Chapter 30
I’m shaking my head, more because I don’t want to believe it than anything else. The connection that once frightened me I now rely on like another appendage. I cannot fathom there being a problem with it.
“Try thinking something very loudly at me,” Memnon says.
Memnon has a big dick.
He cracks a grin, his eyes twinkling. He must’ve heard the thought, so I don’t understand what has him concerned.
But then his grin fades, and though he’s staring intently at me, he’s saying nothing.
…amage…
I pause when I hear my name whispered across our bond.
“Did you hear me?” he asks.
Now unease drips down my spine.
“You said ‘amage.’” My own words are uncertain.
I see Memnon’s throat slightly constrict. “I said far more than that,” he admits.
Disbelief washes through me. Something cannot be wrong with our bond. But then, I recall how Memnon’s voice seemed to die away earlier with his warning.
Now the two of us stare at one another, and I can see the fear on his face, but I can only sense a whisper of it—and even that might be my own emotions.
With horror, realization dawns on me.
“It was the drink,” I say. I remember the pale purple wine and the tingly, electric way it made my magic feel inside me. It didn’t poison me, but it did do something.
“What was in it?” Memnon asks.
I shake my head, wanting to scream at myself. “I don’t know. It was fae wine.”
Memnon’s brows draw together. “There are stories about not consuming fae food and drink, but we have had many of Eislyn’s wines in the past.”
“This wine was purple,” I admit.
I don’t know that we ever drank wine that particular hue before.
“Eislyn did also drink it,” I add. I wasn’t at least that senseless.
I glance around, sure that if I could find the label, it might explain a bit more about what exactly I imbibed.
But though there is plenty of blood splashed across the floor of my room, there is no spilled wine, nor broken shards of the bottle or the glass I drank from.
Before Eislyn left, she cleaned up.
I try to remember the translated fae words. One of them was Syrinx, and there was another word that started with a T, and then a final word that was Amor-something. And though the translated words looked vaguely Latin and Greek in origin, they still didn’t mean anything recognizable to me.
I grip Memnon’s hand and shake my head. “Forget about the wine for a moment. Eislyn doesn’t fully understand what happened two thousand years ago. She understands that she and I both forgot our pasts, but I’m not even sure she knows that I did actually die.”
Memnon searches my eyes as the rest of the encounter with Eislyn comes tumbling out. My words are a poor imitation for the full memory, but I try to recount it as best I can.
And there’s one part, one small but devastating detail, that I remember only after I’ve finished retelling the whole incident.
I squeeze Memnon’s hand, swallowing down my queasiness.
“Eislyn told me that, when I was Roxilana, I—I killed our children with my use of dark magic.”
My soul mate scowls, studying my face. “You didn’t kill them,” he reassures me.
I want to believe him—I desperately do—but the first time I was pregnant, there had been a battle, one I fought in. And I had used dark magic as Roxilana. I’d used it all the time to fight and defeat my enemies, not knowing any better.
I’d had a miscarriage shortly after that first conflict. I’d then fought almost continuously after that, through the several, childless years I spent ruling Sarmatia with Memnon.
I’d only gotten pregnant again after I was kept from armed conflict. That was about the time I stopped leaning on dark magic.
Sickness rises in me as I nod. “I think Eislyn was telling the truth.” My jaw trembles.
Memnon places a hand on my cheek. “Don’t suffer for her words, est amage,” he says. “If it is true, then now we know.” He shakes his head. “But the past is in the past. We cannot change it, and we have spilled enough tears over it already.”
I swallow, nodding.
He leans forward and kisses away the wetness on my cheeks—tears I hadn’t realized I’d cried.
“Now,” Memnon says, his tone growing harder, “it seems she came to you not just to gloat but to understand what sort of threat you pose to her.”
I nod. She did seem to be prodding me, trying to figure out who she was dealing with.
Which happened to be a silly little fool.
I’m sure the fairy left feeling assured that I wouldn’t pose much threat at all.
Memnon and I have already speculated that Eislyn had plans for him, plans that even two millennia later might still be important to her. And just as I was in the way then, I am in the way now. An inconvenience, but not a true obstacle.
And what could those plans of hers be? What terrible machinations are going on in that sick little shit’s mind?
I’m afraid my ambitions have always been bigger than offering counsel to mortals, Eislyn said.
Slowly I lift my gaze to Memnon’s.
A curious glint sparks in the sorcerer’s eyes. “What have you figured out, my cunning queen?”
I search his beloved face, swallowing.
Long ago, Memnon told me that Eislyn had aided his paternal family line for something like two hundred years. But of all the sorcerers in that family tree, it was Memnon that Eislyn fixated on, Memnon she built that terrible tomb for.
It was never Memnon’s power or his prestige alone that captivated her.
It was what all of it could offer her.
Over two thousand years ago, Eislyn tried to overthrow her father. She failed, and as punishment, she was banished to Earth, where she has been trapped ever since.
What does an ancient, banished princess desire?
“Eislyn wants her father’s throne, the one she never got,” I say. “And she wants you to help her get it.”