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“Oh, for—!” Sitting back, Lorelei flung up her hands in disgust as the weight of the fae bargain lifted. “How could that answer have been allowed? It’s utter nonsense.”
“It is the truth,” Gerard repeated steadily. “As Imperial high general, it is my duty to make use of my position and advise His Imperial Majesty against any choices whose consequences he might not fully comprehend.”
“He comprehends them perfectly well,” Lorelei muttered. “That’s not the problem! But what will happen when he orders you to carry out Purification anyway and makes it into a law you think you don’t have the right to break, because it’s your godsdamned duty?”
That was a nightmare beyond imagining. Fortunately, it was his turn to ask the questions. “Why did your mother send you away from the Efaelen court as a child?”
Glowering, Lorelei reached for the jug—and then stopped, her hand hovering in midair, as Gerard raised his eyebrows pointedly.
“Fine.” She drew in a deep, put-upon breath and directed her gaze to her hand as she lowered it to the silken floor. “I had a more important mission to fulfil.”
Pressure mounted around them, and strands of her long, curling hair lifted from around her face with the force of the fae bargain tugging at her. “It was foretold,” she gritted finally. “I couldn’t stay at my mother’s court forever. I had to inherit the Balravian throne, no matter what.”
“Or else…?” he prompted.
When she looked up to meet his gaze, her expression was stark. “You must know the answer to that yourself, by now.”
Gerard frowned. As he recalled, the other candidates for that throne had been an assortment of useless human cousins only known for their inept turns in military service and sloppy drinking parties. He couldn’t imagine any of them—unlike Lorelei—having the sheer drive or conviction to force Balravia into any great political movements, so …
Aha. They couldn’t have resisted those movements, either. The answer settled into place. “You think you were put on the throne to save Balravia from being enfolded into the Serafin Empire.”
“Not only Balravia.” She shook her head slowly, her voice unyielding. “And I’m not fighting only to preserve political independence. Ailana isn’t wrong about Purification, Gerard. No matter what you need to believe to comfort yourself for working for a villain … if we don’t win this war, no fae will be left in the mortal realm in fifty years’ time. My mother was shown that truth. THIS FIGHT IS FOR MY PEOPLE’S FUTURE.”
As she spoke, her voice deepened and echoed with skin-prickling effect. It was as if someone else—no, Someone else—was speaking in divine chorus.
Gerard abruptly remembered that vast, sighing voice that had rippled the trees with its force when it warned him this morning to protect Lorelei, in that impossible frozen moment out of time.
In all their years of enmity, he had never imagined flighty, flirty Lorelei as the avatar of an actual goddess.
But as he looked into her eyes now—their blue irises sheened over with an impossibly bright, forest green—he finally understood.
More than that: He believed.
“You are goddess-touched,” he breathed. There was a strange, tight feeling in his chest: mingled wonder, awe, and …
Was that regret? No: pain. Aching pain for the child who had been torn much too early from her home and sent into a realm that hated her to take on a task with impossible weight.
He knew that feeling all too well.
“Who do you think set my mission in the first place?” As her eye color returned and that impossible echo vanished, Lorelei’s lips curved ruefully. “Only my mother and her closest handmaidens know—even her consort has never been told, for fear the news might spread and panic lead to disaster—but Sylvana came to my mother long before I was born. That was why Queen Morgana was able to let me go so easily and forget me so quickly: She’d been waiting to give me up from the very beginning.”
Her smile faltered, but her voice did not. “One daughter is hardly too high a price to pay in order to save an entire people … from the armies that you’ll be leading.”
“Lorelei…” It hurt to breathe through the constriction in his chest. Still, Gerard leaned forward, ignoring the ache, and reached out to take her smaller hand in his. Light tremors shivered through it as he closed his fingers firmly around hers.
He wouldn’t break his sworn word and betray his empire even for her sake—but this was a wholly different matter. “I will not let the fae be eradicated from the mortal world,” he told her. “I will not allow my troops to carry out any orders of Purification.”
Lorelei left her hand in his, but her lips wavered into a bitter smile. “Fine words, General,” she murmured, “but can you actually carry them out?”
“It is a promise,” he said firmly. “I swear it to you, now—and you know I honor all of my commitments.”
No, he couldn’t simply walk away from his post and all of his responsibilities, the way she had apparently imagined. But what stronger position could he hold at this profound turning point than the right hand of the Emperor himself? As Imperial high general, Gerard could and would fight with every political and diplomatic lever he held to change Otto’s mind before it was too late. Now that he knew the imminent danger, Gerard could convince his emperor of just how unforgivable such a course would be and how harshly the history books would judge Otto’s reign if he gave in to that temptation.
Gerard had the miraculous opportunity to end this forewarned madness before it could ever take effect. That was his new mission. That was a goal he could wholeheartedly believe in.
Thank the gods Lorelei had kidnapped him, after all! If she’d tried to tell him any of this two days ago, he wouldn’t—couldn’t—have believed her. But it wasn’t only the magic of the fae bargain, preventing all lies, that proved the truth of her words to him now.
It was the trust and respect they had gained for each other across the last two days of trials. It was the compassion she’d shown, again and again, to everyone with less power than herself, and the strength and the heart that shone through all her illusions.
