Too late, I understand why the delegate seemed so amused, out in the hall just now. I told him it wouldn’t matter if I was the Shadow’s mate, but if these fae are twins, if they share the same face, the same blood…does being a mate to the Shadow also make me a mate to the king?
“Are you really so surprised, Princess?” Amriel says flatly. “I thought you would’ve realized from inside your cabinet.”
Savage energy screams through me. I try to pull away, but Amriel crushes me closer. Then I feel it—his tongue, hot and wet, as he drags it up the side of my throat, a long lick from collarbone to jaw.
A cry of revulsion tears from my lungs, which Amriel ignores. “Delicious.” He ends his assault with another stolen inhale, his nose buried in my hair. “I’ve never smelled anything like you.”
“Let go of me,” I hiss.
He laughs, every facet of it frozen, and opens his hands. My knees crumple, dumping me hard onto the stone at his feet. Pain pulses in the heels of my hands as I push myself upward and glare.
The fae king stares down, unmoved by the hatred I hurl at him with my eyes. “Sariah of Aethrolia, I hereby Claim you, by the rights granted to me in the Treaty of Vellin. Now stand up. We’re going.”
The world shears, splitting along invisible fault lines. Distantly, I register the roar of the crowd, but the commotion falls through me, past me. Surely this isn’t happening. Surely Ishanna will intervene. Surely she’ll strike down this wretched fae if he so much asthinksof stealing me away.
But when my shaking hands seize my pendant, nothing answers my internal screams. Not even a flicker.
Amriel watches my struggle through slitted eyes, then gestures behind him. “Shadow of mine. Come get this princess off the floor, since she seems incapable of doing it herself.”
“No!” a woman screams. Hands scrabble at me, fingernails catching at my sleeve. A tear opens along the shoulder of my dress, the rip loud in my ear.
I turn my head in slow motion. Evelyn is reaching for me, but my father catches her around the middle, dragging her back. “Stop this,” he says. “Amriel has chosen.”
“No!” Evelyn shrieks. “He can’t have her!”
But my father only hauls Evelyn away. I lurch after them on all fours, desperate to reach my sister.
“Please,” I beg. The word comes out wet and wobbly, as limp as my outstretched hand. “Don’t make me go.”
The look my father levels at me silences my heart mid-beat. He seems resolute, maybe even relieved. “There’s nothing I can do, Sariah. It’s in the treaty. Our family has carried an obligation for generations, and now it’s finally been fulfilled.”
I stare, but when it becomes clear he’ll grant me no aid, I twist around again, my hands grappling for Brynne’s skirts.She’llsave me. She’ll end this madness somehow. But when my fingers close around starched fabric, my eldest sister stands as stiff as a statue. I glance up to find bleak resignation written across her features. “I told you,” she chokes out. “Itoldyou to make yourself ugly. Why didn’t you listen?”
I recoil. She did tell me. But I thought I knew better, and now it’s too late. Now no one can help me except the fae king himself.
But Amriel has already turned on his heel and gone striding away. I scramble after him in desperation, the stone floor biting into my kneecaps, my skirts tangling around my legs.
“Please,” I gasp. I know I must look pathetic, begging on my knees before half of Aethrolia, but what does it matter? “I’ll do anything.Please.”
Amriel comes to a standstill, and I halt just before plowing into his boots face-first. The crowd moves in the background—ablur of light and noise—but I can’t see past the shiny black leather just inches from my nose.
“Anything?” Amriel says, still facing away.
“Anything,” I gasp. “Just don’t Claim me. Don’t take me to Velindra. Please.”
He whirls into a crouch and grips my chin, tipping my head back until my neck threatens to snap.
I don’t resist, though. I’ll endure whatever it takes to stay here. To pledge myself to the priestesshood, like I planned. To find a place that will welcome me, one where I’ll finally belong.
“Break my curse,” Amriel says, his words as devoid of feeling as the wasteland behind his eyes. “Find your way through the Wildwood and smash the hourglass in my courtyard. As my mate, you’re the only one who can. If you can manage that, I’ll let you go.”
“You…will?”
“I will.”
White-hot hope blazes beneath my breastbone. “You mean I won’t have to stay in Velindra?”
A frozen laugh falls from his lips. “You might be my mate, little Princess, but I don’t want you any more than you want me. Ineedyou, because you’re the only one who can break this wretched curse, but after that, you can do what you like. Spend your life praying, if you want. Spend it begging on your knees, since that seems to come so naturally to you. I don’t care, if you’ll just free me from this nightmare.”
