Chapter 47
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Apixie-like woman with long chestnut hair tiptoes carefully into the room.
When she reaches the throne, her heart-shaped mouth parts on an unsteady breath, and she curls her hands into fists.
She slides her shadow mask off her face and tucks it inside her bra, revealing her wide amber eyes.
They’re almost too big for her face, framed by impossibly thick lashes, and a chin dimple lends character to her otherwise soft features.
A long-sleeved caramel leather jacket with matching pants covers her ballerina figure, and jewels flash across her bare knuckles, just as they did on Luther's.
I might have thought her delicate if I hadn't guessed who she was from the way Ezra’s entire body had gone rigid when he’d seen her.
The Lord of the Tides. And his wife.
She’s as beautiful as I feared.
When she pivots and smiles at him, whatever petty jealousy had begun to take root becomes a raw sore. There’s history in that look. Grief. Affection. Regret.
“Light of my life,” she greets him in a melodic voice.
Ezra stands straight as an arrow and tilts his chin. “Flame of my heart.”
The nickname rings a bell.
The only way for us to be happy is for you to die, flame of my heart, he’d said in my dreams.
I wasn’t the flame. She was.
Yet she doesn’t walk toward him, and he doesn’t leave my side.
The two shadowy Fae that traveled through the mirror before her do not remove their masks. The man is unbelievably intimidating, draped in a dark uniform with a front zipper and hood. Shadows cling to him, softening the edges of his silhouette and making him seem larger than he is.
The woman next to him wears a similar uniform, paired with knee-high boots. A white-blonde braid spills from beneath her hood and over her shoulder. Though smaller than the man beside her, she carries the poise of a predator, one hand resting on the stock of the crossbow strapped across her back.
Together, they look less like Fae royals and more like an execution squad.
“Freckles?!” Devi’s voice caves in on me like a ton of bricks, jolting me back to reality. “Freckles, is that really you?”
Devi removes her mask, too, like it’ll allow her to see better.
I wave to her awkwardly. “Hi.”
She barrels across the throne room and whisks me into a bone-crushing hug before I can brace for impact. The bite of power rolling off her is ten times more potent than it was before she left for Faerie
“Are you okay?” She grabs my shoulders, then pats down my arms as if checking for missing limbs. Her gaze drops to my outfit, and she frowns.
My face immediately heats.
In all the chaos, I somehow forgot I'm still wearing sexy lingerie.
“Yes. We arrived last night, me and E—I mean Ezra,” I blurt out.
Devi freezes. A profound look of unease causes her dark freckles to bunch together, and her silver-flecked eyes flash with fear. “You and Ezra.”
Slowly, her eyes slide toward him.
Then back to me.
Then back to him again.
My cheeks burn as she leans in, sniffing me.
“You love him?” she finally shouts, horrified. “I leave you alone for what, two weeks, and you fall in love with Ezra fucking Lightbringer?”
I watch Willow’s reaction, but she doesn’t seem appalled by the news. If anything, her smile finally reaches her eyes, giving substance to the marriage of convenience backstory.
Devi zeroes in on my lover and lunges forward, ramming him into the closest pillar with one hand clenched around his throat. “You seduced my goddaughter? By Eros, I’ll crush your damn balls.”
Her hand flies downward as though she won’t wait long to make good on her threat, but I grip her wrist, my fire rising to the surface.
“Wait!”
Her eyes rove over the flames swirling under my dermis, and her arm goes limp at her side. “What happened to you, Freckles?”
I breathe through my teeth. “Let him go, and I’ll tell you.”
Somehow, I think I’m going to spend a lot of time preventing the man I love from getting attacked by enraged women.
Please, gods, tell me he and Devi didn’t sleep together. That would be almost as gross as finding out he’d been with my mother.
“Are you really the one who cursed him?” I ask with a hint of reproach.
I didn’t want to believe it when Ezra admitted as much.
Devi raises her index finger to Ezra’s face. “You deserved it, and more. Half-brother or not, I ought to have killed you instead, like you asked.”
Half-brother?
A sigh whistles out of my lungs. Of course, they're half-siblings.
Why wouldn't they be? At this point, I'd be more surprised if anyone in Faerie wasn't secretly related—or fucking.
But her revelation begs the question: what else did Devi hide from me?
She slaps his chest with both hands, then her jaw hangs agape. “And you love her, too? Oh, this is a mess.” She paces away from him, pinching the bridge of her nose. “A disturbing, disgusting mess.”
Willow clicks her tongue. “We can discuss this after we kill Ethan, Devi.”
“That wasn’t the deal,” the Shadow King says. “We came to rescue Lori.”
His voice is so gravely and deep that my stomach flip-flops, but Willow laughs openly at him.
“Don’t be daft, Damian. This is how the story ends,” she chimes.
“We’re here to rescue Lori and take Ethan to justice,” the Shadow Queen interjects. “That’s what we agreed on.”
“I am justice, Nell,” Willow chimes. “And you’d be wise to remember that.”
A memory flashes through my mind.
The conversation happened a lifetime ago, yet Mabel’s words are still etched into my brain. But you must tell Damian Sombra that Morrigan bore a child. He must protect her at all costs. She is the sole key to Armand’s cursed treasure.
Just as I’m about to mention it—at least mention that I have a message for him, and that, as insane as it sounds, I might be carrying a secret capable of changing the worlds—a loud throat-clearing sound echoes across the marble.
“Well, I didn’t expect to host a family reunion this early in the morning. Do I sense dissension among the ranks?” Ethan says.
The room falls silent, and I look up.
Ethan and Iris stand on the mezzanine overlooking the throne room, framed by the first pale rays of dawn spilling through the skylight above.
“By Thanatos, I’m going to tear your head off your neck,” Elio growls.
Somehow, he finds the strength to stand. The skull drawn over his chest writhes as he staggers forward.
A pair of black wings spreads behind Devi’s back, and I gawk. I had no idea she could fly, but the expression on her face is worse.
My Faerie godmother bares her teeth through a wry laugh. “There’s nowhere else to run now. We’ve come home to you, Daddy.”