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“Stop that disrespectful tone before you truly anger me.”
I bowed my head. It was the only apology she’d get from me right now. She’d kept me safe and alive and protected my whole life. It hadn’t come without a cost for either of us, but I needed help and she was refusing me.
“You were my spy, and you’ve done a fine job of it. Now, that job has passed. Your brother will pick it up well enough.”
That was a truly terrible idea. “Him? He can’t even think one step ahead, and you think he can do three or four? You want to talk about perilously close to a lie?”
“Right.” My mother laughed softly, and her look grew soft. The queen became my mother with one laugh. For a second, she was the woman I loved, not feared. “Well, he’ll either make it or he’ll die.”
That was a truth. A brutally harsh truth.
Humans liked to talk about survival of the fittest. The fey lived survival of the fittest.
The assassins started coming after me on my twelfth birthday and my mother did nothing. If she had, I would’ve seemed weak and the attempts would’ve doubled. Instead, I was given guards—Van and a few others. It was up to me to keep up my fighting skills and maintain my relationship with my guards so that they couldn’t be bought. It was up to me to prove that I was worthy of keeping my own life. That was the fey way.
For a time, the assassination attempts were terrifying, but they made me stronger. They became my normal.
Eventually, I got tired of fighting for my right to live. I got sloppy, and I nearly died. And so my mother sent me away.
I was her spy. After a good long while, I found a home in the Denver coven. I’d liked my life there.
But then I’d been sent to Texas. And damn it all. I loved it there. Even through the blood and demons and danger, I’d found friends. I’d found Chris.
That day we went to wipe the minds of the police officers… He saw through me somehow. He saw me. The me that only my mother and Van got to see.
Nothing was the same after that night. For a lot of reasons.
Where are you, Chris? If only you’d answer my messages…
“Cosette?”
I blinked once. Twice. Bringing myself back to the moment. “I’ve asked everyone and no one has seen Christopher. I need my father to check where no one else can. I’m begging. Begging. If—”
“Don’t lower yourself to beg.”
She got quiet for too long. I knew better than to speak when she was quiet like that, so I waited for her to speak again.
“And don’t you dare lower yourself to make bargains. You are more than fey. You’re a princess. You will act as such. If you keep after this young werewolf, one of two things will happen. One, he would have to come to court. You know that he cannot survive in our world.”
She was crushing me, and I struggled to keep my face calm. To keep my eyes from welling. To keep my heart from shattering with the weight of her words. “No. He can’t survive it.” It was why we’d never become anything more than friends. Nothing more than a hug. No kiss. Nothing that could feed my poor, starving heart.
“Two, he refuses to come to court, and the assassins would find him and kill him.”
She was silent, waiting for me to say something, but there wasn’t anything for me to say. Nothing for me to feel but the crushing knowledge that I would ruin the one person I longed to save.
“Either way, your friend is dead.”
She put her hands in her pockets. I wondered if it was to keep from reaching out to me. But it didn’t matter. No comfort would help me. Not from this.
“What good does it do to keep reminding my council about the werewolf? To keep beating it into their heads you’re weak?”
I stayed quiet. We both knew the answer. It was dangerous to say his name ever again.
“Why do you keep harping on going after him?”
“Because—” My voice quivered, my heart raced, and I felt like the world might end if I answered her honestly. But I had no choice. I had to confess the truth to her, even if it broke something inside of me.
I looked at her then, so that she would know the brutal, honest truth, and maybe—maybe—that would convince her to help me. It was my last desperate act to save him. “Because I love Christopher.”
