She’s as atrociously lovely as ever, her snow-white hair slicked firmly to her scalp. Her opal-beaded gown reflects the dazzling moonlight coming through the stained glass windows, shooting speckles of greens and yellows and pinks and blues across the walls and floors.

  “Whatever do you mean?” she asks.

  “You spend years grooming me, forcing me to become your son, then you throw me away?”

  She pins me with that icy stare of hers as I stand, a flurry of bone-white runes separating us. I’d lunge for her, rip her delicate throat out, but it’s clear by the way the runes have already begun to blur that the spell has already started. It’s why she picked this room of all places to conduct it. My crossing the runes could do nothing, or it could send the entire spell rippling off-balance, leaving Zora in the crossfires of a ricocheting blast of magic gone out of control.

  So I stay planted and instead simply imagine what I’d do to the Queen of Mystral if my sister wasn’t lying asleep behind me.

  If only she could wake, make a run for it and hide, then I’d end this.

  It wouldn’t matter to me if I went up in the smoke of a spell gone wrong.

  Blaise left. Gunter is gone. Zora’s safety is the only thing tying me to this side of the sun anyway.

  “You act as if I was successful. As if any of my attempts to bring you into my family were successful. Like what I’m doing now is akin to slaughtering my own child.”

  I scoff. “I would have never expected you to be the type to understand that not all children are tied to their parents through flesh and blood.”

  “No,” Abra says, her voice as cold as steel. “They are tied by the heart. And that is the one thing you never offered me access to. The one thing you kept from me all these years. So forgive me if I do not feel as though I’m sacrificing one of my children for the other.”

  I watch the runes, and even as I trace their familiar patterns with my gaze, my vision starts to blur as the spell sets in.

  It will lock me up, at best. Erase me at worst. It depends on how well the queen conducts the spell. Normally, I would be less than confident in her abilities to perform a ritual that didn’t come directly from that head of hers. It seems like it’s taking her longer with me than it took with Blaise, but this one is different.

  Because I know the shadow that lurks within the depths of her irises, the same parasite that watched through Blaise’s eyes the last time I cast this spell.

  The parasite has attached itself to a new host. It’s how the queen knows to perform this ritual. How she’ll succeed in handing my body over to her awful son.

  “I thought your purpose in obtaining the parasite was to protect the Rip,” I venture. In the end it won’t matter. In the end, I’ll be gone, but apparently that does nothing to assuage my burning curiosity.

  The queen traces a pattern on the ground with her foot, like she’s trying to memorize the runes in case the parasite refuses to share them with her in the future. “It is my purpose. But there is no reason I can’t have my son while I fulfill it.”

  “Oh, no?” I cock my brow. “Because I was under the impression you had this grand idea you were protecting this realm from the Others that lurk in the Nether. Yet you seek to release a different sort of monster upon the humans. What did you offer the parasite in exchange for unleashing Farin?”

  The queen purses her thin lips, but she doesn’t answer my question. “He was not always a monster. It was his father’s doing, but the harm can be undone.”

  I can almost laugh. “He despises you, you know,” I say, because the rage is all I have left.

  Her eyes narrow. “It would matter not if he did, even if it were true.”

  I huff, tracing the ground with my foot. When I glance back up at her, she sneers. “Males cannot understand. They are devoid of the natural attachment that mothers feel toward their children. We cannot resent them for it, but we know it in our very being all the same. It’s why you resent our Blaise for leaving you. It’s why you can’t fathom her choice to find her child over the choice to stay with you. It took her less than a moment to choose between you and the ability to obtain the location of her child.”

  My heart stops, and the rage in the queen’s face falters as she realizes what she’s revealed. Her mouth moves as if to grope for the words, to take them back, but she cannot take the words from my ears, from my heart.

  It’s the Fates’ last gift to me before I am erased.

  Blaise left for her child.

  I know it was my plan for her to leave, that because I love her, I wanted her to leave me behind.

  But still.

