41. Keira
I shiver uncontrollably. The chill of the night seeped into my bones while I was strung up on the palace wall, and every inch of my frozen skin burns from the heat of the many fireplaces warming the throne room. The dual sensation is agony.
My heart hammers violently as I constantly scan the calm that has settled over the room, looking for threats or some clarification on why our three cages have been brought here, and failing to find any.
Titania lounges in the throne that does not belong to her, tapping her long black nails on the armrest and wearing a feline grin.
Torin waits beside her and a line of her most trusted guards flank her on either side.
They are waiting for something.
The cockiness on the High Chancellor’s face and the fact I am here as an audience tells me it will be to my detriment. Gods, I hope she hasn’t gotten her hands on Aldrin.
Beside me, Sasha can hardly keep her eyes open, and Drake seems to be in a meditative pose, muttering to himself.
Panic threatens to overwhelm me, tightening my throat and sending my mind into a spiral.
I need to be alert. Ready to react to whatever atrocity they throw at me.
I focus on my panted breaths, on each inhale and exhale until they slow alongside my heart rate.
Calm in the face of havoc will be my weapon here.
It evaporates the moment I realize we have been betrayed.
Thick clouds of darkness swirl within the center of the room, and I become painfully aware for the first time of how dim this space has become.
Of who their new allies must be for them to allow such a thing.
The shadows deepen to the inkiness of an abyss, stretching from the ground almost to the high ceiling, blocking out the guards on the other side.
I can just make out Titania’s self-satisfied grin deepening through the smoky tendrils that whip out from it.
Torin stalks forward eagerly. “Well, well, well. It looks like King Leonardo has seen out his side of the bargain.”
I thrust myself forward, gripping the golden bars of my cage, forgetting the way the contact will burn until I tear my hands away just as quickly.“What bargain?” I yell, my voice shaking. “ What bargain? ”
The world spins around me. King Leonardo, the Starlight Court—they were meant to be our allies. If they have betrayed Aldrin, I have no doubt the Assassins of Belladonna have as well. A fear like I have never felt before pumps ice through my veins.
Torin’s blue eyes light up when they fall on me.
He closes the distance between us. “A bargain where he uses his agents to pluck Aldrin and his closest supporters out of the battle and bring them to our feet, poisoned and dying. Tonight, you are going to watch your mate die for the last time. Don’t worry, Queen of Nothing , we will keep you alive as a symbol.
Maybe we will sell you off as a whore to the highest bidder. ”
My vision fades in and out as a vise clenches tightly around my heart.
“Why would Leonardo do that?” I whisper.
“Why would a foreign king get involved?” Sending us discreet resources was one thing, but personally stepping into the battle to betray the king with the elected support of his people is another.
“Maybe he couldn’t get what he wanted from Aldrin. The terms of his bargain are steep and expensive. Something you can pay off with your whoring for making them necessary.” Torin shrugs, then walks back to his mother’s side.
The entire room turns pitch black, punctured with the sound of many landing boots and falling bodies. When the darkness rolls away, the empty space before the throne is filled with Starlight warriors.
In their center lie the people dearest to my heart.
My eyes fly to Aldrin, collapsed on the floor.
His normally tanned skin is deathly pale, with black streaks of poison crawling across it in jagged, branching lines, slowly growing.
They even mark the whites of his eyes. Blood trickles out of his mouth as he attempts to drag himself across the ground toward Titania, his fingers digging into the grout between the tiles, but he is too weak to make much progress.
Silent tears pour down my face, but I am too stunned to move.
I can’t even breathe.
My heart is breaking.
Around Aldrin are our closest friends, all dying from the toxins circulating in their blood.
Cyprien keeps trying to pull himself up on his hands and knees but collapses each time.
Silvan and Jasper clasp hands, one coughing up blood while the other fumbles and fails to grasp the hilt of a dagger strapped to his lover.
Hawthorne and Lilly don’t even move. Klara stares at her husband with unfocused eyes, an arm outreached toward him, and Drake goes absolutely wild within his cage.
I can’t drag my eyes away from Aldrin.
This can’t be how it ends for us.
