Page 137 of Crowned By the Fae King

My assistant Kat was bound and gagged in the corner, with tears streaking her cheeks. She looked like she'd been rousted from bed; she was still in a nightgown, and her hair was tangled and halfway fallen out of a nightcap. There was a reddened handprint on her face. She'd fought. They must have woken her to get to me, and she'd fought for me.

Next to her were the bodies of my guards, red seeping through the sheet that had been tossed over them. I was so used to being unguarded that it hadn't even registered that there should have been guards at the door after an assassination attempt. I knew without asking that Tech was the one who'd killed them. He'd probably killed his guards, too. He was an excellent swordsman. They wouldn't have stood a chance.

Ace stood in front of the door to my side of the suite, leaning against the frame with his weight on his left leg and his cane gripped in his right hand. Opals gleamed around his throat, too.

I'd always expected Talien to be my enemy. I wasn't surprised to find Tech on the same side. But Ace… Even though he'd told me outright that he wasn't my friend, and that I shouldn't trust him, I'd still hoped.

"Why?" I asked him. My voice held steady.

"It's one the great gifts and great failings of being faery," he said, meeting my gaze and not looking away, his hazel eyes dark and his voice soft. "Promises must be kept, no matter your regrets, nor your changes of circumstances. Your choices may haunt you long past the circumstances that drove you to them."

The corners of my mouth tugged back in sorrow, but I didn't cry. I gave him a grave nod and turned my gaze back to Tech.

He gave me a rueful smile. "I like you," he said, keeping his voice soft. "I would prefer not to kill you, and I'm sure our swordmistress would prefer that, as well. Will you come peacefully?"

"He'll hunt you down," I said, keeping my voice level as I tried to find a way out of this.

The opals meant that, even with the Court's power at my fingertips, I couldn't simply melt them. They were protected from those sort of direct attacks, ones that touched their core being, by the opals circling their necks. I could probably wall Ace off, but he wasn't a physical danger, and there was no way I could get Yllana separated from Tech before he had a chance to kill her. Maybe I could do something like Cass had on the battlefield, impaling him with a spire of stone, but I couldn't do it without putting Cass' mother at risk.

"I think he's in no condition to do anything about it," the Misted Duke said in the same calm tones. He tilted his head towards Kat, who flushed with shame. "She wasn't difficult to break, your majesty."

I wet my lips. "Then I'm surprised you didn't walk in there and put a knife in him," I said quietly, the very idea wrenching at me with imagined pain.

Tech snorted with derision. He didn't look away from my face. "Do you think I trust the word of a mortal servant, even one weeping from pain? Trust it enough to get within range of a stymphalian-winged man who can kill me with a touch?" He shook his head, his curls bouncing. "It's been hours. The monk's-tongue has no doubt worn off, and I have no interest in whatever dregs of power Marys has in his veins being used to stop my heart. It would have been pleasant to wed the Merciful Queen, assuming the Court chose Tarra, but…" He shrugged again. "I don't believe Yllana would agree to something like that."

"Bastard," she rasped, then whimpered as he set the steel of his blade against her throat.

"Mind your tongue, seamstress," he said coolly. "I'm not opposed to cutting it out."

I could kill him. I knew I could. The Court seethed beneath my feet, eager to respond to my hand. He was protected from me simply killing him where he stood, but indirect attacks can be just as brutally lethal. I remembered how fast Cass had killed that dragon. It had taken mere seconds.

Even seconds are long enough to cut someone's throat. All it would take would be a single jerk of his wrist, and Yllana would die.

I met Yllana's dark eyes, trying to convince myself to go through with it—to kill Tech, and to let her be the collateral damage. She'd been cruel to Cass when he was a child, and she'd been nothing but a cold, bitter presence since she'd arrived.

But I remembered the way she'd come alight with Pelleas, talking about rare cloth or complex stitchwork. I remembered wearing that beautiful dress, and the way the Raven Prince had looked at it with the sort of happiness I suspected he rarely felt. She wasn't a person I liked or got along with, but she wasn't the monster I preferred to imagine her as. If I could forgive the men who'd tried to murder me, how could I sentence her to death for crimes done more than five hundred years ago?

Another of the great gifts and failings of being faery, I thought with sorrow. You have to live with your mistakes forever.

"I'll come," I said, my shoulders slumping. I couldn't do it. I couldn't stand here and murder a terrified woman, even if it would keep me and Cass safe. She was innocent of this.

"Don't—" she started, before Tech jerked her head back by the hair. His blade pressed harder against her throat, drawing a bead of blood.

I held up my hands and took a step back. "It's alright, Mother-in-soul," I said, even though I knew it wasn't. "I know what I'm doing."

It wasn't like I didn't know what they wanted. Cass had told me himself: Sagebrush, Mists, and Flies had all been Courts, and they were still distinct enough entities that, under the right circumstances, they could be torn out of Mercy's grasp. The dukes had clearly been planning this for a long time – maybe even decades or centuries – but the timeline had gotten sped up with Cass' ascension. The Court of Mercy was his body. It wouldn't take long for the duchies to forget anything else.

Tech stood, dragging Yllana up with him. A tear dropped out of her eye.

"Hand over your sword to Vaylir and make us a door to the Buzzing Castle, of your kindness," he said in a pleasant voice. "And don't try to tell me that you can't. I don't know how you're doing it, but I know you killed my archers, and I'm certain you were the one who managed to get that basilisk here in minutes instead of half a day." When I didn't immediately move, he gave me a sharp smile. "Now, if you please."

I closed my eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath, then nodded. I unhooked my sword, feeling naked without it, and stepped over to Ace, holding it with care not to look aggressive. He took it without words, and I turned my back on them, walking over to the wall.

The throne, I sent to Cass, knowing he was sleeping and with no way to wake him without getting his mother killed. I could only hope that it would penetrate his dreams—that when he woke, he'd know where to go. The throne, the throne, the throne.

I didn't want to portal us to the throne, though, so before I touched the wall I cleared my mind. The Buzzing Castle, I thought to myself, turning my heart away from Cass. I'd never been there, but I knew where it was on a map. What had once been the heart of the Court of Flies was now merely the seat of a duchy, in the same way as the Veiled Castle. It had probably once been more central to the land, but before the Court of Flies had been fully conquered, the Court of Mercy had nipped away at its borders. Nowadays, the castle stood only a few miles away from the border of the duchy.

Mercy responded eagerly to my hand, but I didn't want it to be obvious that I'd destroyed their siphon. I furrowed my brow and gritted my teeth, making my shoulders go tense and pressing my hands hard against the wall. Okay, I told the Court. Make the door, slowly.

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