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I kick and buck all the way to the palace. Hellebore laughs at my struggle, as if watching me be manhandled against my will is a delightful game.
“Where are you . . . taking me?” I pant.
He tsks. “Don’t be impatient. Can’t I surprise my fiancé?”
That word in connection to him makes me want to vomit. My feet drag over the tile floor as the guards push through a set of tall mahogany doors into a throne room. My gaze skips over the massive chandelier made from butterflies, the parquet floor of interlocking tiles in the shape of the Spring Court’s sigil, and onto the spectacle in the middle.
Oh, God, no.
Terror spikes my heart. Valerian, Eclipsa, and Asher are caught in the grasp of thick, thorny vines that sprout nearly fifteen feet into the air, held aloft like macabre decorations, and when I see their faces—
A flood of horror makes me nearly double over. “What have you done to them?”
They look . . . dead. Lifeless. Faces drained of blood and tinged a deathly blue. Lips purple. Eyes shut like they’re sleeping.
Please be sleeping. Please . . . I swallow down my cry when I realize that I don’t feel the bond with Valerian.
I feel . . . nothing.
A cold, dark emptiness that floods me with fear
“They’re not dead,” Hellebore offers blithely. “Yet. That’s up to you.”
“Poison,” I whisper. My insides twist. My skin both hot and cold, almost feverish as reality sinks in.
My mate and friends are poisoned . . . near death. At the mercy of a madman.
“Very good.” Hellebore approaches Valerian, held aloft in the middle of Asher and Eclipsa, and reaches out his hand—
I strain against my guards. “If you touch him, I’ll rip you apart!”
“Such a feisty thing you are, Princess,” Hellebore scolds as something small and black scuttles from the bottom hem of Valerian’s pants and onto the Spring Court heir’s waiting palm. He does the same with Eclipsa and Asher before crossing to me. “Feisty is good, but useful is better.” He holds up his hand. “Like these misunderstood creatures. Their use as silent, stealthy assassins are unparalleled.”
I recoil from the three arachnids crawling over his hand. Small and dark, they resemble black widows with their spindly legs and fat, round bodies. Each horrible little creature wears an iron thimble with a stinger on the end.
“I still had to get the creatures close, of course, but Inara was more than happy to plant them on your friends for me. Seems her love for the Ice Prince has soured.”
“The council will—”
“Do nothing. My creatures only pricked the Ice Prince and the others with the Bloodstar poison once they broke into my vault, as is my right, by law.”
Bloodstar. No. Panic claws through my chest. “How did you know?”
Footsteps draw my attention to a figure approaching behind me. The Winter King. The air cools around us as he nears, drawing goose bumps over my feverish skin.
“I told him.” Valerian’s father’s pale eyes glitter above a cunning grin.
“What?” My throat clenches. “Why?”
“My son apprised me of his suspicions that Prince Hellebore stole my father’s soulstone. When I realized that my son was bringing both the Lunar assassin and Asher Grayscale here . . . well, it wasn’t hard to determine his motives. Breaking into the Spring Court palace.”
“You had your son poisoned!” I growl as fury builds beneath my sternum, filling the hole that panic has already carved. “You betrayed him.”
“No dear.” The king shakes his head, as if I couldn’t begin to fathom his reasoning. “Betrayal would have been letting him give up everything for you. When my son came to me wanting to end his betrothal to Inara Winterspell, I suspected who you were. The drink you sipped during the ceremony at the academy confirmed it. Only someone with Fae magic could resist the lethal toxin I had the bartender add.”
The toast. I shiver, knowing how close Mack came to drinking the spiked cocktail. Fresh, bitter rage builds inside me. If I had talons I would claw the king’s eyes out right now, guards or not.
“If you had agreed to mate with my son, things may have been different. After all, your powers are rumored to be wondrous. But, when my spies told me you’d rejected him that night instead, after he’d already made an enemy of half the Winter Court for you, I knew there was only one way to rectify the damage. A deal with Prince Hellebore.” hrough the portal to the finish line.