  A faint smile curves my lips, and I’m too flooded by warmth, by my love and respect and adoration for the woman I love, to even revel in the fact that my joy irritates the queen.

  “Thank you,” I tell her, and I mean it.

  She swallows, and I know her well enough by now that this would be easier for her if she despised me utterly. That my genuine smile tugs at her heart.

  The queen’s heart might be made of ice, but that’s the thing about ice.

  It has a tendency of wanting to melt.

  When she speaks, her voice is hoarse. “He is my son,” she explains.

  I ignore her and instead settle into an image, the place I want my mind to occupy before I’m wiped away by a flurry of magic and evil.

  So I close my eyes and think of Blaise, I think of the joy in her heart when she finally stumbles across Theo or Rose.

  I think of her combing Rose’s hair into a braid for Rose’s wedding.

  I think of her attending the audience when Theo is awarded his physician’s medal.

  There’s a sadness to the picture, seeing her there all alone in the crowd.

  A twinge of pain mingled with the joy.

  But the smile that overcomes Blaise’s cheeks is worth the tears that stain them.

  So when the magic of the ritual flares, and my torso no longer functions, I hardly feel the fall. Hardly feel it when my skull slams against the marble floor.

  I cling to that memory that is not a memory at all, but a hope. To Blaise smiling. To the love of my life moving on.

  As the spell heightens, darkness begins to eat at the edges of the image, like fire consuming the edges of a portrait. And where the shadows eat away at Blaise’s happiness, the image is replaced, and Blaise is weeping and heartbroken and distraught.

  When the happiness and joy are swept away and only the aching is left, I cling to that version of her too.

  CHAPTER 50

  BLAISE

  “Blaise…”

  “Fates above, she’s killed someone.”

  “We don’t know it was her—Fates, that’s Clarissa. Oh, Blaise…”

  “Who’s Clarissa?”

  “Blaise’s stepmother. That’s Blaise’s stepmother.”

  “Still think she didn’t kill her?”

  “Kiran”—another voice, one I don’t recognize—“why don’t you have a look around and make sure no one else in the house is hurt?”

  A shuffling of feet, and it’s as if all the warmth flees the room behind whoever left.

  I’m staring at a knot in the wood. Its swivels and swirls haven’t changed with time, but every time I blink, a different picture appears.

  A puppy with its tongue lolling.

  A dragon breathing fire.

  A new picture joins the rotation too: the profile of a face, mouth dripping with blood.

  A warm hand ruffles my robes on my shoulder, and at first I think it’s Nox, because he’s been holding me all night, but then I remember that it can’t be him, because I left him behind.

  “Blaise? Blaise, it’s Ev—it’s Andy. Can you look at me?”

  His voice is soothing, kind. There was a time when it would have melted me.

  I’m too cold to be melted by something as inconsequential as a voice now. Andy doesn’t know that it’s useless to try, so he keeps on. “We’re going to get you out of here, okay? You’re safe now.”

  The laugh I let out is hysterical, harsh, so much so that Andy flinches.

  He steels himself, but not quickly enough.

  “Blaise.”

  “I used to stare at this wall, you know. Well, I guess you don’t know.” I hiccup, and it almost makes me giggle, because I sound as though I’m drunk. I suppose I am drunk, just on my dead stepmother’s blood. “She kept me up here all that time. Thought if she hid me away, no one would know about the baby. No one would guess that Clarissa’s stepdaughter had whored herself and ruined her family name. I didn’t have much to entertain me, so I’d sit and stare and pretend the wood was magic and that you were sending me secret messages. A cloud meant you were coming through the roof to save me. A mouse meant you would burst through the walls. Turns out nothing meant anything. It was all in my head.” I swivel my neck to the side. “It was always in my head, wasn’t it?”

  Fates, he’s as gorgeous as he’s ever been, his sea-green eyes vibrant with concern, his tanned skin drained of color—or perhaps it’s just the cool lantern light.

  Evander swallows, his eyes alight with dread as he takes me in. I realize then that even Andy is afraid of me. Even Andy.

  He must see in my eyes that I’m a murderer.

