Chapter Twenty-One #2
What the planes is he saying?
Dominik misunderstands. Maxian seeks change, even if he fears it, or fears the talk of males like Dominik. The king needs someone strong by his side, someone like Kassandra.
“What do you mean?”
“A wife does not win, even if she could,” Dominik grits out. “And never in public.”
Across from us, Maxian leans forward in his chair, gripping its armrest. He stares at us, adjusting himself. My fear curdles to disgust. Does he interpret my breathing as lust?
Is it scared or turned on? Dominik asked all those weeks ago. Perhaps to these fae males, they are one and the same.
Yet the plane shimmers between us. Hardly noticeable at first but like a heat wave, once level with the magic, I can see it swirling in the air.
Gathering what little awareness I have left, I reach out to the plane and feel Dominik’s power not just surrounding us but extending outward like a spider weaving his web.
An Illusion.
Dominik has shrouded us in an Illusion.
Can Maxian not smell Dominik’s magic? Unless the fae has layered another Illusion on top of the primary. This, I realize, is his grand gesture. This is why he siphoned the plane. And I spent the night feeding into his anger, willing him to store only more power.
“Do you understand now, little faerie?” he whispers. “They cannot see you. Well, not the real you.”
Maxian glances away, clearing his throat. My thumb rubs against the golden moth ring, but I can’t lace away and leave Lila alone. The three figures move around the room undisturbed, like actors in a play.
“I understand,” I breathe. “I promise.”
“Promise what?”
“That I will make her docile.” The words are like ash in my mouth, but I have no intention of seeing them through.
Dominik tsks. “Remember, this is what happens when you try to win.”
His incisors pierce the crook of my neck, breaking the flesh. Agony rips through me. Crying out, I thrash, but more flesh tears.
“Help!” I shriek through the pain. “Help, please! Help me—”
The king’s attention flicks toward us, then back at the cards.
Dominik clamps down harder, like a wolf. Blood gushes from my neck as another wave of pain erupts. I scream and scream. He rips out his teeth.
“Do you need a reminder?”
“No, please—”
His teeth sink into me once more, lower, severing tendons, and I cry out again, twisting. Fire rips up my neck and down my arm. Darkness blots my vision.
I think of my father.
I slam my head back into Dominik’s nose.
He swears, his magic loosening its hold.
I fight harder, scratching nails against real flesh raking them down phantom hands, elbowing him wherever I can, stomping on his feet.
The grip falls away. I collapse to the ground, clutching my neck.
Blood spurts onto the carpet. So much blood, it makes my head swim. How deep did he bite?
The world blurs.
“Help,” I moan. “Please—somebody.”
The king slowly turns his head, brows furrowed, cards still in hand, eyes unfocused.
“Is everything okay?” he asks Dominik in the chair.
“No!” I shout.
Yet an echo of my voice replies, a hollow imitation. “We’re wonderful, Your Magnificence.”
“No!” I cry again.
Dominik crashes into me. I twist, swinging a left hook at his temple with all my weight behind it.
His head snaps back, eyes bloodshot. Body bleeding beneath the fae, the only weapon I have left is magic that is too powerful for a faerie.
That I should always hide and that has never protected my loved ones before. All it has ever done is rot.
So I let it rot.
“What are you doing?” Dominik rears back, disgusted.
I release my genius and it contacts the plane, oozing stink like a decaying corpse. My anger and hatred and grief permeate the air around us. Heat erupts in my palms, singeing the carpet, but no flame comes.
“Stop that!” The slap comes hard and fast.
The Illusion flares, covering the smell. Cheek against the carpet, I stare up at the king, only feet away. He tilts his head, cheeks flushed and hair tousled. His gaze cuts between the carpet and the chair, his grip on the cards tightening.
“Please,” I beg. “Please.”
“What’s that?” Maxian demands.
Dominik pauses, still pinning me down, my neck gushing blood and the world spinning.
His pale chest heaves, clavicles poking out from his undone shirt, hands and mouth red.
His thighs bracket my torso, as if he is about to offer himself to my mouth.
His lip forms a tight, flat line, sweat rolling down his temples as his Illusion shimmers in the plane all around us, covering the entire room.
“What’s what, my king?” Lila asks, still turned from us.
“There’s something strange about the plane,” Eli observes, sitting up.
“Dom, are you seeing this?” Maxian asks the empty chair.
“Yes, quite strange,” Dominik answers—but it’s too late. He used the wrong voice, straight from his own mouth, from on top of me, and not the Illusion of us cuddling.
The king’s eyes cut to us on the carpet, and he squints.
I buck, throwing Dominik off center. The room flickers in and out.
“You’ll regret this,” he snaps, eyes wild.
“I regret everything,” I say. Then in a low and deep voice, I demand, “Maxian.”
The plane quakes.
“An Illusion,” Death says. “There’s an Illusion in the plane.”
King Maxian leaps to his feet, slapping down the cards.
“What did you do?” the king bellows, glasses rattling, lights winking. Dominik only coughs, a failed attempt at clearing his throat. Maxian tears across the room, reaching through the Illusion to grab him by the tunic and haul him up. “What did you do?”
