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I grabbed the first thing my hand found and launched myself at the spider, screaming all my rage and pain, stabbing wildly. I felt the improvised weapon sink into flesh, and I kept stabbing, flailing, and smashing, as blood, mine and the spider’s, bathed me in gore. I felt fangs piercing my legs as I kicked and screamed.

I was beyond human speech. I barely even felt human anymore. I felt like a weapon. A mindless weapon, slashing and battering my enemy ignorant to the tearing of my skin. Blind to the blood, gristle, and bits dripping from my hair. Completely unaware of which one of us was making the haunted sound that kept echoing off the stones.

All I was aware of was the sick squelching of the spider’s head as I slammed into it with whatever I was holding, widening the gash. I hit something hard in my way, and I shoved my fist in, ripped it out, and kept pounding.

Every time someone had beaten me for someone else’s lies. Every time I had been handed a trash bag and told to get out. Every time I had to slide between the rails of a porch and run out into the woods to spend the night in the cold to avoid being raped. Every time I had watched as someone I thought loved me lied about me. Every time someone I thought cared about me believed them. Every time I had to watch the Ard Rí fuck someone. Every blow I had taken from him. Every slice of The Raven’s knife.

It all poured out of me until I was an empty vessel, until all the hurt, pain, and betrayal were gone. Until there was nothing left of me but the hollow shell of a body that didn’t even belong to me. That thought that I wasn’t even going to have the basic luck to die in my own body elicited a final savage crushing of the sludge that was once the insides of the spider.

I fell back, falling a few feet to my ass. The spider had gone still sometime between ripping and pounding. I hadn’t felt it—or me with it—fall to the ground. I hadn’t felt anything. And I still felt nothing.

Not even the deep gouges in my calves that bled milky golden blood seemed to ache or bother me. The spider was slowly starting to liquefy. My shaking hand, covered in acrid green gore, let go of the shard of iron.

“Go figure. The first time I have a bit of luck, and it’s on my deathbed. Cheers. The universe does have a sense of humor.”

The ghost lights danced around me, spinning and swirling at a dizzying pace, as I lay back to await death. I could feel life leaking from me, gleefully running away from the battered body before the pain of my wounds could find me.

I closed my eyes and let the cold creep into my limbs as my mind wandered. It found a single golden thread and followed it to the memory of The Raven’s smile. The way it flowed up to his forest gaze and crinkled at the corners. The way his soft thunder voice rumbled through my chest as he spoke. The way our bodies fit against each other. The sweet way he held me when he had found me under that bed. The gentle way he kissed the top of my head. The way he had known me better than I knew myself.

I didn’t want to admit it then. I didn’t want to admit it ever—that, every day I had gone up to work, I had hoped to catch a glimpse of him. I didn’t want to admit then the way my stomach twisted with nerves and excitement every time I heard his laugh in the corridors. Or the way my knees felt weak when his warmth was close. I didn’t want to admit that I hadn’t known I would like any of the ways he touched me and that I had, in fact, loved every single way he touched me.

Every single caress. Every single brutality. Every single atrocity and kindness was a rich buffet that had fed and succored me. That had built me up from the ground and helped me find my legs when I thought they would never be mine again.

My ego, my pain, my anger had all kept me from admitting any of it. Had kept me from cherishing any of it. Had kept me pushing him away in hopes that he would come back and somehow that would prove to me that he would stay.

It was so much easier when they left before I had a chance to want them, need them, crave them. And he had stayed. That fucker had stayed, and I had let myself feel things for him. I had let him crawl into my heart, and now that it was slowing down, I would never be able to enjoy that. I would never be able to tell him.

A soft wind blew through the chasm like a distant howl.

Blackness chased away the dancing ghost lights. And I fell into its velvet embrace and let it take me away from the shattered body that had been forced upon me. Let it envelop me and hold me in the false warmth of it. I let the darkness lie to me because the alternative was to stay and live out the last few agonizing moments.

I liked myself too much to force myself to endure the ending of my own body. So, I went into the black and did so willingly.

Chapter 32

Ard Tiarna Emrys of Breacadh an Lae, The Raven of the Dawn

Irolled my neck and groaned into the popping barely disguised by the crunching of my boots in the gravel path to the greenhouse. My guards were fanning out, moving in stealth among the flower beds, whispering their apologies as they passed each of the bud heads. I hadn’t said that I would meet him alone. He had not even asked it.

It was sloppy of him. But who wouldn’t be in his position? I’d have agreed to give anything, my true name be damned, if I were him. The way she came undone for him was like a ritual ecstatic writhing before a bonfire in the old days. She had sloughed off all pretense of her humanity, and for the briefest of seconds, I could have been convinced she was the Fae that she had been molded into mimicking. I had watched humans mating over the years. What young Fae wasn’t curious how other species mated? I had never seen the abandon, the wantonness, the commitment to pleasure like that.

Most of them were silent except for the panting grunts. She hadn’t even realized that she talked while she fucked. I jealously hoarded those words and kept them to myself. The bridle was my own jealousy at first, wanting to keep the way she screamed, begged, and whispered her passions all to myself. But when I saw her mouth spread wide, lips stretched thin and struggling to keep the drool in its cavern, I reconsidered my faith in the gods.

Surely, she had usurped them all.

I had left her in my most private chambers, hoping she would take some time to calm down and maybe rest. The thought of her drew a smile to my face without my permission. Of her having curled up on the coverlet I had made to be warm and soft against her delicate skin. Of her snuggling into sheets that she, if sharp-eyed, would notice had her name stitched in matching threads and a love sonnet I had selected for her. Perhaps she had even taken down her hair, and it was pooling in golden sheets across the pillows I had replaced in anticipation that, one day, we would share the bed.

I wanted the best for her. I wanted her to rest among the luxury she deserved. Even if the only time I could have her time was at night, under the cloak of darkness, with no one watching.

At least until I could figure out a way to unyoke her from servitude and flee this corrupted place. Until that blessed day, I would find ways for me to carve out small bits of joy for her and enjoy the way she burned for me.

Flicking my gaze to the dusk-kissed foliage around the greenhouse as I closed in on it, I found the softest glint of a metal bracer. That had to be Hemlock.

I’d told him to either blue his armor or wear leather like the rest of us. He was a slave to the aesthetic of being a soldier and not much dedicated to the actual art of war. I hated having to tolerate the foppish young Fae courtiers whose family wanted to claim a trophy of war. They made my job harder. I would have to deal with Hemlock sooner rather than later. If he blew this operation, I would disembowel him.

Candlelight streamed out of the greenhouse, casting small slivers of golden puddled light across the garden as I made my way to the glass door and opened it.

Brittle Spear was sipping a glass of wine as he leaned against one of the potting tables, casual as always. The man could have a hurricane bearing down on him, and he’d merely tsk at his spilled drink.