Page 39 of Fae Crown

“I do.”

“No one’s ever promised me anything before, not when a promise can never be broken. Well, other than Octavio, anyway, but he hardly counts. We were born bonded to each other.”

“Do you promise to keep what I tell you secret too?” I asked.

She canted her head to one side, as if studying a rare marvel. “I’ve never met anyone like you before.”

“I get that a lot.” I kind of did, anyhow. Easy to happen, when I was the only one here who barely belonged.

The double doors burst open and half a dozen guards dressed in sky-blue tunics filed in.

“The queen’ll be here soon,” I added urgently. “I’ll keep your secrets if you keep mine.”

After noticing the guards, she still hesitated. Finally, “Alright, fine. I promise too. But you go first. As it is, Octavio will probably yell at me for a straight hour for making a promise at all. He’ll be bound by it too.”

When her lips clamped shut with comical regret, it was easy to guess that both her person and her magic were tied to her twin.

When the doors closed behind the guards and there was still no queen, the chatter grew louder, Azariah more jittery, and Rush more intent on blocking out all of us.

I scanned for too-close spies, found them all wary of my backhand, and whispered to my only possible ally, “I’m daughter to the king and to Odelia Catalina Corisande, the queen’s eldest sister and rightful heir to King Erasmus.”

The glass slipped from her fingers to the floor and shattered with a tinklingcrash. As one, every creature in the room spun toward us, even Rush. When I hurried to catch his gaze, he turned back around.Fuck, he really, really didn’t want to speak with me.

I ignored the usual clench of my heart that followed that realization as I called out, “It’s fine, everyone. Just a broken glass.”

Natania, Coretta, Malina, and several others whose names I hadn’t yet learned glared at me, as if even that statement of mine were offensive. I was the stench that would cling to them if they were to interact with me.

I glowered at them across the open room, petite tall tables with pretty finger foods off to one side, until most looked away. Natania and Malina didn’t. Both women narrowed their eyes at me in open challenge.

“Fuck. You,” I mouthed at them.

Natania gasped so loudly the sound reached me. But Malina only grinned. Coretta drew next to them, curious stare roving between them and me.

When I next took in Octavia, her glass had been reassembled into one shiny, unmarred whole, filled to the brim once more, and was back in her white-knuckled grip. The goblin responsible was already fading back into the wall.

She stepped so close to me that her breath tickled my ear. “That’s not … that can’t be possible. You can’t be their daughter.”

My smile was bitter. “Oh, but I am. That’s why the land connects to me. It sees me as the true heir, not the queen. At least, I think it does.”

She sucked in a wheeze that left her choking out quiet, feminine coughs. Once she recovered, “You’d better not let Her Majesty hear you say that or?—”

“She already knows.”

Another wheeze shook her chest. “By the Ethers … no wonder she wants to kill you. You’re a true threat to her.”

“Sure am. And I’m gonna murder the fuck out of her.”

The scaless stared at me so long I feared I’d broken her. But eventually, after a shake of her head to returnher from wherever she’d gone, she uttered, “Octavio and I are connected. Whatever he experiences, I can as well. Whatever I experience, he too can.”

“How so?” Finally, perhaps something helpful.

“Everyone’s watching us.”

“Let ‘em watch. Tell me now. I can feel her getting closer. We don’t have much time.”

I hadn’t realized it until I heard the admission aloud, but it was true. Somehow, some way, Icouldsense the queen’s approach.

Oh dear holy fuck, please don’t let her and me become connected like the twins.I might genuinely prefer to burn in the Igneuslands for eternity than to experience whatever evil lived inside the queen.

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