  He was ready to defend me before, but his eyes drop to my mouth. There was a time I would have interpreted his expression as a longing to kiss me, but I know better now.

  There must be blood staining my lips.

  “Get Kiran,” is all Evander says, though he doesn’t turn to his companions to say it. He doesn’t take his eyes off me. “You’re safe now,” he says. “We’re going to get you help.”

  A pair of feet shuffle away, but Evander and the other presence in the room remain.

  “Sometimes I’d pretend it was you,” I whisper, and I don’t know why I’m saying these things. Maybe it’s the blood still swirling through my mind, my hunger satiated but my consciousnesses drowned. It’s like I’ve had my head dunked under water, and the only way to come up for air, the only way to connect me back to the human girl I used to be, is for the truth to spill out. “I don’t know what I would have done without your letters,” I say, and before Evander can remind me how he feels for me, like a sister and nothing more, I ramble on. “I wasn’t going to kill her, even after I knew she let my baby die and lied to me. All those years—all the money I sent, so one day she’d tell me where she sent my baby, where Rose or Theo was growing up—and the whole time my baby was dead.” Evander’s sea-green eyes try to blink back tears, but they fail, and several skitter down his tan cheeks.

  “I wasn’t even going to kill her for that,” I say, and now I’ve grabbed Evander’s hand, and I’m squeezing it like somehow that will force him to understand. Surprise washes over his face, and I suppose it’s because of my strength, the type of strength a human shouldn’t possess. “But Andy, she…she…” I’m choking. I’m choking on Clarissa’s blood. Somehow it still fills my mouth, my throat, and I can’t breathe, nor can I swallow.

  I can only drown.

  Another hand touches my back. Gentle fingers wrap my tangled matted hair into a braid. As soon as they do, a weight is lifted off the back of my neck, and I can’t feel the blood matted within the knots of my hair.

  “Evander, give us a moment,” says a voice I swore I thought I’d never hear again. Not with that timbre of gentleness, at least.

  I still can’t breathe.

  Andy rubs the side of his neck. The pressure of his fingers leaves little white marks on his skin. “We need to get her out of here.”

  “She’s not going to move in this state,” she says, with only a hint of matter-of-factness.

  Andy looks as though he might not move, but he exchanges looks with the woman behind me, and eventually swallows and nods.

  He stops by the woman and whispers something I’m not meant to hear.

  I do anyway, of course.

  It’s that he’ll be right outside listening. That he’ll protect her at all costs.

  I decide I’d rather not be that cost.

  When Ellie Payne kneels before me, I let loose a strangled sob. It’s raw in my throat, but at least it pushes the air through, reminds me I can breathe.

  “Ellie, I’m so sorry. I’m so so sorry.” I know I should say more, that I should list out all the reasons one by one, but I can’t even count all the reasons Ellie Payne should hate me. I feel as if I begin to list them, I’ll miss something and she’ll count my misremembering against me.

  Ellie’s brown eyes are soft as she takes me in. I expect her to take a single look at my face, at the shadows under my eyes, at the hauntingly beautiful transformation, and recoil.

  But Ellie Payne is not the type to recoil.

  Instead, her eyes examine me like she might a piece of warped glass, with a detached sort of calculation. Then she sets to work fixing me.

  Her fingers are nimble as they work with the clasp at my neck, and though blood smears my front, she manages not to get any on her. My robe falls away, and with it a significant portion of Clarissa’s blood.

  Something in my chest loosens.

  I’m left in my shift, which is also coated in blood, and Ellie helps me work it over my head. There’s a moment when Clarissa’s blood, soaked into the fabric, smears across my face, and the scent threatens to make me vomit. Like when one’s gorged themselves on too much of a single food and later gets a whiff of it.

  But then the shift is gone, and Ellie quickly tosses it behind me, presumably so I don’t have to look at it. I’m in my undergarments now, my arms bare and exposed, but Ellie works at her own clasp, and when it comes off, she sets it gently to the side and begins unbuttoning her linen dress.

