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Sebastian betrayed me for the crown, and now he has what he wanted, while I have become that which I despised for so long. A faerie. An immortal.
I’m not sleeping next to Sebastian; I’m running from him.
I want to go back to that lonely, tiring existence. I didn’t have many people who cared about me, but at least no one was pretending to care. At least I got to believe that the little I had was real.
“The bond?” Misha shakes his head. “You can learn to mute what you’re receiving from him, but it will still be there when you let your guard down.” I need you I need you I need you I need you.
“He knows you’re tuned in to him,” Misha says. “He feels it, and he’s trying to communicate.” I love you I love you I love you I love you.
I take a seat on the ground and look up at the stars. They’re not very bright tonight, but the sight still soothes me. I love the night. The sound of the frogs singing, the owls calling in the distance. It reminds me of a simpler time. When I didn’t know what it was like to have my sister depend on me, when I still wished on stars and had a mother to tell me fairy tales at bedtime.
Everything’s different. Now I know what it’s like to take a life and to lose my own. I know what it’s like to plunge a blade into the heart of a king and feel no remorse. I know what it’s like to die and be brought back through the excruciating magic of a sacred faerie potion. I know what it’s like to love so deeply and have that love used against me.
I need to be entangled with another Faerie court like I need a hole in the head.
“Sebastian may have taken the crown from Abriella, but Abriella still possesses its powers.”
None of us asks for the burdens we bear, but that doesn’t make the way we handle them any less significant.”
I’m so sick of being used so that these spoiled males and their twisted courts can get the power they crave.
I am very, very old, and I recognize a good soul when I meet one, and good souls are never alone for long.”
no matter how much I try to convince myself he’s no better than his evil uncle, my heart refuses to believe it.
“But you did. You took the potion, and in doing so, you salvaged one beautiful thing in a world full of ugliness. I, for one, will never be sorry for that.”
This isn’t just a kiss. It’s all the words we haven’t said written with our mouths, with our bodies. It’s unbridled anger and hope and fear and lust—all woven together and electrified. There’s no loneliness here. No regrets. Just the taste of him, like rich red wine,
“I don’t consider you a toy, Princess, but if you’d like to play, all you have to do is ask.”
I should pull away, but the contact feels so nice. I just want one moment to pretend that life doesn’t have to be as lonely as it has been, that my future isn’t one endless stretch of purposeless days before me. Just for this moment.
“If love and devotion were enough to heal these children and this court, they’d have the savior they need in you.”
we’re wise. For generations, the people of these parts have understood that leading is best left to the females.”
She’s bonded to him, yet you look at her like she is the stars and the moon. Like she’s rain at the end of a long summer drought. You look at her the way all the young females in Staraelia dreamed you might one day look upon them.”
“Next time you straddle me,” he murmurs, “wake up first. I want all of you, not just some dark and twisted secret corner of your mind.”
When his hand is gone, I long for it to return.
“You can trust me, you know. I realize my word doesn’t mean much to you, but it’s still true.”
“but they don’t understand that those of us who love the night revel in it because of how clearly it allows us to find even the smallest points of light. Whereas they deny that darkness exists, even while the sun they worship throws shadows in every corner.”
“I like your mind,” he says. “It’s so sweet and charming, and sometimes . . . deliciously devious.”
“I don’t want to talk about it tonight. I just want to dance with the prettiest girl at the party.”
When you came into my life, you were a bright star in an endlessly dark night. I needed to see there was still something worth hoping for.
The new day brings more sun, but my mood is as dark as a moonless night.
“I’m haunted by your taste.
want you so much, Abriella. More than I ever thought was possible. More than I should admit. But as long as you’re bonded to him, you’ll never be completely mine.”
“And I am just as selfish as the males who loved Queen Gloriana. I don’t want pieces of you. I want all of you, and I won’t share.”
I know it with every breath I take.”
sleeping with nothing but a bed of pine needles beneath us and a blanket of stars overhead.”
“I will be by your side,” he says, cupping my face in one big hand, “as long as you’ll let me. Wherever you are.”
“But I’m grateful . . . to be alone. Without him. Where I can pretend you’re mine.”
“How can you be here with me when I’ve done nothing to deserve you?”
“I don’t think love is about what we deserve. It’s an opening of our hearts, not a judgment we make. But Finnian, if I were judging you, I would find you completely deserving of this . . . and more.
you told me that I made you feel as safe as a starry night sky.”
Until you looked me in the eye and asked me to dance with you. Nothing’s been the same since. I hope it’s never the same again.”
“I know that’s not who you really are. I think I knew it the first time I saw you. You’re no princess. You’re my queen.”
I’m kicking toward the surface all over again, but instead of needing air, I need him.
“I more than don’t like it, Abriella. I didn’t like that he kissed you in the dining room. I don’t like the way he touches you any chance he gets. But watching you spend your life at his side is different. It will destroy me, and that has nothing to do with the fucking throne.”
I am your tethered, and you are my queen. I will do whatever I need to do to protect you. To serve you. But I can’t be your lover while you go on to make a life with him. I can’t take these pieces of you when I know he will have your bond until the day you die.”
“Loving you, feeling the gift of your love—it’s the best thing that ever happened to me. Regretting that just because you won’t be mine anymore would be . . . That would be like regretting a glimpse of the stars before being plunged into eternal darkness.”
“Then don’t ask me to love someone else the way I love you. And don’t you dare ask me to forget you.”
“I’d choose to love you even if I’d known what was coming. I’d choose to love you through the pain of knowing I can’t have you. I will choose to love you still tomorrow. I could sooner choose to stop breathing than stop loving you.”
“In a different world, in a different life, we’d be together,” I whisper. “No kingdoms to rule, no people to save, just you and me and a simple life loving each other.” “But we’re in this world. In this life.” He presses a kiss to the top of my head, and it feels like goodbye. “So I’ll have to save that for my dreams.”
This is how it feels to sacrifice your heart for something bigger. It feels like abandoning it, locking it away in an attic, where you hope it might be safe but where it’s disconnected from your life.
“There’s nothing whole about a kingdom when half of it was destroyed for greed and power,”
a female formed of shadow in this room full of light. I smile and saunter slowly toward another, swinging my hips to the silent beat of my vengeance.
