Chapter 23 #2
For once, I was grateful for the enhanced abilities my resurrection had given me. A human would not have been strong enough to pull the spikes loose from where they had dug into the mortar of the floor, pinning Isanara’s wing down.
The instant I got the second spike out, Isanara flared her wings out. She dwarfed the corridor. She’d grown, I realized. She was no longer the size of a large dog, but closer to a horse. Or what I remembered of them. I hadn’t seen one in at least a century.
I hurled the spikes to the ground and encased them with ice just like the sconce.
Which left the diadem.
“Touch it, and neither you nor your dragon will walk away from this.” Margeaux’s tone left no doubt. She would kill us—or try.
I turned slowly, moving to stand beside Garrick. I did not need him to protect me.
Stay back there, I ordered Isanara. Do not run off. I want to have a closer look at your wing.
And miss the fun? She scoffed.
“That diadem killed my sister.” I wasn’t sure who I was saying it to. I did not let myself look at Garrick.
But a cruel smile curved Margeaux’s face. “Greedy humans get what they deserve.”
“You cursed it,” I realized. She was to blame. She was the reason that Janessa had died so painfully, so awfully in my arms.
“It is mine.”
I was going to kill her. Whatever goodness that Garrick thought he saw inside of me, whatever fascinated the Dark God so much that he cursed me with his presence again and again…
none of that mattered. All that did was punish this monster for what she’d done.
She killed Janessa. Why did my chest hurt so much?
I knew a way to make it stop hurting. Ice flowed in my veins, it spiraled outward—
“Petty squabbling is below a woman of your age, Margeaux.”
The ice in that voice was not as literal as the icicles that formed at the ends of my pointed fingernails. But it was just as cold. The King of the Fae had arrived.
Garrick shifted closer to me. So did Isanara. Fuck that.
I’d spent hundreds of years beneath Maura’s tyranny. This monster wore a different face, but I hated them just the same, and I would not be afraid.
I sank into a low bow. “Your Majesty.”
It made my stomach turn to prostrate myself before the fae king, the epitome of everything I hated about Velora and the fae. But I would do anything for my familiar.
If Garrick was surprised, he did not let it show.
Not that I could see it. My face was bowed.
But I was certain that his invincible mask snapped into place the instant that the king appeared.
His sister, however, was not as successful despite the advantage of age.
She made a sound of absolute and utter disgust, and I did not need to see it to know it was aimed wholly in my direction.
A low, cold chuckle filled the already frigid air. My power roiled, a sea of ice beneath my skin. My desires were icebergs, waiting to crash and damage and tear me asunder. I counted the pattern of the bricks beneath my feet. They were still crusted in frost.
“Your head witch is occupied. You are on your own,” the king said. “Unless the Duke of Sein Talam would like to speak on your behalf.”
Garrick did not miss the opportunity. “Your Majesty—”
I snapped upright. “I speak for myself.”
Garrick’s jaw ticked, but that was the only outward sign of displeasure. The king was not alone. The blonde woman, the queen that Garrick had compelled to leave us alone on our way to rescue Isanara, the one I’d first seen wearing the diadem in the gorge after the Memory Gate, stood at his side.
Prince Edmund and a handful of guards filed into place behind Margeaux. Alize smirked from over the king’s shoulder.
This could go very, very bad, very, very quickly.
The king cleared his throat. The sound was almost familiar, the physical resemblance of silver hair and turquoise eyes enough to trick my senses for half a second. But then they screamed at the wrongness of it. The wrongness of everything.
“To stand between a witch and her familiar is against the covenants,” I said, curling my palms at my sides. “It is punishable by death.”
Allegiance to familiar. The second covenant.
Maura had always glossed past it, as no familiar had ever chosen a witch of the Midnight Coven. The longer the curse held Velora in its grip, the less likely it became. Until Isanara.
Margeaux tossed her red-gold braid and lifted her chin in defiance. “We are in Balar Shan. We are not subject to your heathen covenants,” she said. “And I am not a witch,”
“But I am.” Power flowed from me, and for once, I let it. It was not the same as when the Dark God had held my hands and I’d let it pour forth. This was like a stream, instead of a tidal wave. But it spread across the ground, up the walls, coating the dull red bricks in sparkling silver.
Margeaux’s eyes widened. The king chuckled again, as if this were all a trifling entertainment.
“The dragon stole from me,” Margeaux cried, throwing out a hand. The metal I’d fused to the floor did not budge. For now.
Dragons do not steal, Isanara scoffed.
I suppose you just found that diadem lying around on the floor.
Isanara went quiet. Typical.
The king’s sound of disgust was eerily similar to his daughter’s. “It is an animal,” he said. “You are a daughter of Penruddock. Act like it.”
Would you like to correct him, or should I?
You will keep your jaws to yourself if you want to get out of this with all of our limbs intact.
You should have more faith in us.
Do you see how many of them there are? I have not suffered through nearly four hundred years on this cursed continent to die at the hands of the fae.
“The diadem belongs to the queen,” the King said, dismissing the princess. Victory swelled in my chest—until he refocused that attention on me. “Are you interested in the position?” He had Garrick’s eyes, but when they roved over me, the hairs on the back of my neck lifted in warning.
“Father, it belonged to—”
The cold humor disappeared as he rounded on his daughter. “I gifted it to your mother, Margeaux. When she died, every one of her possessions became property of the crown. Mine to keep or give as I see fit. It belongs to Queen Parry,” he said. “Return it. Now.”
It took several seconds for any of us to realize what he meant. Or maybe Margeaux knew, and it took her that long to reconcile that he was serious.
The fae king lifted his brows. He would not be kept waiting.
Every step etched the hatred deeper in Margeaux’s features.
It took every measure of control, every trick that Tomin had taught me, to keep my feet rooted to the spot as she passed by me to lean between Isanara’s legs and retrieve the crown.
My familiar felt no such need; she hissed, snapping her jaws an inch from the princess’s face.
The fury in Margeaux’s eyes as she straightened was more than enough to melt a sword. It was enough to move a mountain of ore. Garrick had said she was more powerful than I knew. I did not doubt it, now.
“Thank you,” the queen said. For a moment, Margeaux seemed to consider whether she would actually return the diadem. I half expected her to melt it in her hand. But she held it out to the queen, who took it without ceremony. And then immediately turned to me.
“I gift it to you, as a token of goodwill,” Queen Parry said. “You are a guest of Balar Shan. I am sorry you and your familiar were so ill-treated.”
She held it out into the space between us.
That thing had killed my sister. Margeaux had proudly admitted to cursing it. Touching ought to have been fatal. But they were fae.
Take it, Isanara urged.
And I was a witch.
My fingers closed around the ornate filigree of the diadem. I did not have to look to know. Margeaux was enraged and the king was pleased.
“Thank you, Your Majesty.” I dipped into another bow, not quite as low as the first.
Garrick cleared his throat. “Do you still wish to speak with me, Majesty?”
“I have seen enough,” the king said, his eyes dancing. There was mirth, but also a warning. “Take your witch away before she causes any more trouble.”
I tossed the diadem to Isanara as we rounded the curve, just in time to revel in the horror on Margeaux’s face.
Eat up, I told my familiar.