Chapter 28 #3
“I’m afraid my ambitions have always been bigger than offering counsel to mortals, though I particularly relished witnessing Memnon’s rise to power.
” She smiles, her focus growing distant.
“He’s still as ruthless as I remember.” Eislyn gets that covetous glint in her eyes, the one she always reserved for Memnon.
I cannot believe that after the magnitude of her betrayal, she can still act like this.
“He doesn’t seem to have taken well to the modern world.” Her eyes all but dance as she refers to the night of the gala.
“No,” I agree, my gaze flicking over her, “he hasn’t domesticated himself nearly as well as you have.”
The words are an absolute lie as they fall off my tongue. Nothing, absolutely nothing, could ever blunt the terrible monster that lurks under Eislyn’s civilized veneer.
“How is the arm, by the way?” I ask. “Last I remember, I blew it off.” Only now am I realizing just how rare a hit like that from a human must’ve been. Anomalous, given our finnicky magic.
She doesn’t react, but she has gone still.
“Did you have to reattach it? Or did you have it grow back?” I take a drink of my wine.
She’s silent, so once I swallow the liquor, I barrel on, ignoring the way my magic keeps sparking in my veins.
“Magic must’ve been involved,” I say. “The ancient world was good at many things, but surgery wasn’t one of them.” I pretend concern. “Did you have to crawl back to Peru and the sorcerers you screwed over when Memnon’s father died?”
Her expression flattens, and I know I’m onto something.
“I bet you did,” I say. “I also bet their help didn’t come free.”
The bottle next to me shatters.
Oh, I hit a nerve.
“How confused you must’ve been to find yourself with your arm severed and no idea why.”
She rises from her seat and grabs me by the throat, and my glass tumbles from my hand, breaking as it hits the ground.
Next to me, Nero begins to growl again, louder than before. All he’s waiting for is my signal to lunge at the fairy.
I smile, feeling absolutely unhinged.
“I never gave you enough credit,” Eislyn says, squeezing my neck. “You are the closest anyone has ever gotten to outmaneuvering me.”
She’s eyeing me up and down, and I hold her gaze as my hands go to my sheathed daggers.
All at once, I withdraw them and slice them upward in a crisscross pattern. The fabric of her linen suit rips, and two lines of blood well.
She gasps, releasing me.
Just as quickly as she withdraws, her magic lashes out, the plumes of it an iridescent mixture of pine green and rose gold.
The spell traps me in place. It feels as though I’ve walked into a web—the more I try to move, the tighter her magic binds me.
Gasping, Eislyn straightens. “I would kill you now if I wouldn’t so relish a more painful death for you,” she breathes.
I don’t have the same restraint. I focus my intention wholly on her and gather my power close.
“I’ne.”
Die.
The curse barrels toward her, but she raises an arm, and with a burst of her own power, she deflects the spell, sending it careening into a potted pothos resting on my bookshelf. The pot rattles when the curse hits it, and the plant promptly withers.
She laughs in my face as she heals her wounds. “You want to know a hilarious secret, one I only just remembered?”
I glare at her as she steps in close, and I will my magic to eat away at the spell holding me fast. I don’t have much hope that my power can alter the fae magic, but I’m terribly vulnerable at the moment.
“There once was a queen who couldn’t conceive,” Eislyn says, her voice hypnotic, “and it so perplexed this ruler who tried for years to beget an heir. But she was really just so very stupid. You see, that entire time, she was using dark magic, which feeds on creation.”
My body nearly rocks as my magic breaks through Eislyn’s spell—a spell I shouldn’t have been able to break with this much ease. My blades are still tightly gripped in my hands, and yet the fairy’s words have me mesmerized.
“And this foolish, queen,” she continues, “she was likely pregnant many times, but every time she drew on her dark magic, it fed on the life of her unborn children and killed them in the process.”
My eyes widen as my grip on my dagger hilts tightens. The horror of her words is slowly sinking in.
Likely pregnant many times.
She drinks in my expression, clearly savoring the misfortune I’m reliving.
“Murderer,” she says, echoing the very words the Hungering Ones used to sometimes whisper to me.
Black dots appear at the edges of my vision.
A sound is working its way up my throat. With a cry, I lunge forward and shove my blades into Eislyn’s gut.
The fairy shrieks, stumbling back into my computer chair. Gone is that ethereal beauty—when she glances up at me, her sharp cruelty has taken over her features.
“Yeah,” I rasp out. And then I bring up a booted foot and kick her right in her injury. “I am.”
She slides from the chair and collapses on the ground. I stalk after her, something ancient and ruthless welling up in me.
She lifts a hand.
Something slams into my head, Nero snarls, and then it all goes dark.