30. Some of Us Are Meant to Win, Others of Us Are Destined to Lose
“We’ve reached a satisfactory agreement,” the queen crooned the instant Braque ended his spell of silence. Her lips bared her teeth in a grin so smug and feral that it made me grate my own.
“Not satisfactory to me, I’m sure,” I retorted.
“No, probably not, girl.” She shrugged elegantly, the jewels dangling from her crown swaying around her pretty face. “It’s just the way it is. Some of us are meant to win in this life, some of us are destined to lose.”
My back went rigid against the wall behind me, causing my many cuts again to sting. I swallowed my discomfort and glared down the line at Rush, silently saying, This is what you’re making me sacrifice myself for? This is whom you’re forcing me to die for?
Deep down, I understood Rush was as much her pawn as I was turning out to be. But it didn’t stop the heat of my blame as I aimed it his way so fiercely that I felt its burn in my stare.
He winced as if my ire were branding him on the inside. His eyes churned; I could make out the unsettled whirling in his moonlight irises from the other side of the friends who separated us. His brow furrowed into lines so deep I realized I’d never seen him this distraught before, not even in the arena, where he might be forced to face off with his buddies.
I glanced away quickly, my thoughts beginning to race as I wondered if there might be some way out of this I hadn’t yet identified. The queen and Rush had made some pact; I hadn’t. I’d said I’d allow Rush to kill me, but I could change my mind. There was still a chance I could fight my way out of this, that my powers, whatever they were, might shed their dormancy and save me just as they had in the arena.
My magic might still retain its secrets, but there was no doubt it simmered in my veins—if for no other reason than all fae possessed its gift, however slight.
The time for pretenses and subtlety past, I yanked on my chains; they didn’t loosen so much as a hair’s breadth. I tugged on them harder, putting all my strength, built over so many thousands of hours of training, into wrenching open their locks. The manacles rattled viciously under my efforts, causing the queen—and consequently Braque and then Ivar—to laugh raucously, as if there were nothing funnier in their entire upside-down world than a woman trying to defy her seemingly inevitable death .
The bespelled dark shadows that wafted around the shackles intensified—and the bindings wrapping my wrists and ankles only tightened.
The chains allowed me but this one position. There wasn’t even enough length of chain between my wrists and ankles to allow me to stand.
The queen’s amusement was a constant trill, feminine and appropriate for courtly matters, but Braque was now guffawing.
“Is something fucking funny to you assholes?” I snarled at both of them—hell, at Ivar, too.
Their mirth dropped faster than a fist-sized stone sinking to the bottom of a river.
“Watch how you address your monarch,” the queen slithered, blue eyes blazing as if there could be no graver offense than insulting her and her precious crown.
“I’ll say whatever the fuck I want to say. I’ve got nothing to lose anymore, or have you already forgotten your little secret agreement with your pet Rush?”
Even without glimpsing his reaction, I could feel him tense. I knew he didn’t appreciate me calling him that, much less in front of the queen.
Well, I don’t like you killing me , I broadcast through a sneer and didn’t look his way.
The queen’s fingers curled and uncurled around the claws carved into the armrests of her throne. “I never forget a single thing, not one slight against me and my kingdom. It seems, however, that it is you who’s already forgotten how many … tools I have at my di sposal. Perchance I should order your tongue sliced out as I did Sandor.”
Next she pinned her attention down the length of the vast room, opposite where her prisoners sat, everyone but Rush and me still slumped over their chains in sleep. Even Saffron dozed, breathing deeply and evenly, his little chest visibly rising and falling.
I didn’t understand what she was doing until one of her spy eyeballs zoomed over to me with such speed that I jerked my head back into the wall, wincing at another round of sharp pain in my cuts. It stopped and hovered a hand’s length from my nose.
Sandor’s single gray eye was blank as it stared at me, and I could only hope no part of the person survived in there. The nerves that still dangled from the eyeball had faded from the vibrant red of the last time I’d seen it to a pale, lifeless pink.
Other than me, only the queen, Braque, and Ivar studied the place where the eyeball floated.
