by Lexi Ryan
“Pretha,” I say as she wraps a hand around the knob. “After I get the final relics for Mordeus, I have a lot I need to figure out, but whatever I decide, I hope you . . . I hope everyone understands that this isn’t easy for me. I’ve had feelings for Sebastian for two years, but Finn . . .” I swallow. My gaze slips to the kitchen window. Inside, Finn is cleaning Lark’s knee and making her laugh. I think of the way he refused me last night when I was drugged out of my mind and begging. Of his cocky grin this morning. “Finn is my friend. I don’t want to lose either of them.”
When she turns back to me, her smile is sad. “In the end, you will have to choose.”
I think of Sebastian and how badly it hurt me to see him with that other girl. I think of how tempting it is to excuse it, just so I don’t have to sacrifice the little time I have left with him before he finds out that, of the two of us, my betrayals might run the deepest.
Pretha doesn’t realize she’s wrong. There will be no choice for me.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I SNAP A THREAD ON MY BRACELET, and before I can prepare a lock of hair for Bakken, he’s sitting in my bedroom in the Golden Palace, legs crossed, eyes closed, and palms turned up on his knees. I think I caught him meditating.
He sighs heavily, then flashes those pointed teeth in a horrific grin when he sees me. “Fire Girl. I told you not to summon me inside the queen’s palace.”
Indeed he did, but I’d forgotten. I shrug. “Too bad.”
He stands with surprising grace and extends a hand. “Payment, then?”
I grab a lock of hair from the back, pulling it from along my hairline near where I cut the last one. I shear it off quickly and hand it over. “What do you do with it?”
“Is that what you wish to know today?”
“No!” What a waste of hair. I don’t actually care. I probably don’t want to know, truly. “I have another question. Tell me about the disease that makes the Unseelie age and heal like mortals.”
“There’s no disease.”
“Then tell me why! Why do they heal like mortals?”
He strokes my orange-red hair between two fingers, saying, “She grows wiser.”
“She grows impatient,” I say, watching my bedroom door. I’m supposed to leave for the summer palace with Sebastian tonight. When I returned to the palace, I sent my maids down to tell him I was preparing to go and needed another hour. I can’t risk Bakken being here when Sebastian comes to my door, but I can’t wait any longer for answers either. “Tell me.”
“Twenty years ago, when King Oberon returned from the long night in the human realm, Queen Arya rushed to him, desperate to be reunited with her first and only love. But Oberon rejected her. While the king was locked in the mortal realm, he had fallen in love with a human woman. He said he couldn’t be with the queen when his heart belonged to another. Heartbroken and angry that he would choose a weak mortal over her, the queen cursed the Unseelie king and all his people. Under the curse, they were no longer immortal, as before. They would age and be weak like humans.”
“Then why does Mordeus have so much power? Isn’t he Unseelie?”
“Ah, but the queen was vindictive. She wanted mortals punished alongside Oberon and his people. So she provided the Unseelie with a way to maintain their powers and their life. If the king didn’t want to die or become weak, he would have to take the life of a human—many humans if he wanted a long life, and many more if he wanted to use his magic during that life.”
The hair stands up on my arms. Why do humans wish for magic when this is what is done with it? I can’t imagine a world in which the greediest of my kind could wield that kind of power.
Then the implications of this click into place, and I have to wrap my arms around myself. They have to take human lives to heal or have access to their powers, and that was why the tribute showed up when Finn was sick. But no. Finn wouldn’t do that. He’s not a murderer. He must have found some work-around for the curse.
I lock the thought away and rub my hands over my arms, trying to find warmth. “Why don’t they just . . . curse her back?”
“Their power is too weak, even as they sacrifice human after human.” His eyes grow distant—as if he’s not even there. As if he’s looking far into the past and not at me.
“How is this even possible? Why hasn’t this happened before if it’s so easy to cripple an entire court?”
