Page 83 of Fae Crown

Her responding grin was both simultaneously striking and hideously ugly. A juxtaposition of contrasts I’d never be able to reconcile.

“Not everyone,” she said.

My heart thudded. “What?” I croaked, swallowing around the awkward bend of my neck over her lap.

She beamed. “I can no longer die, my darling. In a way, I have you to thank for my newfound immortality.”

What? How? Why?The questions tore through me in a burst of anguish I didn’t voice.She can’t not die. By a dragon’s doom, she simply must be able to die someway.

“I’ve given you everything you could ever need,” she said, looking up in a daze as if she were telling a story, not condemning an entire world to a slow downward spiral of death and decay, sentencing us forever to her darkness.

“You’re the perfect specimen in every way,” shedroned on. “A magnificent manifestation of form and function. You couldn’t be more beautiful.” She trailed off for a few moments before resuming her languid rubbing of my head. “You’re a formidable warrior. A superb leader and drake by all accounts. The perfect choice to be my successor.

“When your parents asked me to accept your life in service to me in exchange for the care of your sister, I didn’t hesitate. It was an opportunity I seized. I could see how much you loved the girl. You’d do anything I said.”

I wondered if she remembered we had an audience. The room beyond us was so silent I would have thought us alone. I couldn’t even make out Braque’s winded breathing, the evidence of his fondness for overindulgence.

“But you betrayed me. I offered you chance after chance to prove that selecting you as my heir was the correct path. Repeatedly, you proved that the only person I could trust to rule this kingdom is myself.”

No mention of the king. It was possible she had entirely forgotten the pretense of their joint rule.

Scratch, scratch, scratch, her fingers rubbed along my head while I sought for something, anything, I could say to sway her. Nothing came to mind.

Her voice was intoned with the wretchedness of inevitability.

“So I found the way to live forever,” she concluded peppily.

Someone in our audience sucked in a soft gasp.The queen’s head snapped in her direction to zero in on the poor female, whoever she was.

After the queen glared for several terrifying seconds, she gazed down at me again. “So you see, Rush. I have you to thank. The kingdom will thank you too. Now it will only ever know my rule.”

This was an outcome worse than death. This was a result I’d never even considered in my worst nightmares.

An undying queen who brought only suffering to the fae. This was the nightmare?—

She shoved me forward with a jerk. My brow slammed into the armrest of her throne, a carved dragon claw ripping open the flesh. Blood trickled down the side of my face, seeping into my hair from the earlier scrapes.

The queen’s nostrils flared—at the scent of it, I thought with a plummeting certainty.

“Go,” she commanded. “Take your seat again. I don’t want you to miss the show.”

I stood rapidly so as to remove my unprotected back from her reach but then hesitated, studying her, searching for signs that she was telling the truth, that she really couldn’t be killed by any means now, not even magic. Not even the continual transference of power that had governed the Mirror World for thousands of years.

“Take your seat now,” she repeated.

Without any idea what to say or do to ameliorate the clusterfuck, I did as she asked. I sank onto the seatI’d only vacated a few minutes before as if I were now a thousand times weightier.

She didn’t watch my retreat to see how I obeyed. Instead she kept her attention straight ahead.

Without deigning to so much as look at the princess-hopefuls, she announced to the empty stage: “The Fae Heir Trials are now concluded.”

Unintentionally, I locked eyes with Sigmund, who stood beyond her line of sight. His long face, always stoic and dispassionate no matter the circumstances, was slack-jawed. His eyes were wide with what I guessed was the same sort of terror I was experiencing.

My attention seemed to jar him from his shock, and he quickly looked away.

“Thus, when Azariah returns with my prize”—

Elowyn. She means Elowyn, I thought with renewed horror.

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