Beyond caring what abilities I revealed when their potential advantage obviously served me fuck-all, I swatted at it—not hard enough to hit it in case some of Sandor endured. He’d been my abductor, but he’d surely already suffered enough. It zipped away, toward the other end of the room.
“You think that scares me?” I fumed, mostly because fear was building in my gut, acid rising up my throat.
“What are you talking about?” Rush asked.
“It should scare you,” the queen said, addressing only me. “You’re new to my court, so perhaps that’s why you don’t understand exactly how frightened you should be right now. Maybe a visit to the fae dungeon to witness what happens to those who defy me will give you the needed attitude adjustment.”
“Sure, why not?” I challenged evenly while discreetly swallowing the first taste of bile.
“No,” Rush interjected. “That wasn’t part of our deal.”
The queen’s glower seared the skin of my face. “I’m thinking I may have to alter our agreement. The girl needs to be taught a lesson.”
“And my death isn’t enough of one?” I asked on a disbelieving chortle.
“No. Not after the things you’ve said to me. I’m not just a person, not just a woman with needs. I represent an entire kingdom, a world as important as that of Faerie. The appearance of my authority is as important as my power itself.”
She sat back, flicked two fingers in the air.
Both Braque and Ivar stepped closer, bowing their heads.
“Take her to the fae dungeon,” she said with a frown toward Rush as if recalling his earlier “betrayal” that delivered me to the human one instead. “I want, hmm, yes, let’s have Reelo work her over. Tell him to do his worst—or his best. It’s the same thing.”
“Yes, my queen,” Braque said, rubbing his pudgy fingers together as he relished the idea. “By the time he’s finished, she’ll be begging for death.”
“He should flay her for how she’s spoken to you, Your Highness,” Ivar added, his lips a thin line of disapproval.
I was torn between telling them exactly what I thought of their depraved wickedness and keeping my skin right where I liked it. The latter prevailed while I acutely realized Rush had been right from the beginning: court life—and death—was a game of chess, and I’d never learned to play the game.
“Your Majesty,” Rush said, “please. Spare her from the added torment. I promise you that my … eager cooperation will be worth it.”
When the queen just scowled, he added, “I’ll make it worth it to you.”
The queen waggled her lips back and forth, before glancing at me as if I were the turd she’d passed that morning.
She looked at Rush. “You’ll be in my debt in a big way.”
“Yes, of course, Your Majesty,” he answered, and my heart sank at how ready he sounded to do her bidding just to spare me from her worst.
Unsure what to do when it was more imperative than ever that I know, I closed my eyes, preparing to tune out their noise. No matter what I’d said and whom was at risk, could I really sit back and allow Rush to kill me? Was that the only path left to me? It couldn’t be, could it?
Whatever time I had left, I’d use it to call on my magic. It’s now or never , I was in the process of telling it, when the soft tinkling of bells rang beyond the double doors of the large hall.
As one, the queen, Ivar, and Braque turned toward them.
She tsked her annoyance at the imminent interruption and told Ivar, “Sheathe your cutlass.”
The chimes grew louder, more distinct, and moments later one of the doors swung open and Dashiell, his many braids capped in tiny silver bells, plastered himself to it to make way for the king as he thundered past. Dashiell allowed the door to slam shut and ran after my father, who scanned all of us slumped against the wall.
His furious gaze landed on me as he panted, asking of the queen, “What’s the meaning of this?”
His coloring was better than the last time I’d seen him, telling me he’d regained at least some of his physical strength since his poisoning. When it had happened, the queen had been upset enough to create her own storm, casting night over day in all of Embermere. Yet now she looked at him with such disdain that it made me question that storm and why no one ever seemed to actually be punished for all the unchecked aggression that took place at the queen’s court—unless it was directed at her, of course.
She tipped her chin upward in haughty regalness. “This is none of your concern, Oren.”
My father stretched into the full broadness of his shoulders, outrage flushing his face, already pink from the exertion of running over here.
“None of my concern?” he boomed. “Elowyn is my daughter !”
