Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Iangled myself in front of Melia. “Is this true?”
She lifted her head, and worry was an ugly beast gnawing at both of us. “To be honest, I’m not sure.”
Dorian could have set a time-activated spell while he tortured Melia. How willing was I to bet Selene was lying?
The Unseelie camp was a river of blood, attacks still coming from every angle around us. Dorian was close by, no doubt. Waiting for me to slip up. I could battle on and risk Selene activating the spell before I killed her…
Or I could face her and get Melia to safety.
I forced myself to my feet, anguish and loss tangling inside me at the death rattle of an Encantado warrior feet away, his armor torn.“Run, Melia.”
Tears ran down her cheeks. “I’m not leaving you.”
“You aren’t a fighter.” We needed her for far more than that. “Meli, go.”
I shoved at her to get her to move, to remind her this wasn’t her fight.
I kept my gaze squarely on Selene and the sinuous way she tilted her head, taking in both of us and sizing us up in a heartbeat.
She ignored the victories and defeats around us in another pristine suit, this one the color of a dove’s breast. It cut down her midriff to her belly button, the trousers loose and feminine.
Melia squeezed my arm. I didn’t have to look to know she’d listened. I didn't want to look and brand her as a target with my attention.
Selene crooked a finger like she no longer had to pretend to be a cold-hearted bitch. She’d accepted it. “This way.”
What should I do now? Leaving put the rest of the rebels at risk. And where the hell did Selene want to go?
No way would she be able to dispose of me, but in this case, I had to keep my head. If I gave in to worry and emotion, then the darkness would spread and she’d have an immediate advantage.
“I wasn’t sure if you’d show your face again,” I said as I followed her out.
She shrugged and her black bob swayed along the cutting edges of her jaw. “Why would I not?”
The forest closed in around us and my wolf whined, the sound snagging somewhere in my chest. Selene lifted a hand to thicken the air around us and make sure we were undisturbed, alone.
“Why should I trust you? You’ve betrayed me twice,” I reminded her.
She’d used Onyx as a scapegoat and got him sentenced to death for murder.
She’d helped Kendrick escape into Faerie from the Fae Academy.
“Oh? I can’t remember. I use so many pawns.
I don’t understand why everyone considers you special.
Or rare. The Prophet, some call you. Like you have the ability to tell the future,” Selene replied, cynicism lacing her tone.
“Others call you the Warrior of EverRose. You’ve managed to insert yourself into the history books. ”
Power crackled around my fingertips, ready to be unleashed, but I tamped it down. Not yet.
Rage drowned my mind, pushing me into her footsteps until the forest cleared. A slight rocky overhang graced us with a view of the creek and its crimson waters.
“I could remind you—” I started.
Selene held up a hand, whispers of the fight carrying to my ears. “Please, don’t. It would be boring. The one thing you’ve never been is boring, Tavi. Through all our meetings with the Claw & Fang, you always managed to keep me on my toes. I’ll give you props for that alone.”
Circles. She spoke me in circles when I wanted to take off the way we came. Preferably after throwing her off the cliff.
My instincts urged me to finish her off, or at least close my teeth around her neck and clamp until her screams cut off.
I slid my hands into my pockets and rocked back on my heels. “I’m stronger now than I was then.”
She mimed wiping sweat from her brow. “Good. You underperformed at the Faerie Trials. I’m glad to see you didn’t make it a habit.”
Selene wanted to provoke me. Which meant the one thing I couldn’t do was show my hand.
She was always ten steps ahead, anyway.
I hadn’t suspected her, had considered her to be a mentor if not a confidant, someone who lived and breathed the same problems I did.
“Oh, it’s all right,” she sighed. “There’s no need for you to get all weepy on me. We are both doing what we have to do for the people we love. Yours are dying as we speak. Mine are as well. Both sides will suffer equally.”
I snarled. “You let a monster into Faerie for the people you love? Sorry, but the logic is coming up a little short from my side.”
“Kendrick might be a brute, but even brutes have their uses as long as you know how to use them.”
I hated her smile. I hated everything she stood for without her having to voice her stance.
Selene stepped closer and prompted me to move to the side to avoid her touch. It was an inelegant dance.
“I refuse to do the monologue. It’s gauche and clichéd. Let’s sit, shall we?” She gestured, and stone erupted from the ground.
She twisted its shape until a long bench formed and sat primly to one side, patting the emptiness to her right with a hand.
“I’d prefer not to.” Was she insane?
Yet as tidy as ever, Selene still reminded me of a shark with expensive taste.
“I promise your friend will be safe on her exit. As long as you allow this conversation to progress naturally. As for the others, well, the battle rages on. We will both curse and cry and win and lose. At least you’ll know you’ve managed to save one of them.”
An earth-shattering howl cut through the silence of our clearing and I stared at the creek where the Encantado had arrived. My heart squeezed.
“One of them isn’t enough.”
Everything will work out the way it’s meant to. Unfortunately, I couldn’t force myself to have faith.
“One is what you’ll settle for until we’ve had this discussion. It’s been a long time coming.”
