
“Don’t make this ugly, Finnian.” She watches my struggle with interest. Learning what causes me pain and getting off on it. “You were always so elegant. Let the ending match.”
The sword slides free. An inch. Two.
“Submit.” Her command, layered with binding magic, is pointless to deny.
My hand draws the blade further. Half out now. The pain is familiar and that’s the worst part. That this particular agony has been normalized.
“Strike.” She says it softly. Almost lovingly. “Strike true, Summer Sword.”
My arm raises the blade. Point against my own sternum. The binding screaming through every nerve.
I look at her. Still trying to see that girl I remember.
But she’s never going to be her. I need to let that go. Let go of the illusion of who I saw in her.
And then I think of Ash. Of every kiss and swipe of her tongue, to every laugh that lit up her whole face.
I want forever with her. Forever to learn what makes her gasp. Forever to memorize every millimeter of her skin. Forever to breath her in every morning and forever to listen to her exhale of moans every night.
Immortality. And yet, it still isn’t enough fucking time.
My Sword rests hovered above my chest. The binding holds my arm, and my arm carries the blade and?—
Nothing.
The compulsion stops. Not fades. Stops. Like a rope cut clean.
