Page 153 of Until the Stars Fall

Mates.

We were mates.

Bound and fated and destined for…not this.

It wasn’t supposed to end like this.

How could it be over before it had even begun?

I wouldn’t accept it. I couldn’t.

We were meant to be together.

He couldn’t be gone.

Lifting my tear-soaked face to Anna, I shook my head as I screamed my pleas. “Heal him! Save him! Please!”

Anna shrugged. “Even if I could, why would I? I told you this would happen!”

My eyes darted back and forth over the dirt floor in front of me. She’d already known I was his mate, even before Connor had arrived. She’d mentioned our kiss. But how? How had she known?

The spy.

But who? Who was working for them?

I stared down at Connor—my fiancé, my mate—who was quiet, unmoving. He was still breathing, but too slowly.

It didn’t matter who the spy was.

It didn’t matter how Anna had known.

There was no fixing what had already been done.

“What now?” I asked pathetically.

Anna stepped toward me, and my entire body tightened when she nudged Connor’s foot with her own. “Nothing good, I’m afraid. We can’t exactly allow you to return to the palace and inform anyone about what happened here.”

“You can’t be serious, Mother!” Raven’s voice pierced the air from somewhere behind me. I twisted my neck but only caught a glimpse of her in my periphery as she walked slowly forward. She glanced in my direction but didn’t look at me. She was focused on something over my head, beyond me. Tossing her head toward me, she turned back to her parents. “She’s family. Are you really considering killing her?”

“Sometimes we must sacrifice for the better of everyone,” Anna said. My stomach turned to stone.

“Do you mean I wasted three years training her—putting up with her blathering and her whining and her incessant pining for a filthy fae—all so you could just kill her? How does that serve the greater good?” The vitriol in Raven’s voice was like acid in my veins, peeling open every old wound I’d suffered at her hand. Through gritted teeth, I growled quietly, mentally forming insults of my own to throw at my supposedfriend, but from behind me came a hushed warning to remain quiet.

“Don’t move, my lady.”

Matthias.

Of course he’d come with Connor.

Relief shot through me, but I did as he commanded and remained still. Keeping my eyes forward and my lips pressed into a stern line, I worked to hide my wince as he began cutting the ropes digging into my wrists. When they fell away, I forced myself to ignore the desperate call of my muscles to be shaken out and stretched. Matthias pressed the etched wooden handle of a knife into my palm, and I wrapped my aching fingers around it.

“Wait,” he whispered, and I signaled my understanding with my other hand.

“Life is a gamble,” Anna said musingly to her daughter, her annoyance seeping into each syllable. “We had no way of knowing Lieke would prove so worthless.”

Owen cleared his throat with what sounded like an oddly placed chuckle. “Not completely worthless. She brought us the crown prince, after all.”

“True,” Anna said, and a tense silence pulled the air taut around us. Raven shifted her weight. To anyone else, the movement would appear casual, but after three years of constant training, I knew her tells. She was anticipating an attack. And she was nervous about it. Understandably so. She had no weapon in hand, and I could see none at her back or thigh or ankle. She was unarmed, facing two ruthless humans who had slaughtered countless fae.

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