Chapter 39
Fallen Angel
MAX
Blood whooshes at my temples. “What?”
“I don’t know what enchantment or curse wiped your memories and made you permanently invisible, but you’re not dead,” she repeats impatiently, addressing him directly.
With a huff, she marches over to him and smacks his head. “Here. Not dead.”
E bites back a wince. “Ow. You’re not fucking around, are you?”
Iris rests her hand on her hips. “Well, I’m a little disappointed in the turn our reunion has taken. I imagined something different.”
“Are you— Are we?” he blurts out. “Aren’t I supposed to be married to someone named Willow?”
Her eyes fly to the sky, and she scoffs, the mention of the name bringing back a flash of disgust on her face. “Technically, yes.”
“What do you mean, technically?” I ask.
Iris acts as though I don’t exist. “You married Willow out of duty, but you never loved her,” she says.
The sentence is arranged in a way that implies he loved someone else instead, but she doesn’t elaborate.
“Well…” she says, smoothing an invisible wrinkle from her skirts, “This is a mess. Your father will be pissed.”
I press my lips together.
If we want to petition Ezra’s father to save my brother from the Reds, antagonizing the King of Light before he even arrives would be a catastrophically bad start.
A servant dressed in white cotton robes appears from the same direction Iris came and clears his throat. “Um. Um. Excuse me, Your Majesty. But you’re not supposed to be outside alone before sundown.”
Majesty?
Iris huffs as though she isn't embarrassed by the reminder, merely inconvenienced. “Give me a minute. I'll ask the servants to stretch dinner.”
She glides off in a whisper of silk and poise, her pale gown clinging to all the right places, the kind of effortless elegance that makes my dirty, rain-soaked clothes feel even more pathetic.
E leans closer, and my heart beats hard in my chest.
“Say something, please,” E whispers.
I turn toward the sound of his voice. “What else is there to say?”
“That woman…” His voice catches, full of guilt and cracking over something more bitter. “Max, I don’t— I don’t remember her. I don’t remember any of this.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s a lie.”
“Whoever Ezra was…” He swallows. “He’s not me.”
“But he is. I mean—you are.”
The distinction feels impossible to explain, especially when I barely understand it myself.
“I love you.”
“That’s beside the point.” I keep my voice cold, but inside, I’m burning.
My heart pounds hard and uneven in my chest.
The reveal of his true identity doesn’t suddenly erase my love for him. That’s the humiliating part. Even now, with another woman’s magic steeped into him like perfume we can’t scrub away, with questions I don’t want answered clawing at my insides, I still love him.
Before either of us can spiral any further, Iris reappears at the edge of the terrace.
She shakes her head and raises her eyes to the sky. “Come with me. I’ll show you to your rooms so you can clean up and change into something more appropriate for dinner.”
My stomach sinks.
“The King will return after sundown,” she adds before turning on her heel, clearly expecting us to follow.
We leave the open terrace behind and step into the palace proper, where the air is warmer and perfumed with citrus oil, beeswax, and something faintly floral.
Iris leads us through corridors so grand they barely feel inhabitable, with vaulted ceilings painted in celestial frescoes, marble floors polished to a mirror shine, and towering windows framing the ethereal glow of the golden hour.
Servants dressed in plain white cotton stop to curtsy as we pass, lowering their gazes in a respectful—almost fearful—manner. At first, I chalk it up to court etiquette, but as we cross yet another corridor, that strange discomfort curdles into something colder.
The deeper we go, the quieter the palace becomes.
The grand public spaces give way to something more intimate, though no less extravagant. The corridors narrow slightly, the décor shifting from ceremonial splendor to overstated luxury. The windows frame the dying sun, washing everything in amber-white light.
At last, Iris stops before a pair of towering double doors. “This is your bedroom, Ezra.” A strange, breathy note raises her voice. “Exactly how you left it.”
She gestures vaguely down the corridor. “The women’s quarters are on the opposite side of the throne room.”
Ezra clutches my hand and brings it close to his chest. The intimacy of the gesture hurts more than it should.
“Max can stay with me,” he says with more guile and confidence than I expected.
Iris’s eyes narrow. “I hardly think your father would approve of that.”
I wrestle free of his hold and force my voice to remain steady. “It’s fine. We should obey the house rules.”
It is fine.
Better, really.
Now that I know for a fact he was married, nothing else can happen between us.