Dominik drops the Illusion. The concentrated energy dissolves into the plane, like sugar in water.
A gasp, a thunder of footfalls. Someone grasps my good shoulder, and I cry out, blackness threatening once more. Eli crouches before me, surveying the damage.
“He bit muscle,” he says.
The king shoves Dominik up against the wall, the stone cracking. “What is wrong with you?”
The Illusion fae spits, the coughs worsening. “What is wrong with you?”
“I said if you ever touched a lady like that again—”
“It’s just a faerie.” Dominik hacks up spittle. “Or are you getting confused? Don’t eat where you piss, Max—”
The king punches him in the stomach, and the fae drops to the ground and vomits.
“We need to stop the bleeding,” Eli tries, voice low and calm. “Please.”
I hiss, showing my own incisors, an immense disrespect, but I need to get these High Fae away from me. I hate them, I hate all of them, and I would rather die than—
I’m gazing at the white ceiling, the rug against my back. Before I can comprehend what’s happening, a warm hand clasps over my wound.
“Just a moment,” Eli says, his face coming into view. The fire in my neck and arm eases, cools.
“Lila.” Then he’s shifting me against another body, a toned arm supporting me.
“You’re okay,” Lila whispers, resting my head against her shoulder. I cry at the sound of her voice, cry harder when she dabs a napkin on my forehead and harder still when I realize that Lila is becoming my friend. She cradles me, and if I had the strength, I’d hug her back.
Eli leans over Dominik, who sputters for breath.
“Leave him,” Maxian grits out through a clenched jaw, pacing.
“I’ll take him back to Illusion,” the executioner offers, eyeing a wall sconce that rattles with the plane before crashing to the floor.
“Leave. Him.”
“Max,” Eli cuts in, grabbing Dominik’s face. “Max, something else is wrong. He’s not breathing.”
Eli yanks Dominik up from his hands and knees. The fae’s face is gray, lips an eerie blue. He wheezes for breath that won’t come.
Maxian stops. “I didn’t hit him that hard.”
Dominik falls onto his back, convulsing. Eli reaches forward, turning him on his side as the fae seizes, prying open his mouth.
“A reaction to overexerting his magic?” Death asks.
“No, this is physical,” the Head of Healing states, ripping open Dominik’s shirt. Hives break across his flesh from mouth to fingertips. “Something is killing him.”
“Poison?” the king asks.
“I’m not sure.” Eli runs his hands along Dominik’s spine. “I can’t cure it if I don’t know the source.”
The High Fae swing their attention to me, still in Lila’s arms. We both shiver as the executioner stalks toward us.
“What did you do?” he demands.
When Dominik inhales, it sounds like a broken whistle.
Eli forms a circle with one hand and presses it over the heir’s mouth, wind rushing past my ear.
“Airways are closing,” he says. “We need answers now.”
Reign magic seizes me.
“What happened to Dominik?” the king asks. My tongue prickles, yanks forward as if someone has reached into my mouth and grabbed it. A new kind of magic I have yet to experience, Reign magic of the mind. The sentence flies from my mouth.
“I don’t know,” I gasp.
“What poison did you use?” Maxian bellows, the room shaking. My tongue pinches, mouth forced open again.
“None.”
“Max, has this happened before?” Eli demands.
“What?”
“This reaction. Did it ever happen in childhood?”
“Once, I think. After we went peach picking in the outer farms and ate a basket together. But I don’t know how—”
“He doesn’t need an antidote. It’s not poison.” Eli flips Dominik onto his back. Death helps hold the fae down, and suddenly Eli is rubbing his hands together, static sparking between them. He presses a hand to Dominik’s thigh and jolts him.
Dominik gasps. Eli once again forms a circle with his fingers and frames the fae’s lips. Air pours down his throat, and his chest expands, his body going limp with relief.
“Adrenaline and air,” Eli says. “We need stinging nettle to reduce the reaction.” By the time he finishes his sentence, Maxian has laced stinging nettle leaves into his palm from the Healing garden. “Moisten them, please.”
A water glass flies across the room, landing in the king’s hand. He drops them in the water, handing it to Eli, who warms the liquid. The executioner sits Dominik up, and they serve him the tea. As he drinks, Eli pulses Healing magic across his skin. The hives reduce. The rash recedes.
Dominik lifts his head, his silver hair plastered to his clammy forehead. His gaze finds me, sprawled on the floor across from him.
“You,” he spits. “How did you know?”
“I—”
“No one knows of my reactions.”
“I d-didn’t,” I say, the words wrenching out of me from Maxian’s magic.
“There weren’t any peaches on the menu tonight,” the executioner says.
I think of Dominik’s hands, his mouth, the hives. As it dawns on me, the king voices my thoughts.
“Your body oil,” he says. “It smells of peach.”
My mouth dries out.
Peach, Kassandra said. For Dominik.
My body trembles as new meaning recasts her instructions. She wasn’t priming me for Dominik. She was using me to stop him, to end him so that she could be free and I could take the fall.
House of Illusion is ripping itself apart. And they’re using me to do it.