He shakes his head. “Because the cost of such power is too great. The queen was mad with jealousy when she made this curse, and alongside her summer solstice sacrifice, she gave something else to bend the magic to her will. She made the Seelie powerless to hurt the Unseelie—thus the end of the Great Fae War.”
“That can’t be true,” I say, shaking my head. “Finn was hurt by one of the queen’s sentries. I stitched him up myself.”
“Perhaps the sentry worked for the queen, but the Seelie cannot wound the Unseelie.”
I remember what Finn said about assuming that the guards were Seelie when they were actually Wild Fae working for the golden queen. I couldn’t understand why the Wild Fae were more dangerous to him than the Seelie. Now I know. “Why did no one tell me any of this?”
“The curse prevents the fae from speaking of it—a clever loophole the queen included to keep humans from learning the truth.”
“Then why can you speak of it?”
“Goblins are the keepers of realms. We gather the secrets, the histories, and the stories. No curse or spell can keep us from gathering or sharing any information we wish, though my kin and I know better than to anger the queen by sharing her secrets widely. Her wrath is great. Just ask the Sluagh that lurk about the seaside palace.” He grins at this.
“Why would she allow them to use humans to get their powers back? Why give them that opportunity when the fae have so little regard for human life as it is?”
“Because the queen wanted the Unseelie to become as evil as they’re rumored to be. She wants them to kill humans. It’s her way of punishing all humans for the one who stole King Oberon’s heart.”
“And yet she wants her own son to marry a human.” I’ve never liked the queen. I may have pitied her that first night when I saw the emptiness in her eyes, but when I learned about the camps, I began to hate her. But it is still hard to imagine the sweet mage’s apprentice I fell for coming from someone so spiteful. So diabolical.
“She wants her son to thrive, to continue on after her and to be more powerful than even she could be. It is her son who wants to marry a human—a very specific human with the loveliest fire-red hair.”
He tucks my hair into the pouch at his waist. “I’ve given you more than is fair for your offering.” He lifts his hand, his fingers pressed together to snap.
“Wait!”
His hand drops to his side. “Yes?”
“Can the curse be broken?”
He shakes his head. “You push your luck. Good night, Fire Girl.”
“Stop.” I pull another lock forward from the back of my hair. “If I give you more hair, will you tell me how to break the curse?”
He merely extends a hand and slowly opens his palm.
I close my eyes as I shear away another lock. My maids will have a fit when they see what I’ve done to myself. But if I can save Finn and those children in the camps, if I can save Lark and keep Pretha from having something as simple as a scrape cause that look of terror on her face . . .
I place the lock in the palm of his wrinkled hand.
“You can break the curse. For twenty years the Unseelie have tried and failed, but you are unique in that there are two paths to end the Unseelie’s torment.”
He starts to tuck my hair away, but I grab it before he can. “How?”
His eyes blaze in anger, and he yanks the hair out of my grasp. “The curse comes from the queen’s blackened bitter heart. As long as she sacrifices one of her own each year to feed the curse, it stands.”
“Sacrifices one of her own?”
; “On each summer solstice, a golden fae must be offered to the fires to feed the curse.”
My stomach heaves. Jalek’s sister. Who did she sacrifice this year? The Unseelie refugees can’t afford to wait another year but . . . “If the sacrifice could be prevented, would the curse be broken?”
“Weakened, yes, but not broken.”
I hate the way goblins talk in circles. “Tell me how to break the curse and give the Unseelie their powers back.”
“Fire Girl, you have two paths. Which do you desire to know? The one where you die or the one where you live?”
A cold specter slinks over me, and I swallow. “The one where I live.”
“If that is what you choose—” His smile is wicked. “To end the curse and live, you must kill the queen.”
There’s a knock on my door. So much for my hour.
I open my mouth to tell Bakken to leave, but he’s already gone.
“Abriella?”
The sound of Sebastian’s voice on the other side of the door warms and cools me all at once. I’ve been dreading the moment I’d see him again after last night, but despite any residual heartache, I need him more than ever.
