My stomach bottoms out. “Explain.”
“You don’t give me orders.” She palms my cheek, her touch making my skin crawl. “See, you had one job. Control Ash through your bond. Secure her loyalty. Bring her to heel.”
“This is because I didn’t do what you told me to?”
Her mask falls. The careful composure cracks, and underneath, something unhinged. Something starving.
“This is because you didn’t do what your queen told you to do!” She shouts it, voice breaking. “You are still bound to the Seelie Court, you foolish Fae. Still bound to me!”
“I was never bound to you.” The words are iron in my mouth. “I will never bind myself to you.”
“Why won’t you love me?”
The question comes out raw. Desperate. The voice of a woman who has clawed her way to a throne and still can’t have the one thing she actually wants.
I should feel pity. I don’t.
“You are my cousin,” I say simply. “And I wouldn’t have loved you even if you weren’t.”
She laughs, but it’s hollow. “Cousin. What an endearment.” She begins to circle me like a predator. “Your mother and mine were never related by blood. Nor our fathers. Cousins by binding, not by birth.”
She isn’t wrong. My mother bound to my father, whose brother met a Fae with a youngling. My uncle, who died under suspicious circumstances. And Amarantha, sent to live at the castle after.
I never questioned why. Never looked too closely at the convenient tragedy that brought her into our lives.
I regret that now. Deeply.
“Then you will remain my Summer Sword.” Her chin lifts as her broken nails drag down my chest, leaving trails of fire. “Eventually you’ll forget her. Your precious bond will wither.”
She grabs the gold bracelet at my wrist, Ash’s bond, Ash’s claim, the only thing keeping me tethered to something real, and yanks.
The magic flares. Warm. Defiant. Refusing to break.
“Eventually,” she snarls, “you will forget your precious Ash.”
The bond pulses against her grip. Stubborn. Alive. Fighting even when I can’t as she tries to rip it off of me. .
“Never.” I pour every ounce of certainty I possess into the word. “That bond was forged in truth. In choice. In something you will never understand because no one has ever chosen you, Amarantha. They’ve only ever feared you.”
Her hand cracks across my face.
Worth it.
The bond keeps pulsing. Warm. Steady. Ash is alive. Ash is fighting. And as long as that connection exists, Amarantha hasn’t won.
She yanks me forward by my shirt, unbothered by my defiance. “You could have just controlled her. Made this easy. Instead—” She shoves me to my knees, hovering over me, fingers twisting in my hair. “Instead you chose her over me.”
“Ash didn’t stand over my parents’ pyre and call it a lesson.”
She jerks as though I’ve slapped her back.
For a moment, just a moment, something flickers in Amarantha’s eyes. Not guilt. Something closer to confusion. Like she doesn’t understand why that would matter.
“You brought her handlers here,” I press. “Graves. His people. You tried to have her killed.”
Her eyes take on a hazy quality. Distant. Like part of her is somewhere else entirely.
“I had to.” Her voice goes monotone. “You didn’t listen.”
