AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He wasn’t going to like this, but it didn’t change what I’d done. I stopped pacing to face him then. “To try to find you.” The pool of dread I was sinking into grew deeper and deeper with every word I spoke. “It felt like a day for you, but my mother monkeyed with the time in our underhill. It’s been weeks for me.”
“So, the one thing that could’ve helped us…”
I swallowed, pressing my hand against my stomach, hoping to ease the churning inside. “I didn’t know what Eli had done with you, but I knew no matter where he’d taken you—it’d be dangerous. I wanted information, so I bartered for it with the reject bargains that my mother didn?
??t want, but no one had any good information. Nothing useful anyway. But even if I could give those to you, I’d have to make a bargain with you, which then my mother would own. And believe me—she wants me married to—” Shit.
Oh, just shit.
It was like a stone had been slowly dropping to the bottom of a pool and I was just now seeing how deep and far those ripples in the water went.
I’d been screwed over. By my own mother.
She’d been playing me for years. Decades. Half a century.
I’d never forgive her.
I spun to Van. “She slowed down time.”
“Yes. We’ve been over—” Van stopped and pressed his lips together, his classic I’m-thinking-this-through look. And then he went very, very still. The kind of stillness that meant he was planning a very elaborate death for my mother. “If she did that—”
“She did. I never saw it. We’re idiots, Van.”
“I’m not following.” Chris didn’t know what he was up against. I’d tried to tell him what my court was like, and why he should avoid it, but I didn’t really explain much. Or maybe just didn’t explain the right things.
There was a ringing in my ears and I moved to sit down on the edge of the bed before I passed out. “My mother screwed us over.” The Queen of the Lunar Court had been playing me for so long, and now she’d really, truly tried to destroy my happiness.
For what?
“How? I’m not following.”
Now, now I wanted to cry. My mother was the queen for a reason. She planned and connived and schemed better than any other fey. She saw moves from so far out, so far ahead, and I wasn’t sure anyone would ever be able to go around her, let alone me.
Chris knelt in front of me and ran his hand down my cheek. “Tell me. I can’t help if you don’t tell me.”
“She slowed down time in my court.” The words were slow at first, but as I spoke, as the realization hit me of how hard I’d been played, the words came faster. “I thought it’d been three weeks—three weeks that Eli had you doing God only knew what dangerous thing and you were nowhere to be found… I wasn’t eating or sleeping, and I definitely wasn’t thinking straight. But now that you’re here, I…I think this was all a setup.”
I turned back to Van. “You were wrong. I don’t think she was giving me time to realize that I had to give up Chris. She was waiting until I had nothing left, and she was going to force us to marry. And once we were both miserable, she’d hone us. Use us as her weapon. She’s losing control of the courts. They want out of hiding. They want her gone. We’re the only thing that could keep her from fully losing control.”
“You’re right.” Van’s hand found the hilt of his sword. “You’re absolutely right.”
I wondered if my mother had forgotten who she was playing this game with and what he’d do if he was pushed too hard.
“She gave us a fortnight.”
Van laughed. “She’s truly evil, but she forgot something.”
“What’s that?”
“That we don’t like to play by the rules. If she forced us to marry, there’s not a chance in all of the four realms that we’d fight to help her keep control.”
“That’s something, but…”
Chris’ hand tightened on mine. He was still kneeling in front of me, but I couldn’t look at him. Not yet. Not when I was still processing this.
“She meant in Lunar Court time,” I said to Van. “Didn’t she? Not an actual fortnight for the rest of the realms. How long is that really?”
Van ran a hand over his brow, but his hand shook. I’d never seen him shake before. He was always still when he was angry. My mother was truly stupid if she was pushing Van to feel something for her beyond anger and hatred.
