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Love.
The third component to power is love. Trick a person into falling in love with you and you can make them do anything. Forget their morals. Their promises. Their friends. Their obligations.
Trick someone into falling in love with you and they will give up themselves entirely. Trick someone into falling in love with you and they are yours forever.
I pause for a moment, then scratch something below it so hard the chalkboard squeals and my chalk breaks twice.
Fuck love. And fuck the Evermore.
55
Two Months Later.
The sun shines down, scalding and angry, and I shield my eyes as I hang another shirt on the clothesline. It’s only May but my cheeks are on fire and the flesh of my arms are tinged bright red. Even after two months back in my world, I don’t take the sun for granted. Every morning when it lances through my window like the asshole it is, I feel thankful.
I still dream of the cold. I dream of snow that spears the air like shards of glass, of frost that invades my marrow, and a prince who weeps sleet and ice. Sometimes I dream he carves out my heart and packs the wound with snow, and I wake up screaming, my chest aching with cold.
Very rarely, I dream that he kisses me. Those mornings I wake up to a pillow soaked with tears.
I don’t care what he says. Our connection was real, just like I know Valerian is his true name. Whatever game he was playing, whatever cruel kick he got from making me fall for him, a part of him fell for me, too. And giving me his name raised the stakes for him somehow.
He knows I could crush him with that truth. And, deep down, I know he likes the power I still wield.
Mostly, though, I’ve managed to forget him and the dangerous, intoxicating world on the other side of the Shimmer. For a while, Mack would email me updates about school and our friends.
Evelyn is still missing. The Council for the Mistreatment of Humans has started a formal investigation into the school. Because of the inquest, the academy has doubled the training for the end of year Wild Hunt. Rhaegar grows darker by the day, and Basil traded Mack to Asher rather than face her glaring looks. She still hasn’t forgiven him for not stopping what happened to me. on’t he look at me? And why can’t I feel the bond between us?
“Prince,” Inara calls affectionately. “It’s time to crown your queen.”
My heart flutters as he walks this way. He takes the crown from Inara inside his strong, capable hands. Hands that have been all over my body.
Then he glances casually down at me, his face dark and unreadable, and offers to help me up. Rings glitter from his outstretched fingers. Rings I’ve never seen him wear before.
My palm is sweaty inside his as I stand. Thank God, he’s going to explain this entire mess. His eyes rake over my dress, the one I wore for him. He smiles. Without warning, he leans forward and kisses me. A deep, probing, claiming kiss.
Except this time, it feels different. Shameful and gross. His teeth scrape mine; his mouth violent and bruising.
The great hall breaks into a cheer.
This is all wrong. I yank my head back, touching my swollen mouth. His lips are twisted into a hateful, cruel sneer.
His eyes gleam with excitement as he settles the crown onto my head. He forces it down hard enough that the edges dig into my forehead.
“Did you really think you could be my queen?” he whispers. “That you were my equal?”
Just like that—my heart shatters into a thousand shards of ice. And I remember Mack’s warning.
The Fae males place bets on you. Whatever you do, don’t fall for one.
“It was all . . . a trick?” I whisper.
“What else could it be? Did you truly think you, a slave-marked human, would stand beside me on my throne? That we could ever be anything but master and slave?”
The total disgust in his voice kills any doubts I had left. A slideshow of all the things we did last night flashes in my memory, just as real as the video Inara just played. The promise he made me becomes a taunting echo inside my head.
I feel sick. Used. An idiot. I remember the feel of his lips as they traced the lines of his brand and I want to cry.
All of this . . . all of it was to break me. What did the prince say the first time I met him? That he would freeze me, chipping away at me until all that remained was my heart. And then he would crush that last piece of me to dust.
