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He gave me a sideways glance. “Are you using me to get you back to your realm?”
“No,” I said, and somehow the words didn’t taste like a lie.
He looked away. “I can’t. Only ambassadors can cross the realms, and if I had an ambassador return you to your realm, you’d never leave it. I can’t bring myself to do that.”
Bash moved for his chariot while I stayed planted. “You would rather leave me in your realm to die than see me go free?”
He hunched like I’d stabbed him. “I don’t want you to die. You’ve no idea the deep love we have for our Mortal Queens.” How many times had I heard that? “Our delicate, beautiful Mortal Queens. Return you to your realm and lose you to ours? Never.”
The sharpness in his voice made me grit my teeth. “That is not love,” I called after him. “It’s obsession. It’s possessive greed.”
“Oh, no. It’s captivation,” he countered. “And it’s endless. No matter how many games we play with our queens, we still love them more than we love ourselves. We will not lose you to the mortals.” He said that word as if it was a sickness. As if we were the twisted ones.
Bash mounted the chariot. “I will not hurt you. I could never do that. But I also cannot save you, no matter how many times you ask it.”
“There must be a way,” I persisted. Surely those who held the power of the realm at their fingers could free me. Bash had made it clear he loved the queens, and more than that, I suspected him of caring for me. Yet the man I saw here was different from the one who’d confidently plucked stars from the sky. He was bent in on himself as if it were he who would die and not me.
“There isn’t. I’ve been through everything and spoken to anyone who might help. When I got the summons for help from you today, I was already at Illusion Point searching for something to save you.”
Pain rippled through me. He’d been there for me, and his reward was to watch me kiss King Thorn.
“Bash, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t. I needed to see it to remind me never to care.” The cold of the snow was nothing compared to the indifference in his tone. “You can collect favors from the kings if you want. But if we were strong enough to save a queen, we would have done it by now.” He ducked his head. “Enjoy the beauty of the realm now and be grateful you don’t have to see the darkness that settles over our hearts when you leave it.”
I slowly went and joined him on the chariot, leaving a wide gap between us.
He needed to see the kiss, and I needed to see him fall apart because of it. I needed the reminder that this thing between us was too frail to survive, and to hear him say he couldn’t free me, even if he held the power. His attraction to me was nothing but the lure to Mortal Queens, and my attraction to him was nothing but the pull of a fae king.
That would not save me or the girls who would come after me.
In the end, I had to be willing to let the fae kings die to repay the punishment this realm placed upon them. I had to be willing to watch Bash die.
I set my gaze forward. “Take me home.”
The next morning, I took my time to wake, slowly pouring a cup of tea to sit on the balcony with as I stared into the darkness and thought of my brothers. Trying to summon a deep-rooted peace. I breathed slow. I cleared my mind. The peace didn’t come.
It wouldn’t have lasted long anyway. A minute after I returned inside, a flash of color came from outside. Troi swept close on a chariot, then lept from it to land on the balcony. Before I could say hello, she’d drawn a sword and pressed the dull end against my chest. “What have you done to my brother?”
“Nothing.” I staggered back, bumping against a large mirror. She—and her sword—moved with me. I lifted my hand to push it away, but she held fast.
Her eyes narrowed to slits. “Lies.”
“I saved your life. You won’t kill me.”
“Try me,” she hissed. Her hair was in braids twisted at the nape of her neck and her brown eyes were closer to black. “What did you do to Bastian?”
I risked easing away. Her blade didn’t waver but she let me move.
“I didn’t do a single thing to him. What’s wrong?”
“He’s a mess. He’s frantic, flying all over the realm, offering favors for assistance that leads him nowhere. He’s going to get himself in a lot of trouble.”
“That could have nothing to do with me. I haven’t asked him for anything.”
“And yet he wasn’t like this until you.” But Troi sheathed the sword at her hip, where it clung to her leather pants. “You did something to him.”
I moved to the mantle to gather my brushes. “Do you always dress like you’ve come from battle?”
