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“I don’t want anything from you,” I gritted out.
“When I become king, you will be my right hand. My blade. You’ll still be my consort, but I can give you back the respect you’ve lost from the Folk. I can make you something to be feared again.”
“The thought of being anywhere near you makes me want to vomit.”
“Yet you’re not leaving.” Balor gave me a sly smile, but it dropped from his narrow face as his eyes grew intense. “Mother is weak. She has been weakening for a while, but it’s getting worse now, ever since your seelie dog took his crown.”
That news thudded into the pit of my stomach, and I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about it. Mother was growing weak? What did that mean? Was she going to die soon, even if I ended up staying here on seelie land and doing nothing?
Was Mother dying?
I wanted to ask, but I refused to give Balor the satisfaction. I refused to show him anything, so I kept my face blank, my expression empty as I watched him.
“The unseelie need a new ruler,” he said when I didn’t speak. “A stronger ruler.”
“And that’s you, is it?” I said flatly.
“It can be,” he rasped. “Your dog found a way to kill the Brid. Together, we could find a way to kill her.”
I already have a way. I had the Carlin’s name. I had the power to bring her under my control. I could order her to slit her own throat. I could force her to tell me the failsafe method to destroy an unseelie ruler. I could make her do anything.
But I was weak. Because as much as I knew that she deserved to die, as cruel and terrible and distant as she’d been for my whole life… she was my mother. Something small and pathetic inside me cowered at the thought of taking her life.
I knew it had to be done. To take my crown, to keep Ash truly safe, to allow me to ever leave seelie without the threat of her trying to kill me always lingering. But I wasn’t ready. As much as being stuck here was affecting me, I wasn’t ready to face what was ahead.
“Think it over,” Balor said with a smirk. “I’m sure I’ll be enjoying many more walks in the forest if you ever fancy another meeting. Or”—his voice dropped, deepened—“you could come into the forest right now, and we could talk without this barrier between us.”
I didn’t bother to answer, didn’t bother to even look at him as I stared blankly at the grass.
“Tell me something, Lonan.” Balor carefully eased himself onto his backside, leaning against a thick tree trunk. “How is that cobbled-together leg treating you? I noticed the ugly wooden foot during our last clandestine meeting in the dark. Just like the seelie dog’s arm. Did he make it for you? How sweet.”
I gritted my teeth. “I’m as fast and surefooted as I have always been.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt that you are.” He gave me a slow smile. “You’ve always been a scrappy little thing. No matter how badly we beat you and tormented you, no matter how often Mother shredded your back into ribbons, you would always drag your broken little body back up and continue on. That kind of tenacity is hard won, Lonan. You should be thanking us for shaping you into the man you are.”
“Thanking you?” I exploded before I could stop myself, and Balor’s mouth stretched into a wider grin, his eyes gleaming with hunger at the sight of my anger.
“Don’t let all those years of training go to waste,” he purred. “Don’t let yourself rot away to nothing here, becoming soft and lazy and degrading yourself as the seelie king’s pampered pet. Join me, and I will make you into something great.”
“I’d rather slit my own throat than join you,” I snarled.
“Mm. We’ll see.”
I finally stumbled to my feet, my head spinning as the wine hit me again. “Don’t come back here.”
“Oh, I’ll be coming back,” he murmured, cobalt eyes drifting down my frame in a way that made me feel sick. “And so will you. You won’t be able to stay away.”
“I don’t want to see you. I don’t want anything to do with you.”
“You will once you’ve thought my offer over.”
I snorted. “You want me to help you steal the crown from our mother? So worried you aren’t strong enough to do it alone?”
He bared his teeth at me. “I could do it alone if I wanted to. I was merely being a good brother, Lonan. Offering you the chance to atone for your wrongdoings. Offering you something better than what you have been left with here.”
“I don’t want anything from you,” I said flatly. “If your plan is to kill her, I will watch from here, and I will rejoice when you fail.”
Balor scrambled to his feet, chest heaving.
