Still, I keep thinking of what he said. I replay his words in my mind, over and over again.

“Why do you call me that?” I ask, wondering why I haven’t thought to ask before. With my fate looming over me, I want to ask him everything I can before my time runs out. “Little Fawn?”

Viridian’s lips curve into the hint of a smile, his eyes cast down at his feet. “Because at the time, I thought of you as a fawn, finding herself alone in a den of wolves. Noble fae were so much stronger than you, so much faster, with much sharper senses.”

I watch him as I listen.

“But as I quickly came to learn,” he continues, “fawns are much more resourceful than I’d given them recognition for. At a glance, they may seem weak, but that is all part of their true strength. Repeatedly, they are underestimated by the wolf, yet each time, they survive.”

Viridian looks at me now, with love and admiration written all over his face. With awe and wonder lacing his words.

It’s at this moment that I realize this whole time, he’s been talking about himself. That he is the wolf in the fable he’s telling me now.

“Whatever the odds, you do so much more than survive here, Little Fawn.” His voice washes over me with new meaning. “You continue to rise above it all. To make all those who ever underestimated you wonder how they were blind to your strength in the first place.”

My lips part. Warmth spreads through my chest, rising to my cheeks.

Viridian bends his neck, lowering his lips to mine. He kisses me, and it’s soft and tender and tells me everything words can’t. I wrap my arms around him, clinging onto him as if my life depends on it.

Now, I know how far I am willing to go.

How much I am willing to give for love.

How much I am prepared to sacrifice.

And when the time comes, I know what choice I will make.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

The castle wakes to the sound of screaming.

As do I.

With nothing but the moonlight to guide him through the darkness, Viridian rises, springing to his feet the moment his eyes open. I’m up almost a second after, frantically lighting the candle by my bedside. Candelabra in my grasp, I follow him, darting into the hall.

Voices ring out from across the way, and it takes less than a moment to find the source.

“Come,” Viridian urges, moving with a sense of grave purpose.

But I’m already ahead of him, practically flying through the hall past the gold-rimmed windows and into the foyer at the top of the main staircase.

The flicker of candlelight is dim, but it’s enough to make out the grisly scene that waits before us.

There, with a sword plunged through his chest, pinning his limp body to the wall several feet above the ground, is the High King.

Viridian pales. His body goes deathly still.

Behind us, someone vomits. There’s a shuffling of feet, and the sound of someone being whisked away.

I stare up in horror. Nausea grips my stomach. Closing my mouth, I swallow hard, unable to turn my face away.

Vorr’s head lolls to one side, his face gaunt and ashen. His torso slumps forward, flesh digging into sharpened steel. Blood still drips from his body, a mass of dark red staining the stone walls and gathering in a puddle on the floor beneath him. There’s a gaping hole where his heart should be. His chest is mangled around the sword wound, as if his killer drove the weapon through him multiple times before piercing his heart.

Below him, sitting in the pool of his blood, is his bronze crown.

My breaths turn shallow.

This was no accident.