Chapter 33
Finnian
Amarantha’s claws sink into my chest the moment everything around me feels possible.
Ash’s laughter rings through the Dark Forest, bright and real, and Orion is saying something ridiculous about tavern food, and even Kieran’s mouth has curved into something that might be a smile if you squint. We’re walking together. The four of us. Alive. Whole.
And that’s when I smell it.
Roses. And underneath, sweetness gone rotten.
Amarantha.
The summons doesn’t ask. It warns and then it takes.
“No—” I gasp, and then I’m on my knees without remembering falling. The brand in my chest ignites like someone poured gasoline on my ribs.
She’s calling me the Seelie Court.
I don’t want to go.
My ribs try to separate. My body attempts to exist in two places at once. Here, with them. And there, in her crystal court where she’s been waiting. Always waiting.
The others stop.
Orion reaches for me first. His hand grips the back of my neck. Warm and solid and literally the only thing keeping me from dissolving.
“Hold on.” His voice holds steady but there’s a pulse of fear to him I feel more than I see. “Finn. Hold on.”
“What is it?” Ash slides down beside me, her knees hitting dirt, her hands hovering like she wants to touch me but doesn’t know where.
I can’t talk. Every word I have is being used to keep myself here. Physically. With them.
The summons pulls harder. My vision whites at the edges.
“Seelie summons.” Kieran settles on my other side. When I manage to focus on his face, there’s no judgment there. No distance.
Just kinship. The look of one leashed prince to another.
“Seems the Summer Sword is about to become active.”
“Stay.” Orion shakes the back of my neck, forcing my eyes to his. “You hear me? You stay with us.”
I can’t. But I also can’t tell him that. Can’t make my tongue form the words that would break something in his face.
“What the fuck does that mean?” Ash is on her feet, pacing, thorns flickering under her skin like her body wants to fight something. “Can’t I…I’m Wild Court, there has to be—”
“You can’t.” Kieran’s voice is gentler than I’ve ever heard it. “The binding predates the courts. It answers only to her.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“That’s Fae magic. Same thing.”
The pull intensifies. I’m starting to fade at the edges, my body becoming less solid, less here.
“Oh look. A light show.”
Badb walks up like she’s arriving at a party she’s already bored of. There’s blood on her fingernails. Fingernails that rest on my shoulder. They dig into my flesh, piercing skin, and I jerk at the sudden sharp pain.
But it grounds me. Anchors me to my body in a way Orion’s warmth couldn’t quite manage.
“What did you do?” I grind out.
“Pain is an excellent tether.” She sounds almost bored. “Now.” Her claws dig deeper. “Say your goodbyes. You have perhaps thirty seconds before the summons tears you apart trying to deliver you.”
“Don’t—” Orion starts.
“Twenty-five seconds.”
Orion’s hand moves from my neck to my face. He grips my jaw, forces me to look at him.
“We will come for you.”
“You shouldn’t—”
“Wasn’t asking permission.” His amber eyes burn. “You are not alone in this anymore, Finn. You hear me? You spent thirty years thinking you had to survive her by yourself. That’s done. That’s over.”
“Orion—”
“We’re coming for you.”
He releases me. Steps back.
Kieran takes his place. His hand lands on my shoulder, the one Badb isn’t currently shredding, and his ice-blue eyes hold mine.
“You are far stronger than you will ever give yourself credit for.” The words are precise.
Deliberate. The kind of thing Kieran doesn’t say unless he means it down to his bones.
“I have watched you survive her for three decades. I have watched you maintain your soul when she tried to consume it. Do not doubt yourself now.”
“I—”
“He’s right.” Orion cuts in, because he can’t help himself. “Smart. Nice ass. The whole package.”
Badb makes a gagging sound.
“Fifteen seconds,” she announces.
Ash drops to her knees in front of me.
Her hands frame my face, cool against my fever-hot skin, forcing my eyes to hers.
“Hey.” Her voice cuts through the static, through the pull, through everything. “Look at me. Look at me, Finnian.”
I look.
Green eyes. Hazel going forest.
“Don’t let her get under your skin,” Ash says. “You are smarter than her. You have always been smarter than her. She knows it, too, that’s why she has to use magic to keep you. Because she could never keep you any other way.”
“Ash—”
“You’re coming back.” Not a question. Not a hope. A command. “You’re coming back to us, Finnian. That’s not negotiable.”
“I don’t know if I—”
“Say it.”
The summons burns. My chest is on fire. Badb’s claws are the only thing keeping me corporeal.
But Ash’s hands on my face are steady. Her eyes are steady. And I—
“I’m coming back.”
“Damn right you are.”
She kisses me.
