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A plan.
Chapter42
Do Your Duty
ELVA
Iam a monster.
The soft bed rustles under me as I lay, counting the specks on the ceiling as I try to harden myself. To push away the emotions. To give myself to the ice that once ran through my veins.
Nathan tugs on our new bond, but I can’t respond. How I wish I had never met him, never loved him. Love makes us fools, blind to reality. Fire and ice.
I scoff at myself. A century of training myself to live without emotions, but all it takes to destroy me is one Summer Fae coming and sweeping me off my feet. A few hours ago, I thought of our love as something poetic to be sung about and shared in those movies humans love so much.
Now, I know better.
I can see what will happen. It’s all laid out for me like a terrible film. After tonight, death will be my only companion, and I will mourn Nathaniel until my worthless immortal life ends.
Our love is a ballad, a tragedy, a tale that will drive the masses to tears.
It is fitting, I suppose that our brief marriage will end in such a poetic fashion. We reached across the sea and found each other, only to lose everything at the hands of fate.
When the clock strikes midnight, savage custom dictates that I must become the thing that I’ve always struggled against.
Gods, I was so foolish to think I could escape my fate. Sitting around the table with my mother, watching the realization strike Nathaniel that we wouldn’t even get twenty-four gods-forsaken hours together as a married couple, was the worst thing I’ve ever had to do.
This is what I get for trying to be happy.
With every second that ticks by, bringing me closer to midnight, I grow colder. It is as though the very flame he lit inside me is being extinguished.
I am being extinguished.
There will be no coming back from this.
For all he has trained over the past few months, Nathaniel has nothing on me.
I am a weapon honed by over a century of cruelty. I know countless ways to take a life, to make it hurt, to make it last for as long as I need.
* * *
Tick
Tick
Tick
The analog clock on the wall is my only companion now. It watches me, its face blank, as it counts down to my husband’s death. I have shoved everything down, and I know that nothing else will ever matter after tonight.
At eleven-fifteen, my door swings open with a thud. A tall, thin female Angel stands before me, her long blond hair pulled into a bun as she walks stiffly into the room. She is wearing a black pantsuit marked with my mother’s livery. She shuffles in sideways, her grey wings tucked in behind her as she looks around the room before sighing.
“The Queen sent me,” she says by way of introduction. “I’m here to prepare you for the Right of Retribution. We don’t have much time.”
She pulls out a chair, and I sit in it. A steady stream of servants follow the Angel, their light chatter filling the air.
At first, they try to talk to me but soon give up.
I stare into the mirror the Angel places in front of me, unmoving, as she speaks. It's as though I'm underwater. Nothing she says reaches me.
