Page 65 of Tell Them That I’m Coming

Losing any pretense of friendliness, she looks at me, fire in her eyes. “You think you can best me, halfling? A full-blooded fae with over a thousand years of mastery over my shadows? How old are you? Three centuries? Four?”

If only.

I just my chin at her. “I’m twenty-five.”

Murmurs break out through the crowd. Even Thane’s head swivels toward me, surprised to hear me admit that. His fault. When I asked him his age, he never asked me mine, and he definitely didn’t dig into my essence enough to know how young I was as an immortal.

Hey, halfling. And, yeah, I know… in so many worlds, twenty-five is still considered a spawn when the race doesn’t mature until their first century or two. That’s the beauty of being half human, though. I’m twenty-five, still immortal, and hungry enough to go up against an ancient fae queen who (hopefully) has gotten a little too complacent on her massive golden chair.

The way her features twist, I think my age offends her more than my audacity at showing up here with my new mate, demanding that she release my best friend from his cage.

Clutching one of the gold bars, giving me a daring stare, she announces to all gathered: “The only way I’ll release the demon from his cage, and my nephew from his debts, is over my dead body.” Her grin develops a wicked edge. “Or yours, Alana of Sombra.”

Great. So she knows who I am. Not surprised, considering she already knew I was from Sombra. I don’t know if Rafe was the one who squealed before she gagged him with her shadows, or if Thane is right and she has eyes and ears everywhere, but it doesn’t matter.

“If those are your terms, your majesty, so be it.”

Her lips part. At first, I think it was my mocking retort—and that’s when I see a swarm of five… six… no, seven monarch butterflies appearing in the room. How? No idea. The doors are closed, armed guards on each side. And, yet, there they are, each one flapping their wings right toward me.

Celeste’s gaze sharpens on a straggler.

“The crowned wings,” she murmurs, more to herself than her audience. “The prophecy did not exaggerate.”

“Another one?” I cross my arms over my chest, pretending that my heart didn’t skip a beat to see their sudden reappearance; and in such numbers, too. “There are way too many prophecies about me. It’s getting annoying.”

Queen Celeste strokes the bar of Rafe’s cage before taking a few steps closer to me. “Are they? Well. Aren’t. You. Special.”

On the last hissed word, she shoots out her hand, snatching the straggler for the air. Before the butterfly can escape, she squeezes her first, dropping the broken butterfly to the slick, gold floor.

I gasp. “Why did you do that?”

Ignoring my pained cry, she lets the mangled butterfly fall by her feet. I gasp, wanting nothing more than to go to it, while knowing that I can’t. Not with her sword-happy guards at my back.

But… look. It’s still moving. It’s okay. Right? A sign of mortal resilience in a fae world, the human butterfly has to be⁠—

Just when I thought it might survive the queen’s malicious cruelty, she stamps on the wing with the heel of her shoe. A flicker of irritation crosses her perfect face when she sees that she’s pierced it through, the dead butterfly stuck on the heel.

“Griselda? New shoes. Now.”

Another of the nobles peels away from the crowd, scurrying toward Queen Celeste. On the way, she removes one of her heels, then the other, so that she has them in her hands as she approaches the queen. Once she reaches her, she drops down, changing the queen’s shoes, replacing them with her own before disappearing among the other nobles.

Queen Celeste lifts her foot, marveling at the immaculate heel. “There. That’s better.”

It’s the easy way she killed something so harmless that makes me realize that prophecies… you can blame fate if you want. You can pretend as though you never had a choice. You did something because someone with a different power than you saw you doing it, and that’s all there is to it.

But, no matter if it’s a mortal life or an immortal one, we all make choices. And at that moment? I make one even without knowing that the true Prophecy of the Gilded Throne is.

Queen Celeste cannot be allowed to rule any longer. Do I know how I’m going to make sure that she can’t? Not yet. Just like how I had no idea what I was going to do to rescue Rafe. Getting to him was more important. Now I’m here, and the only way I’m getting him out of that cage is by going through Queen Celeste.

And she knows it.

As though she can read my thoughts—and I really, really hope she can’t—the beautiful yet vicious queen tilts her head, letting her fiery hair fall to the side, showing off the slender column of her throat.

“‘From shadow and flesh will come her ruin,’” the queen begins, so obviously quoting something, I know it has to be the prophecy that brought me here. “‘She will walk where she is forbidden. Her coming will be marked by the crowned wings.’” She pauses, throwing a murderous look at the swarm swirling protectively over my head and out of her reach before resuming the faux pleasant grin. “‘And the Gilded Throne will not survive her.’”

Her gaze locks on me again. “And now you know why you’re here.”

As if knowing what the prophecy is has changed a thing.