Page 115 of A Bargain with the Fae King

“Sigurd saved her, but she never found the doorway back to her home. Eventually, she decided to stop searching and stay here. She was happy, with my father and all of us, until her human life ran its course.”

Maybe things did turn out all right for her… in the end.

But his words don’t make the grim reality any easier to digest.

“But enough of the past. I thought my plan would work. I was terribly wrong. And when I saw you in the clearing and that Unseelie coming toward you…” He reaches for me, his hand balling into a fist as I flinch away. “Every thought I had fled. Everything. Except saving you. If they had taken you as they took my mother…”

The whole forest shakes again, timbers snapping. The ground grumbles as something—a tree—crashes.

My body tenses. A veritable storm of emotion rages around us, yet every terrible quake of the forest is nothing compared to the certainty carving itself within me.

“I’m the reason your plan failed.”

The horror of it threatens to drown me. I’d interrupted May’s rescue. Even then, I knew that but now… Sigurd’s eagle had led me there. He must have known Riven’s deal with the Unseelie, even then.

“No, Lia, don’t blame yourself.”

He clasps my hand, but I’m too numb to do more than look at it. It’s Riven who retreats from the touch. “This is my failure. Don’t take this burden on yourself. Your appearance wasn’t the only reason. I’d never seen that Unseelie, Katiya. She was not with the group I’d bribed and should not have known how to find them, especially so deep in my own territory.”

“Unless someone told her,” I murmur.

A terrible new realization drops into my stomach like a lead ball.

Riven had played me. Terribly. But maybe someone else pulled even more strings behind the scenes, someone who wanted us torn apart.

“Sigurd knew of the deal you made with the Unseelie, yet your people didn’t know?” I ask in confirmation.

“I told no one at the time. Though I told Solona yesterday.”

“Could she have—”

“No. You walked in on that conversation yourself. Did her anger look false?”

The memory flashes behind my eyes. Her near snarl—so at odds with her typically calm demeanor. The glow of her eyes. No, it hadn’t. In fact, it may have been even more explosive than my own. I shake my head. So that’s why she’d been so upset. My shoulders hunch in. She had every right to be.

“And Galen…” He runs his hands through his hair. “I had no idea. But he didn’t know about that, at least not from me. I didn’t tell any of them. My actions have cost more than I ever expected. You, Galen, maybe even Solona. If I could reverse time, I would, but I cannot. I can only hope to correct my mistakes.”

Riven wallows in his guilt. But pain gives me clarity, honing the edges of my mind to sharp points that pierce through the haze of sorrow.

“Sigurd’s eagle led me to you and the Unseelie in that clearing. If he hadn’t, or if I had only been a few minutes later, things may have turned out differently. And he said he was spying on the Unseelie. What if he worked with them also?”

Riven goes still, his eyes wide, unblinking.

“Riven?” I prod.

He blinks and turns his head to meet my stare. “It’s possible. How did Sigurd get the door key?”

Now it’s my turn to wince. But we’re baring secrets, and I won’t hide from my choices. “I gave it to him.”

His gaze turns hard, steely. “You—”

I straighten my spine and lift my chin. My fingers clutch at the grass under my hands, as if somehow the very ground will give me strength. “He offered to give me May and return us to our world, and when I learned what you had done…”

The hard mask breaks.

Panic flashes across his face as he lunges across the distance between us and grabs my arm. “You can’t!”

Both our gazes snap to that offending spot—to where our bodies touch.

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