The Unseelie King (Maze of Shadows #4)

by Kathryn Ann Kingsley

“Through all our madness, through all our disagreements…you always held my heart.”

“You are my roots, my love. Without you, I fear I will blow away in the wind like the seeds of flowers. I—I do not know what to do without you at my side.”

The few times he lifted his head to look at them through the hair that hung in his face, their faces were etched with wary nervousness. They were afraid of him.

“Enough. I have had enough.” Abigail stretched out her hand and summoned her deadly flowers. The Gle’Golun burst from the ground around them in a ring, forcing Puck to stagger backward, lest he get tangled up in the vines. The soldiers shouted and fled in the opposite direction, but not before one of them lost a spear to the tangling vines.

“Why not leave me to rot? You are the Unseelie Queen. Without me…the throne is yours. Surely you’ve put that together.” His smile turned faint but lingered. “I do not want the throne. I did not ask for it.” “Yet here you are.”

Leaving him here would break her heart. Freeing him would break the world.

“I shall not stay here forever.” His smile widened just a little. “We have eternity, you and I. This is but a moment. Besides, in time, you will find the strength to free me. And together, we shall lay waste to those who did us harm.”

“Puck, stay with Valroy.” Valroy groaned. “I thought you loved me.”

“That is for you to discover, little witch. For you have yet to solve my Maze.”

“You must choose, my love. You must choose whether to release me and begin my great wars…or find the way to kill me.” Valroy grinned. “In the end, it will be that simple.”

But I love him. I know I should not. He is an ass.”

One thing at a time. That was all she could handle. One thing at a time. Or else she might fall apart.

“And do what?” Puck cut her off, his voice losing its manic edge and becoming serious. “And do precisely what, Abigail Moore? You are lost. Caught between what you wish to do, and what you feel you must do. So, sit. Play cards. Drink. And wait for your friends to gather around you. Now is not yet time to act.”

“The game is Texas Hold ’Em. Don’t worry about what Texas is. It isn’t ‘is’ yet. I’ll explain the rules. So—”

But they also watched her, every single one of them, in…sorrow. In sadness. She saw tears upon the faces of a few of them. They wept for her. Perhaps for them both. They took no joy in their duty.

“I…have nothing to bring you, great goddess. I have nothing to sacrifice in your name, or place upon your stone.” Kneeling in the cold grass, she hung her head, and placed her hands on her thighs. “I come to you for guidance, knowing I do not deserve any. But I do not know what to do.”

But as she pulled on the cloak, the figure exploded into a murder of crows that soared up and into the sky, cawing and screeching. It almost sounded like laughter. And she was left holding nothing but tattered black fabric. Fear. Yes. That was what she felt. She was very, very afraid.

“You know what’s worse than fearing you’ll never be loved?” He stood and cracked his neck. “Knowing you never will.”

“Solve the Maze,” he had said. Now she knew what he had meant.

placing her palm over the inked circle of the Maze that rested over his heart. It held new meaning. New, and terrible meaning.

“Can you still love me, knowing what I really am?”

“That is quite the secret you kept from me,” she murmured down to him, stroking a bloody tendril of his blue hair from his face. “I should be quite cross with you.”

That was our game. Solve the Maze.” His hand over hers, placed atop his heart and the inked labyrinth he wore.

“I am part of the very fabric of the darkness itself.”

“I was the Maze, before it had a name. Before it had design. I was chaos and death.”

She came before this Great Unknowable Power and offered me a deal. A game. And you know how I cannot resist a good diversion.”

“I wanted the chance to know what it was like to feel the joy, the sorrow, the lust, the hatred, the love, that I could not understand. That I could not experience. I said yes.

‘My dearest love, I am an ancient and unstoppable monster from beyond the pale who wishes to destroy two worlds for I am unable to help myself. Pass the mustard, would you?’”

Go within my Maze, and embrace it, and you shall embrace me.”

“Take your throne, my queen. Take the peace that comes with our parting.”

For no one would choose a monster like me, knowing the death I bring in my wake.

He was not even truly fae. He was…simply him. There was no other like Valroy.

He was the Maze. He was a primordial evil. And she was his bride.

“He is my king, and I am his queen. I will not abandon him.”

The sword fell. And met the arm of a creature made of a hundred thousand shards of broken glass.

There came the roar. A sound that shook the trees with the bass rumble, that rattled stones and sent wildlife fleeing. It was almost more of a sensation than it was a sound, and it set Valroy’s teeth on edge. He hated that sound. He had heard it a several times before. Everyone froze. All except for Valroy.

The war had begun. The Unseelie King had won his queen, and now was free.

“You gonna be all right with ‘Tall, Blue, and Bitchy’ over there?”

But he was smiling at her. Genuinely smiling, with a kind of tenderness that echoed in his eyes that made her nearly want to weep.

It felt so very much like him that she wondered how she had never noticed it before.

She would forgive them. It was in her nature. Not his.

Valroy could not be changed. But perhaps he could be soothed.

“You are now Queen of the Seelie, Abigail Moore.”

“May I ask you a favor, my queen?” Abigail knew not what to say. Not what to think. Not what to do. “Of—of course.” “Will you hold me while I die? I…find I am still afraid.”

If he had been made Death so very, very long ago… Now she had become Life.

And even then? She was not so certain any of them would ever return from the Maze.

“I cannot change.” “I believe you say that to bring yourself comfort, not because it is true.”

She knew what she was doing—she knew who she was harming. And it broke her heart to do it.

“No. Please. Do not leave. I…I will not hurt you this night. I will not chain you. I simply…I simply wish to speak.”

“You keep terrible company.” “Present company included. I know.”