Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 123190 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 616(@200wpm)___ 493(@250wpm)___ 411(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 123190 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 616(@200wpm)___ 493(@250wpm)___ 411(@300wpm)
“You could go riding and explore the village.”
“I could go riding here.”
“You could start fresh—away from the court where so many terrible things happened to you.” She tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, and I flinch before catching myself. She yanks her hand away as if she’s been burned. “You could make new friends. New memories.”
My heart pinches. She doesn’t just want me to visit her friend. When they were talking last night, I thought she meant a few days, maybe a week. “You want me to live there?”
“I think it would be good for you.”
“Is it that bad?” The words are out before I can stop them. “Having me here? Knowing that I struggle a little? Is it so terrible that you must send me away?”
My sister’s beautiful hazel eyes go wide. “No!” She shakes her head, panic all over her face. “Jas, it’s not that at all. I love having you here. Love it so much I wonder if I’ve been selfish to keep you in the palace when perhaps you’d heal better . . . elsewhere.”
Elsewhere. Further from my mission. Somewhere I will be expected to act as the shadow princess. At least here I’m left alone. At least here I can hunt those who hurt me and feel some sort of purpose. “Well, I won’t, so forget it.”
She bites her bottom lip—Abriella, fierce and feared queen of the shadow fae—cowering because she’s scared of hurting her human baby sister. I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry.
“It’s not just that,” she says. “There are things happening in this court. Unexplained deaths and rumors that give me pause.”
Mordeus. “What rumors?”
“Nothing I want you worrying about. Until I figure out what’s happening,” she continues, “I’d like you to be with Misha. Away from any potential danger.”
My mind skips back to the other piece I didn’t hear them talk about last night. “Unexplained deaths? Surely that’s nothing new.” I can’t imagine the few faeries I’ve killed myself are enough to raise the alarm—especially since these vile creatures were already in hiding.
“This is different. We’re talking trails of bodies. Death with no obvious cause.”
My pulse stutters into a run. “Where?”
“All over the court.” Abriella frowns. “It’s been happening for weeks, maybe months—though it’s hard to know when it started because not every death is reported to me. It’s hard to identify a pattern without all the information, but we’re hearing reports of groups of dead fae—from a few to as many as a dozen at once. Every sign indicates that their deaths are magical, as most are uninjured and showed no sign of illness before they were found dead. It seems I’m getting another report every few days, and the numbers just keep growing.”
“And you think I might be targeted?”
With a heavy sigh, she pushes off my bed and paces. “I think I will worry unless I know you are safe.”
“I’ll be fine, sister. You’ve had me trained by the best. Self-defense, mental shields, sword fighting, archery.”
“I don’t want you to need any of those skills.” She peers out my windows, but her eyes are distant, as if she’s envisioning an entirely different time and place. “We should never have been so honest with the court. We should have led them to believe that Mab already made you fae.”
For months after Abriella took the throne, she and her advisors went round and round about what I thought of as “the human problem.” Mab had told Abriella that I would turn fae on my eighteenth birthday, so they had to decide whether to pretend I was already fae in the meantime or to potentially allow Abriella’s enemies to know my weakness: mortality.
No one ever pushed me to take the Potion of Life that can turn a mortal fae. Maybe because Abriella experienced it and it really is so excruciating that she didn’t want me to go through that. Or maybe because they already knew, on some level, that I dread becoming that which I loathe. I didn’t ask, and neither did they.
“Honesty seemed like the best way to begin my reign, but now I wonder if I’ve left you too vulnerable.”
“I’m always at the palace,” I say. Which is true, unless I’m wearing my ring, but given the powers that come with that, I’m not too concerned something could happen to me with it on. “Where could I possibly be safer?”
She folds her arms. “You aren’t safe in the palace if our enemy knows it as well as we do.”
I throw off my covers and stride across the room to stand next to her at the big windows that overlook the palace’s midnight gardens. They’re filled with flowers that blossom in the moonlight and are rather nondescript during the day. Like me with my ring and me without.
“It is only out of an abundance of caution that I want you to stay with Misha,” Brie says. “Not forever, but for now. Once we figure out these deaths and investigate this rumor . . .”