Page 15 of Fae Crown

We all knew: I had no choice but to enter.

The curtains were pretty and delicate, but no doubt what lay beyond them was hideous with the queen’s touch.

“Right,” I muttered under my breath, looking straight ahead. Taking a cue from the announcer who didn’t so much as wince at his ravaged body, I straightened my shoulders and stepped through.

The Great Salon of Delicacies had been transformed since the last time I’d visited it. Reminiscent of the throne room, large windows lined one wall, more of those same shimmery, iridescent curtains draped in front of them, muting what would have otherwise been bright light. To compensate, dozens of palm-sized orbs bobbed at head height, but out of the way, glowing a soft white light. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of small similarly colored flowers cascaded from every flat surface and from vases mounted to the walls.

Had the queen and all twenty-one contestants not stared back at me with varying degrees of hostilityetched across their otherwise pretty faces, I might have been tempted to say the ambience was lovely.

Now, all I could seem to focus on were the blood splatters near the entrance, several arcs of them painting the floor and the walls, speckled across the nearest curtains, their contrast to the pure white theme of the event jarringly bright. The queen’s many disembodied ears and eyes, their veins blackened, floating around with the orbs—invisible to all the other contestants. How large and terrified the dark eyes of the unisus Azariah were. The muscles of his flank twitched, as if he struggled to keep himself from fidgeting. And how, despite everything I urgently needed to examine about the room—the newest setting for a fight I must win—my attention was ultimately drawn to Rush.

Looking away from me, he claimed the nearest head of the table. I studied what I could make out of his face, pointed toward the queen on the opposite end. His silver hair glimmered like actual moonlight beneath the glow of the orbs. His shoulders extended beyond the tall seatback. Draped in a white velvet marred by crisp lines of blood, crimson droplets dripped slowly from them until they were absorbed by the fabric. Blood also spattered across his tunic and hair, over his breeches, distracting me from the muscled lines of his thighs.

His weapons belt was glaringly absent. Boots polished to a shine and still clean.

I willed him to turn around and meet my waitingeyes—to be the one sole safe person in this entire room, the only one whose motivations I knew intimately, and trusted.

It was he and I against the queen. Against every one of her allies in the Mirror World, if it came to that.

So many sets of eyes—both those attached to living, beating bodies and the queen’s spies—roved across my skin, heating it.

My pulse bounced along the column of my neck while I waited for Rush to reassure me, to settle the bond between us.

To lay claim to me in front of all these pretenders.

He didn’t.

He didn’t so much as glance my way—when my core was still tingly from how many times he’d filled me during the previous night. When his very seed still clung to my inner walls, soft and yielding from all our lovemaking.

His name was a single exhale from slipping from my lips while I pulled myself together. My bond to this man didn’t control me. I wouldn’t let it—couldn’t. Maybe not ever, but definitely not now.

You alone are responsible for your actions, Zako’s voice reminded me as it echoed through my memories.Excuses won’t save you. In battle, there is only one person you can count on to ensure your survival: you. Choose your actions carefully. Every single thing you do speaks volumes to any opponent with enough skill to properly study you.

Slowly, I dragged my attention along a very longtable, draped in more of that iridescent white, until I found the queen.

She, Ivar, Braque, and Azariah were the only ones untouched by the chaotic force that had torn through the room when I’d been denied entry. The vast table occupied the center of a nook carved from the larger room by a partition of billowing, shimmering fabric. The many swaths of it hung suspended from nothing—more magic.

Perched in a chair that was grander than the others, a veritable throne in its own right, the queen glowered at me. Accusation burned in her blue eyes, as if somehow I were at fault for the disaster that had devastated her artful scene.

Ivar and Braque sat to either side of her while Azariah stood behind her throne. Eleven seats lined each side of the table between the heads. Only one was empty.

“Bow to Her Majesty,” Braque commanded while Ivar did his best to glower a hole through my cranium.

Before I could catalog all the reasons not to, I dipped into a curtsy. “Forgive me, Your Majesty. I was startled to have been excluded from the event and forgot myself for a moment.”

“If only you were so easy to forget,” answered the queen with a frown of her perfectly painted lips. As it so often was, the pigment of choice was blood red. “What a disruption you’ve caused.”

“I’vecaused?” I quipped, before considering ouraudience and how the queen was especially fond of punishing impudence when she had a crowd.

“Yes,you.” Her eyes narrowed on me.

Despite Azariah’s reassurances that she couldn’t kill me so long as the magic of the trials was active, I recognizedmurderin that stare of hers.

Jaw set so hard I had to make myself unclench my teeth, I replied, “My apologies for that too, then, Your Majesty.”There. Pandering and wheedling complete.

But then … it just slipped out. “Whatever it is I’m supposed to have done.”

Her eyes narrowed farther, until they were mere slits, as if they were throwing blades aiming at their target moments before launching.

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