Page 58 of What Lurks Between the Fates

“Come in,” Mab called, her voice muffled behind the door.

Malachi pushed it open, stepping into the room first before he looked back at me and waited expectantly. I took a single step forward, pausing when I laid eyes upon the ornate bedframe carved from solid gold on the back wall. A thin veil of fabric hung in a circle around it, forming a canopy of shimmering gray.

Mab’s bath was a massive square set into the floor itself. It was filled with water, the entire surface covered in rose petals as she lounged against the wall of it. Sunlight streamed inthe windows, half-blocked by that same curling metal, casting shadows throughout the room and keeping it dimly lit. Pillars of curled metal arched throughout the room, curving toward the ceiling to separate the designated spaces: bedroom, bath, dining, and sitting areas. Her rooms were easily three to four times the size of mine, and far larger than the cottage I’d called home in Mistfell.

Mab’s arms draped along the edge of the bath, the water covering up to the base of her neck. Nila walked into the room behind me, making herself as small as possible against the wall. It wasn’t typical that my handmaid was dragged along with me whenever Mab summoned me to torment.

“Good morning, Estrella,” Mab said, trailing a black nail along the stone. The sound echoed through me, the high pitch making me shudder.

“Good morning,” I said, grimacing through the sound. It was faint, barely even there. As a human, it might not have registered at all, but as a Fae, it was agonizing.

“I’m sure you’ve realized by now that your mate has left,” she said, leveling me with that dark, empty stare. There was a challenge in the words as she probed me for weakness, testing me to see how easily I could be swayed to believe whatever illusion she tried to paint with her half-truths.

“He would never have left me willingly,” I said, lifting my chin.

Malachi walked to the sitting room to the left. He lowered himself into a chair, kicking his feet out in front of him as he made himself at home. He’d clearly spent far too much time in this space, in Mab’s personal quarters, to be anything but intimately familiar with her.

I swallowed down the surge of nausea that rose within me.

“I’ve sent him to greet the coming royals for the Winter Solstice,” Mab said, her mouth twitching with annoyance at my assurance in our mate bond—at my confidence in his love for me. Over and over again, he would have sacrificed himself to save me if he had the barest hint that it would do any good.

He never would have left me here unless she made him.

“And when will he return?” I asked, trying not to think about the fact that she was naked in the water. I didn’t want to see beneath her dress, didn’t want to see the fair skin that I knew wouldn’t show a hint of any of the suffering she’d inflicted upon others.

I wanted her body to be mangled. I wanted it to be scarred in the ways she had scarred my mate.

I wanted to taste her suffering on my tongue and see the signs that she, too, had known pain—anything less was an injustice I blamed the Fates for. I sent a silent curse to haunt them.

“Tomorrow, I suspect,” she answered.

She moved forward in the bath, her body shifting as she stood from what I presumed was a seat. Her hands swirled absently through the roses on the surface of the water.

“Has anyone told you what to expect of the Solstice?”

“Few people tell me anything here,” I said, honesty ringing in the words.

Nila informed me of what she dared, giving me bits and pieces of information that she didn’t think would get her in trouble. We were never sure if there were prying ears, if Malachi or any of the guards who relieved him at night would attempt to listen to every conversation we had in the supposed privacy of my room.

“Once, the Solstice was a way to celebrate the return of the sun,” she said, her eyes going distant as she looked towardone of the windows lining the room. As if she could see the very court that should have been the happiest to see the solstice occur, and what it meant for the slow, subtle shift of power toward the Summer Court.

Her brother’s court. The court where she’d been born and raised.

“What is it now?” I asked, fidgeting slightly at having to draw her attention back to me.

I didn’t want the force of that gaze on me, but I didn’t want to waste my time standing in her rooms as she bathed. Better she get through whatever she needed to say, setting me free so I could go about my day of idle lounging and waiting for my mate to return.

“The Shadow Court mourns the darkness. Other courts may celebrate with dancing and revelry. We grieve with blood and death,” she explained, her lips curving with pure malice.

I swallowed, biting back the sharp retort that it didn’t sound any different from daily life within Tar Mesa.

If Mab thought the events of the solstice were special, then I didn’t want to consider what that meant for the people living here. For those coming to visit, forced to join in the grieving by the queen they didn’t want.

“It sounds absolutely lovely. Am I to assume I’ll be tucked away in my rooms and miss out on the joy of those celebrations?” I asked.

It was pathetic when someone who used to sneak out looked forward to being locked in her rooms in the way I’d once hated more than anything.

Malachi stood at Mab’s slow nod, stepping up behind me and removing the collar from my throat. I drew in a steadybreath, letting the power of Alfheimr flow into me and through me once again as he moved to the table and set the collar upon the surface.

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