The queen narrowed her eyes, the muscles in her neck tensing noticeably around the heavy diamond and ruby necklace she wore. “But she’s not mine,” she rumbled, low and more perilous than when she shouted.
“That doesn’t mean you have the right to kill her, Talisa.”
“Who says I’m going to kill her?” Her stare remained hard and menacing.
The king waved his hand in the direction of all her prisoners. “Your artistry for playing the truth like a mandolin is well known to me.” He inhaled loudly. “Perhaps you don’t intend on killing my daughter yourself, but surely with how many times you’ve attempted it recently, it’s only a matter of you ordering someone else to do it for you.”
She didn’t deny it. “What do you want?”
“Isn’t it obvious? For you to leave my daughter alone.” He studied how many of us were bound and helpless. “And it’d be a nice gesture for you to free everyone else too.”
The queen ran her tongue over the top row of her teeth. “Even the filthy beast?”
“No. I won’t stop you from killing the dragon.”
A gasp shuddered through me. Some man he was…
“Hmmm,” the queen muttered. “I might have been tempted to allow you the honor of the kill, but I’m not happy with you at the moment, Oren. Not one bit. ”
My father’s shoulders remained strong but he didn’t say anything, not even a, Well, I’m not happy with you either, you despicable, monstrous, hideous bitch .
Her mouth twisted in disgust, she scanned Dashiell from top to bottom. To his credit, he didn’t so much as dip his stare downward, meeting hers with the kind of courage I wished my father more often displayed.
She harrumphed, adjusted on her throne—of which there was glaringly only the one, though from my current angle I noticed the scuff marks where there’d recently been a second—and sighed. “Oren, I won’t be sparing Elowyn.”
He opened his mouth to express his outrage?—
“Nothing you say will sway me otherwise. The girl’s too tempestuous. She knows nothing of our ways and refuses to be taught with an unbearable arrogance. She’s rough and crass and all around a brute. Females shouldn’t fight. That’s a man’s role. She threatens to disrupt our very way of life, our beliefs, our carefully crafted balance, the society that’s worked perfectly well as it is for thousands of years. And what’s worse, she defies me in public, with a rapt audience.”
Her frown softened. “Oren, darling … she called me a liar in front of all our subjects. A liar .” She sniffed as if simply recalling the humiliation were unbearable.
Oh, so when she was trying to manipulate him with her feminine wiles, suddenly she reverted to it being their subjects, their rule. Surely my father wouldn’t fall for her fickle dragonshit .
A familiar disillusionment coated my skin like a dirty film as my father’s anger gentled in response to her artifice, the ire lighting his brown eyes dimming so that they became once more unremarkable.
He looked at me with an expression I imagined was meant to convey parental disappointment. “You really shouldn’t have done that. Such an offense…”
My mouth dropped open. I snapped it shut, protesting, “She was lying.”
“That’s not the point,” said my idiot seed donor. “Lying’s a given with ruling. It’s how it’s always been done, forever and ever. It’s how it always will be done. It must be this way.”
“Oh, must it ?” I snarled.
He yanked his chin into his neck as if me mouthing off— when my freaking life was on the line —was the worst of everything going on here. For sunshine’s sake, the pygmy ogres’ heads were still strewn about!
Nostrils flared, he said, “Yes, Elowyn, it must. Clearly, my wife is right and you don’t understand anything about what Embermere’s like or what its needs are. Hmmph.”
The queen smiled slyly, then hid it by transforming it into some demure bullshit when my father again faced her. She gazed up at him coyly from beneath lashes coated in a dark kohl that made the blue of her eyes seem to glow, and I decided with finality that I was rescinding my offer to allow Rush to kill me. I must have been out of my mind to agree to it in the first place. If for nothing else, I had to live because I was the only one who apparently saw right through her. Well, maybe Dashiell saw her for the treacherous serpent she was. He alone looked at her with evident wariness, quietly clicking his nails together as if as desperate to escape her presence as I was.
The queen finally rose from her throne, the train of her dress slinking along the floor behind her as she sauntered over to the king. The heavy beading of her train scraped along the floor, sounding like someone trying to claw their way out of one of the many dungeon cells several floors beneath us.
