Chapter 16
Ash
The plan? Hope we don’t get caught where we shouldn’t be.
Easier said than done.
I could leave. Right now. Slip out through the passage Kestra showed me, find the borderlands, disappear into the human world where no one knows my name.
I don’t move toward the door.
Every time I look at Tiana, something strange pulses inside me. Then to Kestra. Back again.
Like there’s a thread between the three of us. Tightening.
Growing up with cousins, I had built-in family. Never had to make friends—I was born with them. Which also made it really hard to make friends.
There’s a dynamic that forms when you’re born with people. No social cues to watch for. You just are who you’ve always been with them.
Or so I thought.
And yet, as Kestra, Tiana, and I rummage through Kieran’s quarters for supplies, there’s this energetic pulse between us. Electrical. Exhilarating.
Different from the purple magic tasting my essence every now and again. Licking at my aura before it’s satisfied with something.
I’ve stopped flinching when it does that.
Progress, I guess.
Kestra finds me standing in a closet watching it twist and turn through my fingertips.
“Survival,” she whispers, hands clenched at her sides. “What does it feel like?”
I lick my lips, trying to put into words what it feels like to constantly feel monitored. Except that’s not quite it either.
“Is it reporting everything I think and feel back to the courts? Because if so, I’m a liability.” My stomach turns until I have to breathe through the pain there.
“No,” she whispers. “It doesn’t work like that.”
I breathe a little easier. “It feels like...” Oh, I know. “The aquarium.”
“What is an aquarium?” Tiana steps into the closet with us.
“Oh, well it’s usually in a coastal city.”
“What is a city?” Kestra asks.
“You two have never been to Earth, have you?” Excitement hums through me. I could take these two to an aquarium one day. “Okay, so you have courts, right? On Earth we have cities.”
That clicks. “How many cities does Earth have?” Tiana asks.
“Oh, thousands.”
Their jaws drop.
“So many humans,” Kestra gasps. It’s honestly so innocent and wholesome I forget we’re supposed to be packing so we can escape.
“There’s millions,” I tell them and nearly laugh at the reaction.
“And they have the lifespan of what, seventy-eight years?”
“Oh, that is horrific.” Tiana’s eyes widen. “I mean, my early years were spent learning at court, but that is such a short amount of time.”
The perspective is jarring. She’s right. There are billions of humans on earth.
And only thousands of Fae.
One lives forever. The other? Mere years in comparison.
I blow out a breath. “We have these oceans where marine life swims, and in these coastal cities, we have aquariums where humans capture and place the fish in tanks for viewing.”
By the looks on their faces, I’m not winning at the aquarium thing.
“You capture fish?” Tiana tries the word. “From oceans.”
“I know what oceans are,” Kestra says. “They’re our seas.”
“That would have been easier to explain,” I mutter.
“Fish?” Tiana asks Kestra.
“Brainless mermaids.”
“And we’re done here.” I laugh. “Go. We need weapons.”
“Fine.” Tiana walks away but I hear her whisper to Kestra, “Sirens?”
“They actually have those, but don’t tell her that.” Kestra’s voice trails away.
I bite my tongue. I know about the sirens. Had an assignment where I had to convince them to stop taking out our ships.
“You two...” I stop. Start again. “You’re good at this.”
Kestra pauses in the doorway. “At what?”
“This.” I gesture between the three of us. “The talking. The planning. Being...together.”
Tiana’s head tilts. That assessing look I’m starting to recognize on both of them.
“I’m not.” The words scrape out before I can stop them. “Good at this. I had cousins. Built-in people. Never had to learn how to...choose someone. Or be chosen.”
The silence stretches. I want to take it back.
“The military was easier,” I hear myself say. “Orders. Objectives. You don’t have to figure out where you fit. Someone tells you.”
Kestra’s expression doesn’t change. But something in her shoulders softens.
“Kieran is the same,” she says quietly. “He knows how to command. How to strategize. But choosing someone? Letting someone choose him?” She shakes her head. “He’s terrible at it.”
“So am I.” Tiana’s voice is smaller than I’ve heard it. “Tatiana chose me. Trained me. I never had to earn it. I just...was.”
Three queens who don’t know how to be chosen.
Something passes between us. Not spoken. Just acknowledged.
“All right.” I clear my throat. “Weapons.”
Looking around me, I let myself sink into reality.
Kieran is bigger than me, but I think I can make his pants work. I pull on new trousers, a tunic, and toss some out for the others. I find a small box at the back, but it doesn’t hold weapons.
A keepsake box. Inside, a red ruby wrapped in satin cloth.
It feels significant. I should leave it—it’s not mine.
But when my fingers brush the stone, cold shoots up my arm. Not unpleasant. Familiar, somehow. Like touching something that already knows my name.
Something whispers through me. If I don’t pocket this now, it’ll be lost.
I’ve learned to trust those whispers.
I wrap it back in the satin and tuck it into my pocket. Against my hip, it pulses once, then settles.
I don’t show Kestra. Don’t mention it.
I don’t know why. Just that I shouldn’t. Not yet.
I move on, finding weapons. Mostly small knives. Throwing knives. And more knives.
When I come out, the girls are dressed in Kieran’s clothing, looking less like the queens of Faerie and more like—well, human.
“My mother?” Anxiety twists inside me. “Finnian?”
