“There he is.”
Amarantha’s voice slides over me like oil on water. Sweet. Poisonous.
Her fingernails pinch my chin, tilting my head up until I’m forced to meet those crystalline eyes. The same eyes that watched my parents burn. I was eleven. She made me watch, too, said it was educational.
The same smile that told me I’d learn to love her eventually.
Everyone does,she’d said.You’ll be no different.
“I knew you’d come when I summoned you.” Her thumb traces my jaw, and my skin crawls. “You always were obedient, Finnian. It’s one of your better qualities.”
My stomach turns. But I keep my face blank.
“What game?—”
She presses two fingers to my lips.
My voice dies in my throat.
Gone. Not muffled. Gone. Like she reached in and plucked it out.
That’s new.
That’s impossible.
I’ve read every text on Seelie power. Memorized the throne’s limitations. The crown grants authority over court members, not abilities. Not this. This is something else entirely.
This is wrong.
But as I look at her now, really look, I see it.
Hidden under the familiar cruelty. Threaded through the crystalline perfection of her features. A darkness that wasn’t there before. Something borrowed. Something stolen.
Something that doesn’t belong to the Seelie Court at all.
The Crown pulses a warning beneath my temples. Flashes of knights dances behind my eyes. It’s warning me of…something. And I can’t quite put my finger on it. She shouldn’t hold this much power over me. Yet she does.
Oh, Amarantha.
What have you done?
12
Finnian
There’san essence to Amarantha that didn’t exist before.
I catalogue it automatically, the way her magic tastes darker, the shadows that cling to her edges where light should live, the wrongness that makes the Crown pulse warnings against my temples.
And yet the essence is somehow familiar.
It’s how my cousin became Queen of the Seelie Court.
Murder. And something worse.
She killed for the throne. But this, this feels like she consumed something that’s now consuming her back.
“Stand, cousin.” Her voice lilts, harmonic and otherworldly. Off-key in a way that sets my teeth on edge.