Energy rose in a crackle around me, whipping my hair free of its braid. Selene’s feral smile burned itself in my memory before she lifted a lazy hand and held her fingers half an inch apart.
“Sit,” she repeated. Or else.
“Are you really a reporter, or something else?”
“I’m whoever I need to be in order to complete my tasks. That’s something we have in common. Or at least we would if you’d understood the trajectory of your growth. Perhaps it takes an outside perspective to see it.”
She didn’t pat the bench again.
The surreal picture she presented added a tension to the air I hadn’t felt before. I’d rather take on a dozen rampaging shifters than Selene Montrosse at her sharpest. Where was Dorian?
My knees locked. “What do you want?”
“The truth?” She lifted one side of her lips. “I want to see the world my husband has envisioned come to fruition. He’s worked tirelessly for decades to topple the monarchy. I like to think I have a hand in accomplishing those dreams.”
“Your husband?”
“Dorian.”
“Your…what?” For better or worse, she had my full attention now.
Selene laughed, the sound as dark as a tempest. “Naturally we wanted to keep our relationship private. It’s hard to have romance in the middle of a war, as you know.”
My eyes were fixed on her and my jaw worked but at least my mouth didn’t fall open. “That’s ridiculous.”
“People have done stranger things.” Selene sucked air between her teeth. “I’ve been slowly turning half shifters to Dorian’s team. It’s been easier than I thought it would be, and their strength is appreciated even if they are somewhat…primitive.”
I took an automatic step backwards.
She leaned closer until her elbows balanced on her knees. “I’m sure you’ve wondered why there’s been a divide among the local half shifters of the realm. Haven’t you?”
I turned my face away and broke eye contact. Was that the real reason Selene had headed the Claw & Fang? Not to help but to recruit?
She’d backed me into a corner of the conversation and she knew it, and accomplished it with hardly any effort.
Don’t engage.
I needed to know everything.
“I intend to rule as queen alongside my husband. As intriguing as you were at the start of this game, you’ve become a large thorn in our side.”
“So you’re after a crown.”
“I’m after a way of life,” she corrected. “The only way to get it is to grab it for myself by any means necessary. And it happens that my husband and I agree. Ruling Faerie is the only way to ensure our magic can thrive.”
Their methods left a fucking lot to be desired.
Even if I hadn’t stood in her way, this war would have happened, and more people would have been hurt. “Why would you befriend me in the first place?”
She shrugged. “I thought you could be convinced to join my side. But you can’t even be convinced to sit.”
Selene stood and with another irritable exhale, she banished the bench she’d created for this conversion. I didn’t see a queen in front of me. I saw a villain.
But then again, when was a monarch ever anything but comfortable in moral grayness?
“Ultimately, if Dorian won’t kill you and get you out of the way of our plans, I’ll have to do it myself. He loves these little games of his, as he calls them.”
My chest heaved, adrenaline firing my blood. “You say it like it would be a loss.”
“Then you’ve misinterpreted my meaning.”
She pulled out a gun faster than my gaze tracked. A sharp pain nicked my chest right between my breasts and seconds ticked by before my awareness of what just happened grew.
It made sense, really, for her to use a gun. I expected a magic fight. One where I was strong enough to hold my own, strong enough to win.
Surely Selene was already aware of that. Thus the gun. Cheap but effective. Selene had proved her point.
Pain blossomed in my chest and blood had spattered my chin, cooling now under the breeze. I wondered how much longer I could remain standing. Loss of blood would kill me.
The bullet must have grazed a lung and I fell, dragging air into my lungs uselessly. None of it made it farther than my lips.
She stepped closer as my back bowed and I hunched in on myself, circling me before her next attack.
“This wasn’t what I intended but it does the trick. You’re incapacitated. Still aware, though. More’s the pity. Where’s your magic now?”
Selene hovered over me and blocked the light, casting herself in shadow. The gun was aimed for my head in a killing shot and my eyes widened.
“You don’t have time to heal yourself before your lungs fill with blood. You’ll suffocate.”
But you have time to talk.
The edges of my vision went black and blurry as her finger tightened on the trigger. Where was my magic? I called it now but it came in trickles, sluggish.
My body braced for the pain of the end. For whatever waited for me on the other side where I’d planned to send myself anyway.
Then something silver arced through the air, and in the next beat, a sword separated Selene’s head from her body.
Its weight tumbled it to the earth and it rolled to a stop between her feet, eyes and mouth open, before the rest of her body crumpled.
I pushed a hand to my chest, lungs gurgling as they filled.
Dorian Jade tipped the bloodied sword into the dirt and stared at the mess he’d made. “It’s a shame. She was my favorite wife.”
His gaze found mine.
I was choking. I cowered away from him, unbalanced with blood filling up one lung, my magic sputtering and desperate for a direction. Him, take him!
“In exchange for all the shifters he donated to my army, I promised Kendrick you would make it home to him alive.” Those violet eyes gleamed with passion. “Now you will.”
The deal. The price.
Before I could fully understand the implications, Dorian kicked me in the head and the world guttered out.