Page 121 of Until the Stars Fall

Anna shrugged casually. “Brennan. Connor. Who knows which one we will go for?”

“But why would you kill Connor? He’s not the one marrying Calla.”

Clicking her tongue, she shook her head at me and smiled at my apparent ineptitude. “But if he dies, who is left to take the Emeryn throne? Brennan. And if Brennan takes our throne, he is not free to marry into the Arenysen royal family. So no, he may not be marrying Calla, but his death will serve us just as well.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but I had no words. How could I save both of them?How could I stop the wedding?

As if she could hear my thoughts, Anna said, “You’ll think of something, Lieke.” She began to back away. “But don’t try to betray us. You aren’t our only eyes and ears—and hands—in that palace. We’ll know if you try anything stupid, like telling him about any of this.” She pointed at Connor before reaching behind her back and pulling out a knife. Flipping it, she caught it by the blade and offered it to me. I simply stared at her. Her eyes remained cold and distant. “He’ll wake up in a couple of hours, but you’ll probably want to take care of his horse soon.”

“I can’t move him,” I said pathetically. “I can’t move the horse off of him.”

Anna snapped her fingers in the air, signaling her husband to help pull Connor’s body out from under his horse, dropping him roughly in the dirt. She said nothing more as she turned on her heel and disappeared back into the trees with Owen and the other woman close behind.

CHAPTER 59

Connor

The last thing I remembered was watching Lieke race away, and then Rosie’s legs buckled underneath me. Something stung my back as we crashed down to the ground. Blackness engulfed me. Sleep pulled me away from this world and into one of sweet nothingness, a place where there were no rebels, no brothers, no servants, nothing.

Just darkness, comfortable and blissful.

Voices echoed somewhere off in the distance, but I couldn’t be bothered to care. Here I could rest, finally. No one needed me here. In the far reaches of my mind, something poked and prodded, urging me to remember what I’d been doing when I’d fallen. But I shoved it away.

Until the pain hit, and I groaned.

Rocks dug into my spine as I shifted my weight, and my eyes snapped open. Bright sunlight pierced my skull, forcing me to close them immediately.

“Connor?” a voice called, sweet and light and scared.

“I’m here,” I said. Or at least I thought I said it. I must not have, though, because the voice called my name again.

“It’s me, Lieke.”

I knew that name, but as I hovered here in the peaceful fog of my mind, I couldn’t quite remember how.

“Please wake up,” she pleaded.

But I was awake. Wasn’t I?

Something squeezed my shoulder, and I turned my head toward the pressure, forcing my eyes open again. A pair of eyes sank into my line of sight—eyes of a sparkling deep blue that reminded me of a star-studded twilight.

“Lieke?”

“Are you okay?” she asked, and I wanted to smile but couldn’t. I was okay, wasn’t I? I mean, I had been a moment ago. But the pain shot through my leg again, a brutal reminder that I was, in fact, not okay.

“My leg hurts,” I whispered, reaching a hand toward it.

“You broke it when you fell,” she said.

Her voice cracked, and she sniffed back a tear. I was going to heal quickly, so why was she crying?

“What happened? Where are we?” I said, though I didn’t know why I’d asked that last question, because it was fairly obvious from the trees lining the edges of my vision that we were still on the road and not yet back home.

“The rebels,” Lieke said quietly. I pushed myself up onto one elbow, and she rushed to grab my shoulders, helping me to sit up. I leaned back on my hands and looked around. We sat in the middle of the road. One horse lay dead back down the road behind me. Another was stretched out beside us, blood pooling around its head. Two bodies—Evan and Willem—lay motionless nearby.

Dead because of me. Not just these guards. So many fae had been killed on these roads. They had all died because of my failure to stop the rebels. Panic snaked around my heart with icy tendrils, tightening its grip as it filled me with guilt and despair.

I lifted a hand off the ground to press my fingers to my forehead and nearly toppled over, but Lieke caught and steadied me.

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