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When the guard kicked his knee, I stifled a cry. Watching his big body broken, him still trying to stand, shifted something inside me. Something that had been teetering on a slippery edge for a while now. Something his kiss had ignited deep in my soul.
One horrible, beautiful truth slammed me in the gut.
I was in love with Queen’s Huntsman.
Sahlyn Asher would be my ruin—my death—after all. He’d told me as much, and I hadn't believed him, but I did now.
I would die saving him; I felt it in my core.
But I was not afraid. For those you love, you do insane things. For those you love, you sacrifice it all.
Bravery and Foolishness
This golden, glorious woman made my heart beat again.
I could not lose her.
Again I tried to stand, but the guards delivered a boot to my knee, and pain lanced through my leg. I barked from the onslaught of pain, and my head throbbed.
“Don’t hurt him!” Autumn cried.
The queen sent her a slow, vicious smile. “Oh…My. Or what, little heart?”
Autumn said nothing, but I saw her mind working, equating, and evaluating. My clever girl would produce a plan and save the day. She had to.
Iwas the damsel in distress this time. I fought back a grin. It was uneven the number of times she had saved me to the number of times I had helped her. Autumn Snow needed no one, but it would take all hands to take down the wicked queen.
“Why would you save him?” The queen was asking Autumn. “Why would you sacrifice yourself?”
“You don’t know the answer, Amira? You haven’t guessedwhy?”
The power play swirled between them. One fair and light but full of darkness, the other dark and gold and full of all things good. One heart was stone, the other so pure it shined as bright as the sun. So many didn’t see Autumn as beautiful because she wasn’t the vision of classic beauty that this country took to its socialite norm. But, she was beautiful in her difference, in the empathy with which she garnered everything she did. Her beauty wasn’t just in her exterior; it was in every grain of her being, every facet of her existence.
Something shivered over the queen's face, but hatred consumed her a moment later. “You have no idea what it is you feel.”
“I do.”
My heart beat at a furious tempo. What was this? I was too bruised and broken to help, yet I felt like this moment was too much aboutmenot to listen to every word before I passed out again.
“You know I had chosen him, pure heart? I had chosen him to give me what I had lost.”
My eyes whipped to the queen. She had said those words a few times, and I had assumed them just a mad riddle. I hadn’t thought they meant something.
“What had youchosenhim for, Queen? Had he no say in this choice, just like everyone else you make to do things with their consent?”
Amira sneered. “Giving others no choice is power. Consent is respect, relinquishing choice is control.”
Autumn’s face was full of revulsion as she stared at the queen, but she said nothing as if waiting for something.
I noted a thready swallow in the queen’s throat. Even though I had been gone for weeks, I could still pick up on Amira's tells and nuances.
The room felt very heavy as her following words rocked my existence.
“I had chosen him to give me heirs.”
My heart flopped in my chest as the gravity of the situation seeped into me. Amira had chosen me as her consort. Her cryptic words echoed in my mind.What the fuck. How could she do that without my con—
She had just answered my thoughts with her words to Autumn. She took things because she had the power to take them without asking. It was what she did. Her manipulation and magnetism made people do as she wanted without better belief. Bedding me was just one more thing to reap control.
