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He kissed the top of my head. “I’ve been trying to get to you.”
I was clinging to him as tightly as the tree branches around the castle walls. He seemed so amazingly tangible and concrete, and I never wanted to pull my arms from him.
And even as I melted into him, a dreadful thought slithered its way into my mind…
Whydid the queen want him alive? Why order Morgant to heal him?
Grim ice crept over my heart.Nothing happens here without the queen’s consent…
As if hearing my thoughts, Torin’s muscles went rigid, and he pulled away from me, his gaze flicking over my shoulder.
He held out his hand to me protectively in a signal to stay back.
Did I need protecting now? I’d left a trail of gore in my wake.
Slowly, I turned to see the queen.
On the other side of the trapped soldiers, Queen Mab waltzed through the hall. A crown of ivy and jewels rested on her head, and her white hair draped over a fur cape. She arched an eyebrow as she looked down at the weeds that trapped her blue-uniformed soldiers.
“I see you didn’t let Ava go, as you promised.” A quiet threat laced Torin’s voice.
The queen stopped walking just on the other side of the line of soldiers. “I didn’t saywhenI would let her go. Or whether or not I’d throw her off the tower first. And I believe I made another promise, didn’t I? That if youwent to see the Lost Unseelie the night before the tournament, there would be consequences.”
My gaze flicked up to the vines above her, but I couldn’t entwine my magic with their life force, not when another magic already possessed them.
“You see, Lost One?” She radiated light. “You’re not the only one who can control the vegetation around us.” Mab smiled, her teeth white as bleached bones. “Of course I wouldn’t kill Torin swiftly. I did mention castrating him, I believe, and slowly crushing what remains of him in a tree? Isavell, do you know what he did to my son?”
I swallowed hard. This wasn’t a question I wanted to answer, but Torin did.
“I never sent my assassins after your sons. I sent them to kill you.”
“My sons would give their lives to protect me, and I them. That is the burden of love, I suppose. But you haven’t known the exquisite pain of losing a child. You’ve never known the pain of feeling another’s death like it was worse than your own. I’ve done it twice.”
She started to step gingerly closer to her trapped soldiers, and as she did, one of the thick, purplish vines from the walls shot out, straining for Torin’s sword.
He swung his blade through it, then the next, and the next. A new horror was dawning in my mind. The queen’s magic mirrored my own.
But I didn’t have time to dwell on this connection between us because she was sending her thorny weapons after me now. Torin pivoted, and the Sword of Whispers hacked through them, one by one. Hewouldn’t be able to keep up this relentless attack forever.
I still felt as if frostbitten stones encased an infernal power in my chest. If only I could unleash a torrent of power, I could wrest control from her.
I took a step back from Torin, trying to think clearly with my heart slamming against my ribs.
In almost every living thing around me, I felt the stain of her poisonous magic. It tinged the living fibers, except those strong, thorny weeds wrapped around the soldiers. Mentally, I still controlled them, and I could compel them to stretch toward her. Long, grasping hands that reached for the queen.
She sauntered further into the hall, turning back to look at us. “Oh, I’m afraid that isn’t enough. But Isavell? I wanted to tell you about what his parents did. They promised our families would meet. They promised we’d trade between kingdoms, after all these years. That we’d share magic and food, unite against the growing threat of mortals. And I never assumed a fae royal would lie.Wedon’t lie here. But it was an ambush. When I saw them bring in the severed bull’s head, I knew I’d been betrayed. They demanded that I lift the curse of frost. Except it wasn’t the Unseelie who cursed them, was it?” Her voice grew louder. The smile faded from her face, and fury contorted her features. “The Unseelie aren’t responsible for the frost in Faerie,” she roared. “That is your own fault, Torin.”
Her fury was like a toxic fog in the room, making my legs shake. A wrath that could be matched only by my own.
I cocked my head, tuning out the noise and the chaos around me, until all I felt was the flagstones beneath my feet and the phantom breeze rustling the leaves of my weeds.
I closed my eyes and commanded them to grow, to burst from the cracks. A raw, primal power tumbled from my body, magic so ferocious that it sent molten cracks racing through the ice in my chest. Beneath me, the stone floor itself burst open with the force of the unfurling plants. The weeds ripped through the flagstones, tearing through the floor beneath our feet.
I felt myself plunging, stones and dust raining around me, until I landed hard on the wooded floor below. Beneath my back, the gnarled roots of the tree pressed against my spine, and above me, steely muscles wrapped in a ripped and blood-soaked shirt. Torin arched his body, covering me like a shield, taking the brunt of the falling stones that tumbled around us. Enormous, sinuous plants surrounded us.
Warmth streamed through the dust, which covered his dark hair, his eyebrows, his eyelashes. When I looked over his shoulder, I could see the hole my plants had ripped in the floor, at least twenty feet across.
The queen and I agreed on one thing: we would give everything we had to protect those we loved.
