Page 125 of Bride of the Fae Prince

“You cannot kill him, Ash,” she says, breaking her silence. “You’ll lose your throne if you do.”

“True.” I breathe hard, staring at her puffy pink cheeks. I stumble back to my desk and crash into my chair, burying my face in my arms. It’s so sudden, this overwhelming relief—even in the face of Stella’s observation. I don’t even know what to do with it all! How to live. How to walk. How tofeel.

I look up, and there she is, still standing by the door. My whole life, I’ve had to be strong for myself. No one else did it for me. It’s why I did all those stupid things as a child. Drinking poison and hunting for tarlith cats and so forth. I was trying to prove I was strong. Strong enough to be a worthy successor to my father.

Strong enough for my father to love me.

Then this sweet, soft woman walks into my life, and shows me what true strength is. She stands there, unshaken, unfaltering, though she looks as though she could break at the least provocation. Shedoesn’tbreak.

She’s stronger than I ever was.

I feel as though I’ve spent my entire life on a quest for the wrong thing, but now I know what I should be searching for—only to discover that I’ve had it all along.

It doesn’t matter if Stella has magic or not. It never did. She doesn’t need it. She’s strong enough, just as herself. Great Kings, she must be exhausted after this last twenty-four hours. She has hardly recovered from sickness and look at what I’ve dragged her through!

I meet her gaze, shoving aside talk of kings and thrones for the moment. “I owe you an apology. Quite a number of them.”

Chapter 44

The Princess

Ash’s face has gonesoft as he looks at me. I want to take that tenderness, wrap it up, and save it, to pull out when I most need it. But I don’t want to need that. I want this Ash to be the Ash I always see.

“I’m sorry for all the times I’ve scared you,” he says, eyes never leaving mine. “You were right last night. As long as you’re here, you need to be able to trust me, rely on me, be safe with me. And I’ve done a terrible job of it. But Stella, I will let you choose what you want moving forward.” He takes a deep breath, as though bracing himself for what he says next. “If you want to leave, I will help you. I’ll make sure you find someplace safe. The human lands aren’t safe right now, but you could find temporary refuge in one of the Small Cities until everything blows over. Or Orawyth. Now, I cannot take you to Orawyth because the only portals to there are in the Nothril Court and the Bridge, but I can get you there.”

His words roll over me. Calm, level. They give me a way out of this terrifying world. They give me a choice, a chance. I don’t say anything, letting him finish.

“You’d be safer if you left.”

I nod once. Safety is very important to me—more important than I thought it would be. And yet . . . is it everything? Is it truly what I want? That after all this talk of giving up fear, of refusing to bend to its whims, I’d choose it over everything else?

But fear isn’t the only consideration here. It isn’t the only reason I’d want to leave.

“Or,” Ash says, dropping his voice even lower, “you could stay with me. You could stand at my side, face the High King with me. It may cost us everything. I cannot promise you’d survive, though you know I will do everything I can to keep you safe. Even if you survived Lulythinar, it is your choice. Whatever you want, I will honor it.”

My choice.WhatIwant.

The notion is so strange I almost balk. I haven’t had much of a choice this entire time, have I? I made no choice except to do as I was told to save my people, no choice except to make the best of this situation.

But now,now, I have a choice. Do I stay here with my fae husband and risk my life for the sake of saving my people? Or do I leave the saving in Ash’s hands and run? Do I choose my life over my sweet sister Amelia’s? Over every human on the continent?

I bow my chin against my fist, staring down at an open book on the floor, its pages wafting in the draft coming from beneath the door.

Ash didn’t ask me what I was duty-bound to do.

What is such a thing as wanting? What is desire? I’ve hardly dared to want anything in my life, because the more I want, the more I’m vulnerable to the stings of disappointment. Of loss.

But now I must decide. Which means I must first know what I want. I want my people’s safety—but how much will my presence here change anything? What can I do to fight for Aursailles when I’m just a human princess in a magical world of lethal bargains and royal intrigue? It almost seems like removing myself from the equation, from the list of things that can be used against Ash, might do more for my people.

Do I want Ash?

The question seems to come from nowhere, but as soon as it’s there, I realize thatitis the question that needs to be answered. This isn’t as much about my people as I want it to be. If it were, the answer would be easy. But ever since I became a way to hurt Ash, my aid in the situation has gone down drastically.

This choice isn’t about them.

It’s about me. And Ash.

Do I want him? Him, with his unbuttoned shirts and disastrous treatment of books. Him, with all the wars he’s taken upon himself to fight. His determination, his kindness, his chaos, his strength. Hisweakness. His faults. His throne, his people, his power.

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