But after thirty years of magic settling into my bones, rooting itself in my very essence, is there even a way out anymore?
The Crown pulses. Searching. Hoping.
The bond at my wrist pulses back. Warm. Stubborn. Refusing to fade.
Ash is alive. Ash is fighting.
And against every odd stacked against me, so am I.
13
Ash
Terror ghostsdown my spine like the slide of a fingernail.
Finnian is gone. Amarantha’s hand on his arm, her smile sharp as glass, and then, nothing. Vanished into whatever hell she’s constructed for him.
The bond at my wrist flickers. Gold thread pulsing with something that feels like panic. His or mine, I can’t tell anymore.
I don’t ask where he went. It’s obvious.
I don’t scream his name. I want to.
I’m not a crier. Not usually.
It’s probably one of the few things my cousins found strange about me. That I just didn’t cry. Not at funerals. Not at goodbyes. Not when Graves pushed me past breaking and expected me to thank him for it.
It isn’t that I’m an ice queen. Or that I have no heart.
I like to think it’s the opposite, actually. For so damn long, when a moment passed me by where tears stung the back of my eyes, I took that feeling and buried it deep inside of me. Locked it away. Kept moving.
Sometimes I wonder how many emotions I have stored there. Behind my sternum. Buried deep in my soul. A graveyard of everything I refused to feel.
And watching Finnian disappear with Amarantha, the woman who killed his parents, who’s been obsessed with him for centuries, who looked at him like he was a toy she’d finally gotten her hands on?—
A dam begins to fracture inside me. And now? I can’t stop the tears as they consistently come. Maybe that’s the trial of survival. Maybe it’s nothing more than my mate falling victim to his court.
I walk out. It’s the only control I have.
One foot in front of the other. Don’t run. Don’t scream. Don’t give Moros the satisfaction of watching you fall apart.
He’s watching anyway. That look of interest on his ancient face, like I’m a specimen. A curiosity. Fae are so old they’ve forgotten how to feel, so when emotions bubble up in someone else, they’re fascinated.
Predators watching prey bleed.
I keep walking.
The bond pulses again. Faster now. Gold flickering like a warning light.
Don’t think about what she’s doing to him. Don’t think about?—
I think about it anyway. Every horror story Kieran’s ever told me about his cousin. Every shadow that crossed Finnian’s face when her name came up.
Left foot. Right foot. Keep moving.
I’m halfway down the corridor when the realization hits me like a blade between ribs.
I’m Fae.
