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“I would tell you good morning, but I believe you’ve made sure your morning is good regardless,” she murmurs, and I press my lips to her collarbone.
“You’re upset,” the queen says as we walk toward the waterfall. Idalia and the others in the retinue have fallen back, so I’m the only one who can hear her.
“Do not lie to me,” she says. “You’ve been upset since the castle, and I will discover why, although I cannot do it here. In the meantime, I will remind you that you need to play the part of pet now and play it well.”
“This is not a game, Janneth. I do not wish to be separated from you, and so I’ve brought you with me, but there are those in the market who will not hesitate to snatch you away once you’re outside the Sanctuary, and the Court of Thistles will see you as a threat if they understand what you mean to me.”
Those dark eyes soften. “Is that what this is about? Janneth—”
“My time might be infinite, but your mortal pet’s is not, so perhaps we should get started?”
And quickly, before I can react, Morgana takes my jaw and delivers a kiss on my mouth—hot and open and velvet soft. I know right away what she’s doing: she’s making sure the first fairy fruit I taste today is from her. It’s a claim on me and my body, a display of ownership for Acanthia’s benefit. And maybe also for my own.
“I do not want you to do this,” she whispers against my mouth. “Only signal, and I will stop it. I will stop it all.” I press my hand to hers where it still curls hard against my jaw. “Let me.”
“Little pet, you are quite something,” she murmurs. “I can see why she adores you. Not so much that she won’t pay the tithe, but it will hurt her to do it, be sure of that.”
When beloved things bleed, the land sings.
I let out a shaky breath. She’d been right the night of the feast. She’d tried to warn me herself. There are many, many ways to lie.
“It is the way things are and always have been. And I do promise you that it will hurt her. She will hate every moment of killing you.”
“You are,” she says, and there’s a hitch in her breath when she speaks, “so very beguiling like this.” “Trapped?” I ask. “About to die?”
“I could spend years just looking at you,” she says in a murmur, echoing the squirming hopes of my stupid heart.
“Years and years. You look so beautiful right now. Let me feel you too, Janneth. I must feel you now.”
“You’re so soft,” she says. “And so sweet. Doesn’t that feel good, pet? Doesn’t that feel exactly like what you need?”
I never needed fairy fruit to become trash for Morgana. Even stone-cold sober—even knowing she’s about to kill me—her amused little smile is enough to drag me to the edge.
All I know is that I want her to kiss me, kiss me with that mouth still wet from me, and I don’t even want the fairy fruit, because it’s her I want. Just her. No fruit, no crown, nothing save for obsidian eyes and perfect aim and a flair for cruel pleasure—just her. Morgana.
“Kiss me,” I beg. “Kiss me before you kill me.”
A tear, hot and fast, drops from her lashes onto my cheek and rolls into my hair. “Go,” she says shakily. “Go, Janneth.”
“I do not know for sure. But I do know that nothing means anything to me if you are not in the world, Janneth. I love you. Despite how stupid and foolish it makes me. Now go.”
I want to tell her I love her too. I want to tell her that this love makes me stupid and foolish too, because even now the idea of leaving her feels akin to ripping out my own throat, and I want to tell her that all I want, even now, is to stay her pet forever, sitting beside her in fairyland.
I love you, I think. No matter what you planned to do. I love you.
You have no duty to Faerie or its woes. Flee and live, and let Faerie pay for its own sins for once.
Morgana was going to kill you. She watched you for a year, adored you, craved you, knowing all the while she’d pay the tithe with your blood.
“I’m here for you,” I say, my voice pitched so only she can hear. “But I have to know one thing first. Did you always plan for me to be the tithe?” Her brows lift; her mouth is soft and unhappy. “Yes, Janneth,” she answers as quietly as I asked. “From the moment I accepted your bargain. The long year of watching you and wanting you…falling in love with you. I knew what you’d be marked for. What I’d do to you.”
“Except then you came here, then I truly knew you, and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t use you to pay the debt. I…” She puts her hands palm up, almost helplessly. “I love you. So here we are.”
The queen loves me. Enough to die in my place when she had planned to kill me all along.
“I’m paying the tithe with my life,” I say, loudly enough that everyone in the stone circle can hear me. “I’m leaving the life of Janneth Carter behind. Forever. My parents are dead, I have no other family, and leaving their graves behind, along with my friends and my work, will come with pain. But the pain is what makes it a sacrifice, and so I pay it gladly.”
“I’m staying in Faerie,” I tell her. “I’m saying I’m sacrificing my life—except instead of surrendering my body and breath, I’m surrendering my future as a mortal archaeologist, as a friend and as a student.”
“I’m saying that I’m yours, Your Majesty. Utterly and completely. Forever.”
She searches my face. “You know I love you,” she says softly. “You know I’d want you to stay here, to live as long as one of us lives, like Felipe has. But you didn’t have to—”
“I love you,” I say, stopping her right there. “I love you so much it hurts, in the very best way. I love you so much that I still wanted to save you, even when I thought you wanted to kill me. Where you are is my home. For always.”
Its been like three days but me too girl me too
She touches her forehead to mine. “For always,” she echoes, her lips nearly grazing my own. “Forever, for the girl who will always want more.”
Enough to pay every tithe from now until immortal, monstrous, magical, cruel forever.
