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I hated dealing with mind magickers.
“I thought she was dead,” Lady Queill said. “I should’ve known it was a vile Unseelie trick.”
“Self-hate is not very healthy,” I said.
She felt something right then. Utter disgust.
I realized something.
“You’re not Unseelie,” I said.
Denial and disgust rose from her together.
“You are?” I asked, confused. I was trying to distract her, but I was also interested.
“Do not try to read my emotions, princess,” Lady Queill said. “They are mine to control.”
“You hate the Unseelie,” I whispered. “And yet, you can’t deny that you are one of us.”
“I can deny whatever I want,” Lady Queill replied.
“But if you hate the Unseelie so much,” I started, trying to distract her again. “Why are you helping Lugh?”
She seemed taken off guard. I realized then that she had not intended to reveal her feelings to me.
But feelings were my specialty. No one could hide from me when it came to feelings.
“You hate the Unseelie and work with Lugh,” I started to speak.
I pushed on her hate as I spoke. As her face contorted with it, I knew I had succeeded.
“I guess I should not be surprised,” I continued. “Lugh is the worst thing that has happened to the Unseelie for a long time.”
Lady Queill’s smile came back. I felt her tendrils wrapping my mind like she had done so many times before. The feeling was crushing. She had me, but it was only for a moment.
I felt her before she stepped out of the passageway, and I think Queill did too. She pulled her focus off me at once, and when Orla took a step forward to stand before me as though she wanted to shield me, the two women stared at each other with hate.
“You live,” Lady Queill said.
“Your poison was too weak,” Orla replied. “But failure suits you, I guess.”
Anger seeped through Lady Queill’s skin. I could almost imagine it bursting into a flame that could surround her. Still, she smiled.
“Failure?” she asked. “I watched your king die in pain. His screams echoed in the hallways of his family home. And what did you do? You hid.”
Lady Queill’s anger was contagious. She sucked both of us in so quickly that I struggled to breathe as fury rose in me.
Orla took in a sharp breath beside me. I reached with my magic toward Queill in an attempt to subdue her with the vilest of emotions. Fear, pain, grief... Anything that could hurt her the way I hurt at the thought of my father suffering in her hands...
But Queill was prepared. And she was more than we had ever assumed.
She pushed me away from her mind like she was flicking off a fly. Then, the earth began to shake violently. Even Orla lost her grip on the floor. We fell.
I stopped my head from hitting the ground at the last moment. The stone was cold underneath my palm as I looked up.
Lady Queill was laughing now. She did not seem scared or even angry anymore.
She came for me.