Twilight paints the sky pink and orange as I follow Iris further inside the castle.
Silence stretches between us as we walk, strangely intimate in its discomfort.
She doesn’t look at me, her spine impossibly straight, her skirts gliding across the marble, but I can’t stop wondering what she was to him.
A friend?
The bitterness in her voice earlier sounded too personal for that.
A mistress, then?
Despite everything, I can’t help wondering whether we have something awful in common. Whether she, too, loved a version of E she could never truly possess.
Across the throne room had been a euphemism.
The women’s quarters aren’t down the hall, but on the opposite side of the castle. If I wanted to find E again, I’m not sure I could.
By the Dark One…
I don’t know anything about this place. I don’t know who can open which doors, who answers to whom, or whether I’d be allowed to wander freely at all.
I’m still a prisoner, sort of.
I’ve just been moved to a prettier cage.
E grew up here, amid impossible luxury. Compared to that, Mabel’s cozy Victorian house must have felt ridiculous to him.
Iris and I finally step into the throne room, and I falter.
A glass throne sits atop a pedestal flanked by twin curved staircases that sweep upward on either side toward an upstairs mezzanine. Above it, a vast circular skylight opens to the sky.
A sun is etched in gold into the floor beneath the throne, and frameless mirrors line the walls, reflecting the room into endless, blinding repetitions.
White Roman columns stand in a circle around the pedestal, ensuring the structural integrity of the building. A glass enclosure hangs from the vaulted ceiling, suspended above the throne, its thick golden chains fixed to the skylight above.
Inside, a pair of wings rests in perfect stillness.
They are enormous. Pristine. Their feathers overlap in careful, luminous layers as delicate rays of sunshine glide across their vast span.
Following Iris, I climb the stairs one at a time, remembering how soft Ezra’s wings felt under my touch.
An itch prickles the back of my neck as I pause near the top of the staircase, my hand tightening on the gilded railing.
At the root of the wings, beneath the immaculate down feathers, traces of what they were taken from remain. Not something crafted, but something torn—ragged hints of cut muscle, thin strands of skin, and the dark, stubborn stain of blood caught in the seams.
It’s all perfectly preserved, untouched by time, as though they were severed and sealed away moments ago.
I study the way they’ve been suspended and bathed in sunlight, and I can’t tell if I’m looking at something horrible or sacred.
Who did they belong to? The poor creature… I glance at the base of the wings again, where mangled pieces of flesh are concealed beneath all that brilliance, and unease coils in my stomach.
Maybe they were cut off after death and kept as a way to remember and honor their owner? The king’s dead wife, maybe? E’s mother?
I hope that’s the case, though something a knight said back in the forest makes me doubt it.
He’s got wings, madam. Our king shan’t suffer anyone he doesn’t approve of to keep them.
“They’re beautiful, no?” Iris says softly, jolting me out of my reverie. “The Sun Court makes glass lanterns in all colors, shapes, and sizes. Most of them are made for souls, but they can hold anything, really.”
I blink. “The Sun Court hunts the souls that fled their reaper, right?”
“Yes, the soul chasers trap the lost souls in glass to prevent their decay, and a soul that is found quickly enough can then rejoin the gods as intended.” She licks her lips, freckles of ice rising along her neck.
“While the ones that are too tainted and corroded are condemned to an eternity of stillness.”
I detect a hint of regret—or perhaps longing—in her voice.
The shattered bronze lantern lying on the floor of Luther’s tent comes to mind as I glance back at the wings.
“And these wings?” I ask.
Clouds pass in her eyes. “Light Fae build larger enclosures for bigger things. Bodies. Relics. Anything they consider worth preserving.”
My heart bangs against my ribcage. “To honor them?”
Her lips thin. “That’s what they say.”
“And what do you think?” I press on, sensing her diverging opinion on the matter.
“In the Sun Court,” Iris says quietly, “there’s very little difference between love and possession. Light Fae don’t like to part with anything that ever belonged to them.”
Her throat bobs before she adds, “They’ll tell you it’s devotion—that preserving something is the highest form of respect. That letting it change, decay, or disappear is akin to neglect…”
Her voice lowers, not quite bitter, but not soft either. “But it’s also about control. Freezing something in time means it never gets to leave. Never gets to become anything else.”
A full-bodied shudder quakes her from head to toe, and she rubs the chill off her arms, her weary gaze glued to the wings. “It just remains captive forever.”