Chapter Thirty-Five
I kick the service door open with all my power, flimsy lock shattering, and it slams on its hinges into the wall.
Maxian leans an arm on the mantel, staring into the darkened firebox, his back to me.
Lila pours water from a pitcher, unharmed.
For a moment, I want to sink to my knees in relief, cry, and hold her as I never could hold Jeremee that one last time.
Yet the muscles in her neck strain. She is fighting Reign magic; the king is controlling her. Her arm shakes. Water overflows the cup, spilling onto the floor. How many hours has she held this position? How long has he been torturing her? And where have I been? Soaking in a bath.
“Your Magnificence,” I grit out.
My mouth clamps shut against my will. The shuttering magic tumbles through my jaw, piles stones behind my teeth; I can taste the minerals. As his genius pushes inward, it forms rocky walls around mine, a moth trapped in a well once more.
The door behind me slams shut.
We are trapped, the three of us now, in this. But if that’s where I need to be to have Lila’s back, then I will stay until we can both leave.
The king turns, something clasped in his large hands.
A small red boot.
My stomach plummets, my legs almost giving out. When I drag my eyes up his heaving chest, to his distorted, beautiful face, I find red-rimmed eyes. Red and violet and sorrowful and wild.
“Why?” he croaks.
Pebbles grind down my throat. A fire crackles to life in the hearth. The ground rumbles, and water splatters to the carpet.
“Why would you dig up my brother like this?”
My heart twists. Shame burns me as tears pour down Maxian’s face. He lowers his head, presses the boot to his chest, as if clutching an exposed heart and willing the organ back inside him.
But he has said nothing of his heritage.
Movement catches my eye. Lila trembles, an endless stream of water cascading from the pitcher into the overflowing cup in her purpling hand.
He must be lacing the water from another source, for it keeps flowing.
Pain etches across her features as her raw hand shrivels, rivulets soaking the carpet at her feet.
He hands back my voice.
“Please,” I manage, throat tight.
“Please what?” he spits.
A low whimper escapes my friend. Her hand has cracked, bleeding, the water tinged pink, her skin leaching color. Wherever he laces the water from, it must be an icy stream in the north.
He is killing her hand. He is killing her.
“Please spare her,” I rasp. “She does not deserve this.”
Something punches my stomach. Stars blot my vision. I grapple on the carpet, wheezing for breath that doesn’t come. My vision wavers and I cough blood.
“I decide what she deserves,” the king says, approaching.
“Please.” I cough again.
The king crouches before me, gripping my chin, a painful, twisted echo of another time.
“Look at me when I’m speaking.”
Oh, how I believed myself a thing with claws just because my thoughts had teeth. But they mean nothing now, as my friend moans in pain and the king holds my face in his killing hands.
Still, I say, “What can I do to—”
“Tell me,” he snarls. “Tell me what you know.”
But my mind spins, my stomach throbbing with pain. I do not care, at this moment, what the greater game is. I only care that my friend lets out a closed-mouth cry.
“The tapestry,” I gasp. “Your brother.”
“What else?”
My genius spasms, the creature surrounded by a stony facade. But there is something else in the facade, something I discovered that day in the training hall, when our magics collided, something so small, only a moth could fit into it. A crack.
“Avery,” he seethes, shaking me until my teeth rattle. “What. Else?”
Does he know that we know?
No, Lila would be dead, then, favorite or not.
“I don’t know.” My voice cracks with fear, something in me giving way. I almost wet myself.
“You must understand,” he whispers, pressing his forehead to mine.
Blackness edges out his beautiful irises.
Has he taken more of that black substance?
“You have to understand the position I’m in.
I must do this. To keep the kingdom safe.
It’s the only way to keep the kingdom safe. You must tell me. Who are my parents?”
My genius flies in erratic circles, its legs brushing against the walls of that stony closet, sensing the vibrations beneath the surface: wrath and shame and disgust and fear and sorrow.
These emotions are not mine, I realize with a shock. As if in entering my mind, the king left the door to his propped open, a crack small enough only for faerie genius.
“The late King Gregor the Great and Queen Elise—”
“You’re lying.” He twitches, pulling his face from me though we still kneel, knee to knee.
Lila whines in pain.
“I am not a killer like my father. But you force me to do this,” he says.