They pause. Then nod.
There’s a secret there. Something they aren’t telling me.
And something in my heart whispers I may have to choose. That I can’t save everyone.
I push the thought down. I have to try.
Right now it’s the middle of the night. Darker than usual, but purple still streaks across the sky, kissing the dark blanket of stars above.
“All right.” Kestra walks over to a wall, a tote around her body full of weapons. We all look the same in our earth colors. She presses a spot on the wall and the stones shift, exposing a secret passage.
I love castles.
“Silent,” she warns.
Single file, we enter the exposed space.
The passages twist through the castle walls like veins through a body. Cold stone presses against my shoulders. Cobwebs catch in my hair. We move in silence, Kestra leading, Tiana behind me, our breathing the only sound.
I don’t know how long we walk. Time stretches strange in the dark.
Then Kestra stops. Holds up a fist.
I press against the wall beside her. She points to a small gap in the stone—a viewing hole, barely visible.
I look through.
My hands press against the wall. Cobwebs stick to my fingers. My heart feels like it’s being wrung out.
On the bed, Amarantha lies naked. Davis at her feet. Also naked.
I should look at them. Assess the threat.
But Finnian is the only one I see.
On the floor. At the foot of her bed. Like a dog.
Something in my chest cracks open.
His eyes shoot open.
I swear he can see me through the wall. Through stone and magic and everything we built between us.
He rolls to his side, eyes locked on mine.
And crawls.
Not stands. Crawls. Slow and silent, staying below the bed’s line of sight.
My nails dig into stone. I want to rip through this wall with my bare hands.
“How?” I turn to Kestra.
She’s pressing against the wall, eyes closed as she whispers. The space shimmers.
Finnian doesn’t stand but crawls faster, out of sight of Amarantha.
My stomach twists in knots. I can’t figure out where to look. Him. Her. Then back again.
I hold my breath as he stands slowly, now at the wall.
Amarantha rolls over.
We all freeze.
Finnian stares at her. One breath. Two.
Then he steps backward through the wall.
Into my arms.
I catch him. Pull him tight against me. Tighter than I should. Tighter than I’d let myself before.
“I’m sorry.” The words come out broken. “I’m sorry I wasn’t—”
“Don’t.” His voice is raw. Wrecked. “You’re here now.”
I’m here now.
His hands shake where they grip my arms. He smells wrong—like her perfume, like something rotten underneath.
“What did she—”
“Later.” His voice cracks on the word. “Please. Later.”
I swallow the questions. File them away. Later.
But beneath all of it, beneath everything they did to him, he’s still Finnian.
Still mine.
And I wasn’t there for him.
Distance didn’t protect him. Distance just meant he crawled through that alone.
The logic I’ve been clinging to shatters like ice on stone.
Distance didn’t protect him. Distance just meant he crawled through that alone.
The purple magic pulses at my edge, then floods inward.
Not painful. Not invasive. More like...settling. Like something that’s been circling finally found a place to land.
There you are, it seems to say. That’s the one. That’s the answer I needed.
I don’t know what I just passed. Don’t know what any of this means.
But something in me feels locked in. Committed. Like a door just closed behind me and I’m not sorry to hear it shut.
I’m done running.
Not for the mission. Not for duty. Not because I’m trapped.
For them.
I pull back just enough to look at Finnian’s face. His amber eyes are hollow. Haunted. But when they meet mine, something flickers there.
Hope.
I grab his hand. Look at Kestra and Tiana.
“Let’s go get my mother.”
Kestra nods once. Turns back into the darkness.
This time as I follow my gut twists. It’s all so easy to get out of here. Almost too easy. Maybe that’s what causes my heart to gallop in my chest. My mouth to run dry.
And as we turn a familiar bend with a hole in the wall Kestra pauses, turning to me. I look back, seeing Tiana holding up Finnian and my chest crushes.
“We aren’t getting my mom, are we?”
She doesn’t have to answer for me to know what she will say. It’s written on every single line of her face.
“No.” And there is so much emotion in that answer that I have to rapidly blink and look away. “A true queen knows when to play her hand.” She steps close to me, her voice lowered. I can’t look at her and choose to look through the hole in the wall.
My mom sleeps on a bed in a row of them. Amongst other human women.
“My mom bound a god once.” I choke on the words, looking back to see Finnian’s eyes on me. Watching and listening. We don’t have time for this. I know that but not saying goodbye in some way feels wrong.
Kestra grips my hand, holding tight.
“My mom and her sisters absorbed his powers. She didn’t get much out of it. But she can sing. Her voice,” my own cracks.
“If we take her now? My father will know.”
“He set up a trap for me, didn’t he?”
“She will die the moment she tries to leave.”
I gulp down air, remembering how to let my emotions roll thought me.
“I swear to you, Ashlynne Moonshadow of the Wild Court.” Kestra holds both her hands in mine. “Upon my return to the Unseelie Court as queen, I will free your mother.”
I gasp as the binding burns through my wrist. Not blood red like Kieran’s, but purple and blue like a bruise. But a life debt all the same.
I look at my mother through the wall, one last time. Sleeping peacefully.
How many nights did she watch me sleep? Breathe. And now I need to leave her here so she can live another day.
“Let’s go,” I say and turn away.
Leaving my mother to the whims of the Unseelie Court.