Does Sebastian know about the curse? He must—it seems all the fae do—but does he know his mother is responsible? Does he understand that a whole host of faeries want her dead—not just because of feuding courts but because she is literally killing them? I can’t imagine he’d sanction the death of one of his own simply to keep this curse alive. Then again, there’s so much about Sebastian that I never would have imagined, which is exactly why I can’t trust him.
I tuck the Mirror of Discovery under my skirts and wrap it in shadow. Drawing in a fortifying breath, I open the door and am met with the sight of Sebastian’s deep eyes and smiling face. All thoughts of curses and sacrifices scatter from my mind as it fills with images of Sebastian with his hands all over that other woman.
Keep it together, Brie. Focus.
Swallowing hard, I gesture him inside. “Hi.” One word, and it wobbles. I don’t know if I’m capable of pretending last night didn’t happen.
“We need to talk.”
“Okay . . .” I drop my gaze. I’m so sick of keeping secrets from him, but if I get the Grimoricon from the summer palace, I will be that much closer to the end of these lies and all this deceit. That much closer to helping Finn and his people—and I’m realizing that’s something I really want to do.
I don’t have to look up to know that Sebastian’s moving closer. I am always aware of him when he’s close. He tilts my face up, guiding me to meet his eyes. “I heard about last night,” he says.
Everything inside me stills as images flash before me. The shower, so cold on my hot skin, and the firm, unrelenting press of Finn’s body against mine, his mouth on my neck. The way I begged him . . .
“Riaan just told me. He would have told me sooner, but for some reason he assumed that when you left the party last night, you came to my room.” He shakes his head. “I wish you would have.”
Oh. Oh. I can only stare. My mind’s a mess of questions and hurt and justifications I know I shouldn’t tell myself. But as I lose myself in those sea-green eyes, I feel the temptation of easy forgiveness. Everything would be so much easier if we could just go back to how things were when he left my room yesterday.
“I’m sorry about the other girl,” he whispers. “I never meant to hurt you.”
“Bash, minutes before, you’d been in here kissing me.” Pointing this out makes me feel like a complete hypocrite. Only hours after that, I was begging Finn to touch me, to kiss me. It hardly matters that it didn’t happen. I would have welcomed it if he’d been willing, and that is betrayal enough. Yes, I could blame the cocktail of drugs and heartbreak, but . . .
Sebastian’s eyes flash as he steps back. I see so much in that beautiful face—frustration, anger, maybe a hint of self-loathing. “I told you I’m expected to choose a wife, and while you try to talk yourself into even considering it, there are women who want the position.”
“I invited you to my bed and you walked away and found her.”
He squeezes his eyes shut. “I think I was trying to convince myself that what I felt with you wasn’t special. I wanted to believe I could feel it with one of them too.”
The words hit like a dull blow. “Did you?”
His gaze drops to my mouth, and he slowly shakes his head. “No. I never do, no matter how strongly I wish it.”
I turn away and walk to the window, hating that he wishes he didn’t feel so much for me and understanding it all the same. That’s the worst part of this: I get it. I don’t understand the rush to find a wife or a world where those decisions usually aren’t emotional ones, but trying to connect with someone he may marry while his mother’s deadline looms? I can sympathize. “You looked like you felt it just fine,” I say.
“I wanted to, but I didn’t.” He blows out a breath. “If I felt for her what I feel for you, I wouldn’t have sent her home.”
“Okay.” Right alongside my hurt, guilt ravages my chest. I spent last night begging Finn. I spent this morning loving the laughter in his eyes when he teased me, and the entire afternoon trying to figure out how to save him. And I don’t know where this puts me and Sebastian.
“Can we put all that aside for the night?” he asks. His warm hand slides down my arm until his fingers wrap around my wrist. “I want to focus on us for the next two days. I don’t want to think about you training with Finnian or my mother pressuring me to choose a bride or how soon I’ll have to take my position as king. Can we just focus on us for a while?”
