Page 24 of Blood of the Fairest

"No? And here I thought you'd be clever until the end. Then let's begin."

Pure, unadulterated pain blinds me in an instant. It rockets down my spine, curling my toes and pulling another scream from my raw throat. There's heat, too, so sudden and severe that I'm sure this is what burning alive feels like.

And it just builds, second by second. More agony. More heat.

Pounding fills my ears while the taste of smoke and copper singes my throat. Something inside me is going very wrong. My heart has started to thunder so unnaturally that it feels like it's breaking apart just before⁠—

"Malivant!" a vaguely familiar voice calls from somewhere. "Stop."

The ever-increasing pain lulls for a moment, but I still feel like I've been shut in a dark coffin full of nails and set on fire. I'm not sure I could open my eyes if I tried.

The cruel faerie hums. "An unmoored soul, passing through the reflections of the pools, dares to utter the true name of Wrath? Whoever you think you are, you have no business interrupting. Leave."

"Use your seelenwerk to read her soul, faerie. You'll see it is not the same one who deserves your punishment. You're torturing an innocent."

The Huntsman is still pinning me to this cage, but I feel him tense. Meanwhile, whatever magical agony was just pumping into me stops abruptly, leaving me trembling.

"Impossible," the faerie spits.

The newcomer's tone is pure challenge. "Is it? Find out for yourself."

It's quiet for a moment, and then I flinch when a hand gently but firmly grasps my chin through the tears, tilting my face up.

Strangely, it doesn't feel like the clawed hand I just saw a moment ago, even though it's accompanied by the faerie's voice demanding, "Open your eyes."

No, thanks. I don't need to be terrorized even more before dying.

I'm so shaken and hopeless that for a second, I'm tempted to tell them to please just kill me and get it over with. How much terror can a woman like me handle in one lifetime?

But when the faerie silently holds my chin as if he'll wait forever if needed, I work up the courage to open my eyes.

The tears and shadows work together to obscure a lot of what I'm looking at through the bars, but I can make out vertical, slitted pupils peering into mine. Those pupils dilate quickly just before an odd sensation sweeps through me, like every vein in my body is tingling.

My heart pounds in a different rhythm. I feel…strange.

Like I've just been laid bare—but so has he.

The faerie exhales harshly before the grip on my chin disappears. His voice is strained with confusion and something I can't name.

"It's true. This is not her."

I fucking told you.

The Huntsman makes a strangled sound, his grip on me loosening at once. "No. That cannot be. This same vile creature hired me to dispose of the Isenmerian princess. Look again."

"No need. There is no mistaking that Queen Reinhilde's soul is gone, and a broken one occupies her body now. Thus, my wrath may remain forever unanswered," the faerie sighs.

There's a powerful whoosh like something large has moved inside the cage, and then the shadows hide their prisoner once again. The second he's moved away from me, exhaustion nearly makes me collapse.

The Huntsman catches me in time, lowering me to the floor carefully.

"You…are not the queen," he says very slowly, like the words aren't computing.

No shit, Sherlock. I only screamed that over and over.

I think this means they're not going to kill me anymore. I'm also pretty sure that the lost soul the faerie mentioned is the Adonis from the magic mirror. I'm not sure why he's here, but I should thank him—except whatever the faerie just did to me is taking a hefty toll. My eyelids feel heavy, and my body is as weak as wet paper.

Even though I'm half delirious and about to pass out, I flinch away from the hand that dabs at the blood and water on my face. My left hand throbs again as a shudder wracks through me.