“You force me to keep her here, like this, for days on end until there is nothing left but a shriveled, blue shell of a creature. Then I will send her to the mines with four limbs of debt and special instructions—stamped with the royal crest—for the halflings to keep her alive at all costs. As the ash fills her lungs, as the dark and cold weaken her body, as her hands and arms tingle with the pain of a pick against rock over and over and over, even in her sleep, she will live. She will keep living for hundreds of years more and she will know it was you who sent her there. All because you wouldn’t tell me who my parents are. ”
“I don’t know who they are,” I cry.
Maxian pulls back, cocking his head. He tsks, then looks at me. “You aren’t lying this time. Just like Lila.”
Because I don’t truly know, not really. I don’t know the name of the faerie who birthed him.
I sob, my stomach splitting with pain. “Please.”
“Did I say I was done?” He pinches my chin, and I open my eyes. “There you are, golden faerie.”
Yet his eyes fade in and out of focus. He is fighting to keep his attention split, just like me—between the magical plane and the earthly one.
I think of the niche in Lila’s wall, the slow carving out of the thickest stones in the palace.
I don’t need to take down the mountain before me.
I just need to put pressure in the right place.
“Stop that,” he spits. “What are you doing?”
It started without warning. My genius wedges into the crevice in his magic, picks up a speck of rock, a shaving of mineral, then drops it to the floor below.
It does this over and over, scraping away dustings of the rock, removing it on the most minuscule level, deepening the crack ever so slightly.
It has become automatic, like breathing, and I do not give it all my concentration to remain undetected.
In the dark well, I give my genius what it wants: permission.
Do it, I think. Do what you must.
Because what can a moth do to a mountain? It can erode it.
He shakes his head, coming back to me once more. “You haven’t heard the most important part.”
“What’s the most important part?” I gasp, giving my genius more time to work.
“Do you know which stable the silver mare is kept in? Yes, that one. From the coronation. You see, the mare may be Illusion’s, but the babe is mine. So, in a way, mother and child are both mine. Now, where is the silver mare kept?”
“Reign?”
“Come on now, you’re cleverer than this.
” He pulls me forward by my face, and I fall off balance, into his arms. Maxian tucks me in close, rearranges our bodies so that I sit on his lap like a child.
Cradling my head, my cheek pressed to his chest, he leans down, whispers in my ear.
“The silver mare is in a very special stable to me. Yes, it’s an Illusion stable, but do you know why it’s special? ”
He yanks on my hair, tilting my head up. My throat dries. “Why is it special?”
Now he smiles. “Because it’s Benji’s stable.”
My mind goes blank.
The room pitches.
He pets my hair. “Yes, my golden faerie, yes. You understand now. You were a gift from Illusion, but I’ve decided something today. Nothing could ever convince me to marry Kassandra Morella, even if she is extremely powerful. Even if it means saving this kingdom. But I will never return you.”
“What…” I try to focus, keeping the words even. “What are your plans for us?”
“Stop digging,” the king hisses, his eyes dilating.
My genius scrapes and scrapes, dust billowing around it. But it is not enough; erosion takes years and I only have a few minutes, and the magical organ inside me is spasming, the walls around it trembling, screams filling my ears.
My attention snaps back to the library, to the shaking fae.
I have a hand around his throat, a bruising grip, and his eyes are glassy.
His arms have fallen limp at his sides, the effort too much to hold me anymore.
We are both split between our inner and outer battle, only he must also keep Lila in place and lace the endless stream of icy water into the pitcher.
Even if the king is the most powerful fae in the land, it may not matter, for his mind is more splintered than mine in this moment.
The room around us quakes, and books slide off the shelves. His magic retreats from my limbs, focusing instead on our battling geniuses in the back of my mind.
I have control over my physical body once more.
But it will have to be quick, lest he realizes.
Taking a breath, I slip from his lap. The king cocks his head, eyes flashing black to violet, brows furrowing, as if checking each environment to find the source of change.
I sprint to Lila, whose lips turn blue as she stands in a puddle, feet bare.
Bare feet? Why are they—
A high-pitched whine escapes her gritted teeth. I try to pry her hand from the pitcher, but it remains frozen solid as rock under his Reign magic. Instead, I grip the pitcher, an ice block.
“I’m so sorry for this,” I whisper, and yank.