I will not exist in a world where he does not live, but I cannot see a way out of this. I can’t allow the villain to win in my story, though, even if I have to give everything to stop her. Even if I die expending myself.
Fury rises within me, boiling my blood, tightening my muscles for a fight, awakening the feral beast that is my magic.
They cannot continue to abuse people without consequences. To take and take, bleeding dry all the good in the world. People like them do not deserve to live, and I will be their judge and executioner.
This fucking cage will not hold me back.
I roar with frustration as I grip the bars, thrusting my flaring magic into them. I scream with agony that tears through my body and rips my heart into pieces. The sound is animalistic.
I have never felt more feral in my life.
I want to tear the world apart with teeth and claws. I want to burn it all to the ground.
My blood races through me, burning me from the inside out and turning to pure fire.
Aldrin stares simmering fury at Titania, but freezes his slow crawl toward her when he hears me. He turns, horror dawning on his face as our eyes lock. At the fact that I will witness his downfall. He tries to speak, but nothing comes out.
My magic flares brighter at the way his eyes widen, then glaze over.
It is a monstrosity I can no longer control.
Raw power gushes from my fingertips. There is so much filling up my cage that it rushes around me in bright orange torrents.
I generate more as the cage greedily drinks it up, every bar of its golden structure illuminated.
Leonardo steps out of that crowd of soldiers, Belladonna and Valentine flanking him. I could murder them all for betraying us.
The Starlight King’s dark eyebrows are slashed down over his face and his lips are pressed into a thin line. “You made a promise that there wouldn’t be an audience.” He throws an arm out to indicate myself, Drake and Sasha.
“An audience? To what? Your betrayal?” Titania laughs with glee. “That was never a part of the bargain, and I just couldn’t help myself. I do love a good show, and what is better than making my prisoners watch their loved ones die?”
The Starlight King has enough conscience to cringe. “This is no betrayal. As far as I see it, this is one leader helping another catch a fugitive. You did say the election was falsified, the civil unrest caused by these fae.”
Titania rolls her eyes. “Yes, yes, yes. All that and more.”
Leonardo glances down at Aldrin with something like disgust on his face, curling his lips to reveal fangs, then back to Titania, the expression not changing.
“You view the attack of the Assassins of Belladonna and Nightmares at your… ball as an insult from my court, and I have assured you that they were never under my rule. That the entire league defected from the Starlight Court. But I would like you to take this offering of your enemies as a royal apology and a gesture of my goodwill. Let us clean the slate between us for an ongoing alliance.”
An ongoing alliance.
He promised the same damned thing to Aldrin.
My anger flares to unknown heights, making me shake with adrenaline.
Sizzling smoke rises from where my hands grip the golden bars, but I don’t know if it is my flesh that burns or the enchanted metal.
I can hardly see through the waves of my magic that thrash around me, distorting the air like steam, but it almost appears like the bars are warped.
The entire world could end right now, this realm could combust, and I wouldn’t care so long as I got to hold Aldrin one last time. So long as I could save him.
I would give it all up for that chance.
“Like this bargain doesn’t benefit you!” Titania’s aggravated voice reaches me, seeming disembodied because I cannot drag my gaze away from Aldrin.
“What about the term where the Spring Court can never wage war on the Starlight Court in my lifetime? Or shall we speak of the hefty trade agreement with both Spring crops and human goods that practically robs me blind?”
“Not as much as it benefits you.” Leonardo is cool and collected.
“Aldrin and his followers will die, and your hands will be clean. I know how much you love scapegoats. The bargain was to ensure you wouldn’t come after my court to appease your people.
I know how you turn against the fae you do business with. Why would politics be any different?”
Aldrin’s hands shake as frothy blood spills from his lips.
Those eyes that I fell in love with are no longer amber, but almost completely black, whites and irises both.
He keeps trying to communicate something to me, expression pleading, but he cannot form words.
My heart shatters anew and tears sting my eyes.
“You disappoint me, my dear Leonardo,” Titania chirps. “You were meant to bring me the false king already dead. It was a clause in the bargain. I don’t want to take any chances.”
She is too much of a coward to finish the job herself.
The king shrugs. “He is on his way to death.”