“I’d like that.” Liar. While he thinks he’s taking me to Serenity Palace so we can have some quality time together, my focus will be on finding the Grimoricon and getting it back to Mordeus.
He smiles. “Are you feeling okay?”
I narrow my eyes. Does Sebastian know someone drugged me last night? Was Riaan involved? “Yes, why?”
“I came to your room after breakfast, and your maids said you were still sleeping. That’s not like you.”
Pretha must have put some sort of glamour on my room to make my maids think I was here and sleeping . . . or glamoured someone to look like me and play the part.
“I had a few glasses of wine at the party last night,” I say.
“I’m glad you went.” His eyes soften. “I like seeing you take part in events around the palace.”
But maybe a little more honesty would be better. “Bash, I think I was drugged.”
His faces pales, and those beautiful eyes turn as violent as a raging sea. “What?”
“I didn’t feel right. Hot all over, low inhibitions.” My cheeks heat in embarrassment. Thank the gods only Finn witnessed the worst of it. “When my—my maid found me at the party, I was trying to take my clothes off.”
His jaw is hard, and his eyes glitter with anger. “I need to ask you something, and I need you to be honest with me.”
How can he and I ever stand a chance when simple honesty is something I can never agree to?
Sebastian takes me by the shoulders, his face solemn. “Did you see Finn or any of his people last night?”
“You think they drugged me?”
“I think Finn would like nothing more than to gain your trust, then lower your inhibitions so you’d do something reckless . . . like agree to bond with him.”
“I didn’t bond with anyone.”
“I know.” He squeezes my shoulders gently. “I want to know if they tried.”
The only one I was tempted to bond with last night was Sebastian, and my bargain with the king kept me from indulging that wish. “But . . . why? Why do you all care about this bond so much? You act like it matters more than . . .” More than me. That was at the root of my begging in the shower, wasn’t it? It seemed that Sebastian couldn’t want me without a promise of the bond, and I wanted to feel like I’d be enough even without it. I can’t blame the drugs for that.
“Becau
se it does matter.” He searches my face. There’s more he’s trying to tell me. Maybe he can’t. Maybe something about the curse? “I wouldn’t put it past Finn and his crew. A simple bonding ceremony, and he could take you away from me forever.”
Didn’t Finn give me a similar warning about Mordeus when I first came here? Why would they both warn me this way? And Finn was angry this morning when I admitted that the bargain with Mordeus is truly what keeps me from bonding with Sebastian. What else would he have said if Pretha hadn’t come in with Lark?
I can’t afford a fight with Sebastian now, and defending Finn and his friends will only prolong this argument, so I swallow back the urge and shake my head. “I don’t know who drugged me.”
He squeezes my hand in his. “If we were bonded, I’d know when you were in trouble. I would have found you last night and made sure no one could use your inhibitions to their advantage. I hate knowing how vulnerable you are.”
“I’m not vulnerable—not like I once was. I’m getting better at using my powers.”
But he doesn’t look reassured. “Sometimes it’s your power that makes you so vulnerable.”
“Why do you say that?”
“It doesn’t matter.” He gathers me against his chest, and I can hear his heart racing. “All that matters is that you’re safe.”
“Is it truly so rare for a human to have magic?”
He huffs out a laugh. “Indeed.” He leans his forehead against mine. “You’re so damn special, and Finn knows it.” He swallows. “Even if he’s not responsible for you being drugged last night, he will try to convince you to bond with him. But whatever you do, refuse him. No one can force the bond on you. It has to be entered into freely by both parties.”
“Why would Finn want that? What could he possibly gain from that?”
Shaking his head, he slides his hands down my back and to my waist, tugging my hips flush with his. “He’d have . . . access to your power.”
And since Finn can’t use his own without shortening his life or becoming a serial killer of humans, he needs my power. Is that why he flirted this morning, was so good to me last night? Is that the real reason he’s been training me? Is this all a long game to gain my trust so I can be his puppet?