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My back hits a wall as he slams his palm beside my head, rattling the picture frame above. Unseen pressure locks around my wrist, forcing my dagger to pin to my side. I struggle, but it’s like fighting a boulder. In this form, he’s two people at once. The wraith and the nightmare made flesh. He hasn’t even revealed his wings or horns.
His face is inches from mine. I see every tiny pore on his porcelain skin, every perfect feature. His intake of breath is guttural and pained.
“We bargained for a queenwho was our equal,” he whispers hoarsely. “For an end to our eternal suffering.” His second palm slams on the other side of my head, and I wince. “We wanted aqueen, and they gave us achild.”
“You can’t blame this on anyone else.YOU did this.”
He scoffs, “You don’t even know who ‘anyone else’ is.”
My mind stutters to a halt. Is he talking about Titania?
His expression deadpans, and his taloned hands slide down the wall, scraping like nails on a chalkboard. His skull flickers, and his wraith form returns to his body. He is once again pretty and a devil, all rolled into one. Except now his eyes are sad, and he’s at a loss for words.
“Who do you think gave us these secrets in the first place?”
I shrug. “Varen is psychic. You’re old enough to know the difference between right and wrong. The blessing proves you do.”
A cruel laugh spills from his lips. “The so-called blessing changed us into something new. We were children in the eyes of the light. Fish out of water, breathing air for the first time.” He gestures hastily to his blue Guardian teardrop. “It took usyearsbefore we understood the intricacies of shame. Why do you think we sent you away? The only way to protect you from Maebh’s urge to kill you was if you remained with us. But a child?”
He’s making too much sense. “You all whispered stories into my mind—preparing me with tales of knights and dragons.”
“We distracted you from Nero’s abuse the only way we knew how.”
My mind races back in time, trying to relive those moments so I can prove him wrong. But all I can pull from my foggy memory is the first time I sat in Nero’s secret garden, playing with a little bird, and he clouded my mind with his stolen powers of persuasion. He walked over to the bird, said something about lessons, and—“Close your eyes,” my secret friend’s words cut through the wool in my mind. “You don’t need to see this part.”
None of this matters. My life is still ruined. Rory is gone. Tinger is gone. I was rude to my family. Disrespectful to everyone.
“You claim I was your queen, but you abandoned me.”
The crack in my voice reveals more of that pain I uncovered last night.
I can no longer deny it. For a moment on that battlefield, when our eyes had connected, time stopped, and there was no death, no life, just us—connecting over our shared sufferings. We were all prisoners, all used for our power, all wanting to be free but not knowing where to run to.
“You left me,” I accuse. “And I continued to suffer.”
His eyes glimmer in an all too human way that leaves me unnerved. “We never wanted you to suffer.”
“I fought for you. I sacrificed my immortality and my magic, and Itrustedyou. I did what you asked of me on that battlefield, but youleftme,” I scream in his face. “I want you dead!”
His hand drops to mine, and he guides the dagger to his ribs.
“Do it,” he begs. “Finish what they couldn’t.”
He lets go, leaving the final act to me, so there’s no mistaking whose choice this is. I push into his soft flesh. His pupils contractto pinpricks in a storm of gray. I witness his pain and burrow for his heart, thinking it’s poetic I learned to kill because of them.
His lips part when the hilt meets his skin. Warm liquid oozes over my fist, and still, we gaze into each other’s eyes. He seems as lost as I feel. No amount of searching will fill the void in our hearts, and we’re tired... so tired of swimming upstream. Maybe this feeling is why Rory never swam.
Fox inhales slowly through his nose as if my scent will summon the answer, and then a sly half-smile touches his lips.
“Happy now?” he murmurs, deep voice oh so intimate. “You’ve killed me.”
I pull the dagger out and slam back in. He jolts, his head bows as if the pain is too much, but he does not fall. He does not die. “Finished?”
“NO.Never.”
“Then keep killing me softly, little wolf.” He looks up from beneath his lashes. “If it makes you feel better.”
Blood oozes down his front, staining his breeches.
