“The sooner we leave, the better chance Morella has,” Seraphine explained. “Korven and Killian are already there,doing everything they can. They’ve called in the best healers of Revelry.” Seraphine stepped forward, taking one of Reshina’s hands into hers. “She needs you. We all need you. When your letter came, I opened it secretly. I couldn’t give hope to Korven or Killian until I knew what it contained. I recognized your handwriting and you can imagine my surprise to find you’d ended up here. With Arthur.” She nodded towards me. “Please come. I shifted through the trees to find this place. They think I’ve gone to another healer in the Citrine Cliffs.” She took Reshina’s other hand. “I will bring you back, I promise. Korven will understand…with time…why you’ve chosen to stay.”
“You think I chose to stay here for over a year?”
The cut of her words hit me solidly, like a heated knife across my skin. I knew what she meant, but the way we’d been living as if we were free from the outside world was suddenly a burn on my heart—a lie we’d fashioned together.
“You disappeared!” Seraphine cried. “We thought you’d chosen another life!”
“I have been trapped inside a curse I delivered here decades ago. I cannot leave. The curse does not allow it.”
Seraphine’s lip trembled again. “Give me your hand. I’ll shift us away from here right now.” She pulled Reshina to the wooden bench along the wall. So Seraphine was a Forestfae then, able to move herself and others across the land through the wood of the trees of Revelry.
Seraphine gripped the armrest, squeezing her eyes shut. When nothing happened, she groaned in exasperation, pacing again. “I know all curses can be broken. What must be done to break this one?”
I stepped forward. “There is a way.”
“No.” The snap of Reshina’s word resounded through the corridor.
I reached for her, pulling her to me. “I told you it would come to this.”
“NO!” She yanked her hand from mine, backing away. “The curse cannot be broken,” she muttered, her eyes frantic.
I followed her, softly pinning her against the tapestry along the stone wall. “You can do this,” I breathed. “You must go. You’ll never forgive yourself if you don’t.”
“You are wrong, Arthur,” she said with ire. “I. Cannot. Do. This.”
“Look at me.” She turned her head, squeezing her eyes shut in refusal. “This is not the end. Do you remember what I said?” She shook her head, tears streaming freely down her face. “I said I have been immortalized by you. All of this,”—I stroked her cheek, gently turning her back to me—“all of it was real. And I have loved you—” My voice broke. But I’d not been through years of torment and months of bliss just to fall apart when the time came to be strong for her. I swallowed all of it down. “So much. It’s time for you to go. Save your daughter. Enjoy your grandchildren and children and don’t forget to take care of Piffle along the way.”
“Fuck you,” she seethed, grabbing my face. “I saidno.”
She shifted between my arms, soaring down the corridor without another word.
“Fuck,” I heaved, already feeling the heat of the Beast’s blood pulsing through my veins in the shift.
Seraphine twirled around. “Is she going to try to leave?”
“No,” I called, racing down the corridor after her. “She’s going to try for the western corridor!”
CHAPTER 45
Reshina
I soaredthrough the great hall on borrowed time. I would not allow my daughter to die. I would not kill my husband. When all the paths were laid bare, and I was stripped of any sense of normalcy, of safety, I chose proactivity. It had been that way all my centuries. I’d always fought back to it. And I’d always won.
But this…this I did not know how to manage. There was no choice I could make except to find the one Goddess in the Underrealm who could help me in a way I could not forsee.
I slowed my wings, flapping into the dark of the western corridor, shifting back to Ravenfae when my feathers brushed along the narrow walls. The Beast followed me, but I didn’t care. I’d get through these tunnels with bite marks, drained of blood—whatever it took to reach Ishtak.
I misjudged the Beast. It had been so long since I’d truly run from him that I had forgotten how swiftly he could close the distance between us. The clicking began, alerting me that the Underfae dwelled near. I’d stun as many creatures as I could and rely on unrelenting rage for the rest.
The sharp claws of the Beast grabbed hold of my wings, yanking me back just as an Underfae brushed across my leg. Iscreamed in rage and fear, desperate to get to the end of that tunnel, desperate for someone to save me from what would come at too great a cost.
Arthur pinned me to the cavern wall, his shift from the Beast slowly forming over his body. “I won’t let you,” he heaved. “They will kill you.”
“What if we go together?” I pleaded in the dark, touching his arms, his neck, his face, desperate for more of him, needing so much more.
He shook his head. “It won’t work. I cannot tell you why.”
Ishtak had his explanation sealed, just as she’d hidden the truth of the Underfae from the world above.