She trailed fingertips along the king’s arms and shoulders as she circled him, leaving Dashiell to scamper out of her way. Even though the gauzy fabric dragged across splatters of blood, gore, and crystal, not a single speck of any of it affixed itself to her impeccable attire—more magic.
“I’m glad we understand each other, my darling,” she cooed.
I grimaced at the sugary sweetness of it. No way would my father fall for this obvious display of manipulation!
The moron leaned into her touch, allowing his eyelids to drift closed.
My own eyes shut for a few moments in utter exasperation. If only it had been my mother’s people who’d found me instead of his. Surely any of them would have been a thousand times more intelligent than he.
“She might be the … misguided fruit of your loins,” the queen continued in a purr I wished I could unhear, “bu t she’s rotten fruit. And you, my dear, are deserving of nothing but the most splendid, shiny, ripe, colorful fruit on the tree. You deserve … perfection.”
She pressed into his side, brushing her lips across his neck. He moaned so softly it was little more than an exhale, but those blood-red lips of hers curved at her success.
“After all,” she added with a seductive smirk, “you have me: perfect … squeezable … gropable … lickable … edible … fruit.” The tip of her tongue snaked out to slide along the tip of his earlobe.
He shuddered.
Everyone but Dashiell, Rush, and me seemed mesmerized by the sexuality she slathered on the man like butter. Though he did a decent job of hiding his true feelings, Dashiell was as disgusted as I felt, I was sure of it. Rush merely appeared terrified—or perhaps it was regret that made him visibly vibrate against his chains.
The queen finished rounding the king and faced him, the fingertips of both hands playing along his shoulders as if strumming the very mandolin he’d accused her of wielding.
“You like your perfect fruit, don’t you?” she said, voice imitating a girl much younger than she was.
“I do,” he breathed.
She pouted. “And you don’t like rotten fruit, now do you?”
“No,” he again breathed, sounding so absent that I wondered if the queen might not be using some magic on him.
“Good.” She spun to face me and leaned back into him. Greedily, his hands latched onto her hips. She allowed her head, with all its shiny loose hair, to drape across one of his shoulders. “Then let’s go and have some … fun ”—she peeked up at him, dragging teeth across her bottom lip, thinning the scarlet pigment coating it—“and leave Rush to do what he promised.”
The king inhaled her scent, his eyelids fluttering while he bent to kiss the long line of her neck she pointed his way. “And what’s that?” he asked, sounding fully addled.
“Oh, nothing for you to worry yourself about anymore, darling. Elowyn isn’t good for this kingdom, which means she’s not good for either one of us, so Rush has agreed to kill her. Take me now, and let’s leave him?—”
Slowly, my father blinked away his arousal. “Rush can’t kill Elowyn. No one can kill her.”
The queen growled, her act dropping in a flash as she stepped away from him, spinning on him and crossing her arms over her chest. “And why the hell not? We’ve already been over this.”
“Because Elowyn’s mother isn’t some floozy I bedded and instantly forgot.”
The queen’s body tensed so suddenly that the many beads lining her gown shivered. “And who might the girl’s mother be, then? ”
The king only stared at her and bit his lip. Was he … afraid to tell her?
Oh, this was so not good…
“What tramp were you careless enough to shoot your seed into, Oren?” she accused.
My father gulped. I leaned forward over my chains, straining for that one piece of truth I’d yearned for all my life. The air around me became tangible as I breathed in, out, in, out, knowing that finally, after all these years, the secret would be revealed to me.
Zako was no longer denying me the truth. The queen wasn’t interfering with my every attempt to get the king alone.
My father sighed loudly and ran a trembling hand across his crown—a child’s toy compared to the opulence of hers.
“Tell me who the fuck you betrayed me with right this second, or I swear to the holy Etherlands I’ll twist your balls till they fall off your body, and then I’ll slice off your dick and command the fairies to serve it on a platter in the Hall of Mirrors, and next I’ll?—”
The king swallowed again, louder even than her litany of threats.
“Your sister,” he admitted.