Not gentle. Not tentative. She kisses me like she’s trying to leave a mark, like she’s branding me with something stronger than Amarantha’s claim. Her mouth is warm and fierce and tastes like the forest, like wild magic, like everything I’ve spent centuries pretending I didn’t want.
I kiss her back. Try to tell her with my mouth what the binding won’t let me say out loud.
She kisses me like she heard every word.
When she pulls away, her forehead rests against mine.
“Come back to us,” she whispers.
“Five seconds,” Badb says, and rips her claws from my shoulder.
The summons takes me.
I hit crystal floor on my knees. The impact sends pain shooting up my thighs. Good. Pain is clarity.
The Seelie Court bleeds into existence around me. Gold light, summer flowers, the particular perfume of a place that’s never known winter or honesty. My shoulder is bleeding freely. Badb’s claw marks are already bruising.
My lips still taste like Ash.
I file that away. Bury it deep. Amarantha can smell emotions, can taste lies, can read the surface of my thoughts if I let her.
She won’t find this. She won’t find them.
“Morning, cousin.”
Her voice slides over me like honey laced with arsenic. I’ve heard it in my nightmares since I was eleven. I’ll hear it until I die.
I lift my head. Arrange my face into something neutral. Not defiant. Defiance is a luxury. Not submissive. She’d smell the lie. Just...present. The Summer Sword, reporting for duty.
I’ve had a lot of practice.
She’s draped across her throne like a cat in a sunbeam. Silk chiffon flows over her body, pale pink that matches the roses woven through her platinum hair. Her bare feet are tucked beneath her. Casual. Relaxed.
Like she hasn’t just ripped me across realms against my will.
But it’s not Amarantha that makes me freeze.
It’s the human kneeling beside her throne.
Davis.
Naked. Collared. A golden leash running from his throat to Amarantha’s hand. She’s given him a velvet cushion. Like a favored pet.
His eyes are clear. Alert. Not spelled.
He looks at me with something that might be hatred. Might be jealousy.
And I realize, with the particular clarity that comes from years of watching monsters: he’s not here against his will.
He’s home.
The man who spent years trying to cage Ash, who saw love as ownership and control as devotion, he finally found a queen who speaks his language.
I catalog him the way I catalog all threats. Weaknesses: obvious. Leverage: limited. Usefulness: to be determined.
Then I focus on the more immediate problem.
“Amarantha.”
“Tsk-tsk.” She rises slowly, the silk flowing around her like water. Her hair is straight today, falling past her waist, and her eyes hold excitement. I’ve learned to recognize it over the years of surviving her.
That’s never good.
“I prefer Queen,” she says, descending the dais toward me.
Davis’s eyes track her movement with naked hunger. His hands clench on his thighs. He doesn’t like her walking toward me.
Interesting.
“Queen Amarantha,” I correct, keeping my voice neutral.
“It’ll do.” She stops in front of me, close enough that her silk brushes my knees. “For now.”
She begins to circle.
I track her by sound when she’s behind me, so I know always know where she is. The goal is to never let her surprise you. those lessons are written in scar tissue.
“Someone marked you.” Her fingers press into Badb’s claw wounds. I don’t flinch. “How...territorial.”
“The journey was difficult.”
“Was it?” She completes her orbit, each step deliberate, her silk brushing my skin. She stops in front of me again. “You smell like wild magic, cousin. Like earth and thorns and something distinctly... feral.”
I keep my face blank. My thoughts blank. The taste of Ash buried so deep even I can barely find it.
“You’ve been with her.” Amarantha’s fingers find my chin, tilting my head up until I’m forced to meet her eyes. “The Wild Court heir. My prize that you helped steal from me.”
“I’ve been in the borderlands.”
“Don’t.” Her grip tightens. “Don’t insult us both with lies you know I can smell.”
No Fae can lie. She knows this.
“You summoned me, my queen. I assume not for conversation about my travel arrangements.”
Something flickers across her face. Frustration, maybe. The familiar irritation of a cat whose mouse won’t play properly.
“You’re trembling.” Her finger traces my jaw. “You always tremble when I touch you.”
“My queen.”
“Is that fear?” She tilts her head, genuinely curious. “Or something else?”
I don’t answer. Can’t answer.
And the truth? Her touch makes my skin want to crawl off my bones. That I’m swallowing bile right now, that I would let Badb’s claws shred me to ribbons if it meant never feeling Amarantha’s hands on me again.
So I stay silent. And I don’t vomit. And I count the seconds until she stops touching me.
“I remember when you were a boy.” She circles behind me again. I feel her breath on my neck, her hand playing with my hair. “So bright. So eager to please. You used to bring me flowers from the garden.”
“I was eleven.”