  She’s left in a set of ivory satin undergarments, which only highlight the beautiful warm tones of her smooth brown skin. The undergarments do little to expose her, other than the form of her waist and hips, but I remember how little Ellie enjoys flaunting her body. How she always seemed to gravitate toward more modest designs when picking out her evening gowns, and even had Imogen rework an outfit I picked out for her to provide more coverage.

  But here she is—Ellie Payne sitting across from me in her undergarments as she wipes my face with a terrycloth. She dips it into a basin of water Clarissa must have been using to freshen up. I can’t help but stare as she slips her clean dress over my head, as she wraps me in a freshly laundered cloak that smells of rainwater and lavender.

  My face is wet, and it shouldn’t be after Ellie dried it off with the bedsheets, it shouldn’t be soaked in blood after Ellie’s cleaned me up, after she’s wet my hair and pulled a comb through its tangles to work out the blood.

  It takes me longer than it should to realize it’s not blood coating my cheeks.

  It’s not the coppery, bitter substance that leaks through my veins.

  It’s salt and water, tears streaming down my face, wetting Ellie’s underskirt as she works on me.

  “Ellie, I’m—”

  “Shh,” she says, and I’m in no position to argue with her, so I don’t.

  Moments after she’s done cleaning me up, Evander enters the room, followed by two high fae I don’t recognize.

  The male with tanned skin, jet-black hair to match his trimmed beard, and molten fire for eyes examines me with suspicion, but he has no reason to fear me, and I can tell with one exchanged look that he doesn’t. I’ve heard of this male before—the King of Naenden, the male who can summon fire with his hands.

  He wouldn’t need the sunlight to burn me.

  Next to him is a slight woman, barely older than me. She’s missing an eye, and burn marks snake up the left side of her body.

  Yet she doesn’t seem to fear her husband, the yielder of the element that left her marred.

  Queen Asha of Naenden, weaver of stories and savior of her people.

  There’s something else that’s important about her, but I can’t quite grasp onto it through the fog.

  The three of them glance quickly at Ellie, still in her undergarments, but Kiran’s and Asha’s attention quickly returns to me.

  I’m the one clothed, yet I’ve never felt so naked.

  “You’re safe now,” Andy says again, and I want to believe him, I do, but why should I? The last time I was with him, he locked me up. It’s not that I blame him for it; I would have locked myself up too, but I can’t…

  I can’t I can’t I can’t…

  “You can’t what, Blaise?” Ellie says, wiping a sweaty strand of hair from my eyes.

  I hadn’t realized I was speaking aloud.

  “I can’t go back to the dungeons, to the dark, but…Oh, I can’t be in the sun either. What time is it?” I ask, my eyes frantically darting around for the clock. Just moments ago I fully intended to go walking in the sunlight as soon as the sun rose, but now that Andy and Ellie are here, I can’t quite summon up the courage to let myself die.

  King Kiran’s eyes narrow, and when his molten stare traces the shadows underneath my eyes, I wonder if he knows who I am.

  What I am.

  “Why can’t you go in the sun, Blaise?” Andy asks, but Ellie puts a hand on his.

  “I don’t think she’s in a mental state to answer our questions right now,” she says, intertwining her fingers with his.

  There was a time in my life when the sight of them holding hands would have made me ill.

  It still does, but for a completely different reason.

  It’s because when I see their fingers interlock, I can feel the phantom of Nox’s touch upon my skin.

  The touch I’ll never feel again.

  The touch I left behind, the touch I sacrificed for my baby.

  My baby who is not here. Who hasn’t ever been here.

  Andy nods, and he reaches for me to pick me up, but there’s whispering in the corner—Queen Asha to her husband, and he suddenly says, “I’ll do it. I’ll carry her back.”

  Evander shoots a questioning look in his direction and angles his body between me and the King of Naenden, like he expects the king to squelch me any moment now.

  “Kiran won’t hurt her,” Queen Asha says, and though she’s human, her word feels as binding as the promise of the fae.

 

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