Page 7 of What Sleeps Within the Cove

I paused at the top, looking down the hall to where the entrance to the cove lay hidden. Considering my choices and my obligations,my heart and my duty pulled me in two different directions. I had sworn to burn the world to the ground if it was what was needed to save my mate, but Estrella would never forgive me for leaving the humans to such a fate.

She’d never forgive me for condemning so many others to the loss that I so desperately refused to accept.

Fuck.

Decision made, I rounded the top of the stairway, jogging forward and navigating the crowd of fleeing Fae. They raced out of the throne room, their cowardice forcing them to push through me as I made my way to the massacre I could hear more clearly now.

It wasn’t one woman screaming, but a cacophony of shrill screams and howls. The torment of pain and agony resounded through the hall as I rounded the door to the throne room, glancing over my shoulder once to find Opal hadn’t dared to follow me to what would be a sure death sentence.

Fucking coward.

The bodies of half a dozen humans lay at the base of the dais, Mab’s hands enrobed in shadows as she twisted them through the room. A handful of Fae cried openly, curling their mate’s limp bodies into their arms and rocking them as the remaining two humans watched in horror.

“I’ve done you a favor. You’ll see soon enough,” Mab said, taking a step toward one of the grieving Fae. She stroked the top of the woman’s head, running her mangled hand through her hair affectionately and leaving a trail of blood in her wake. “I have rid you of the weakness that is love. Now he can never have power over you without ever doing anything to earn it.”

I strode through the crowd waiting at the sidelines, nursing injuries or placing their palm over their heart as if the pain of her control was too much to bear. Mab had always had her darkness. She’d always possessed an evil so deep that none would dare to question her ability for cruelty.

Killing mates was a new descent into madness, a completely irrational outburst that hurt us all. Only through the mate bond could the next generation of Fae come to exist, and with our population already dwindling because of the witches’ curse, every life mattered.

She hadn’t just killed humans. She’d destroyed the potential offspring that wouldneverlive now.

Mab took a step back as I approached, moving closer to her throne before she seemed to regain her sense of self-preservation.Mab did not back away for anyone, and the moment of fear was enough to show just how much my display at the cove had rattled her. The movement dragged my attention up to the bones that had crafted her seat of power, to the skull on the right side of the throne.

If I hadn’t known any better, I’d have thought the jawbone moved, shifting to grind together with Mab’s words. My brow knit together, but I quickly averted my gaze to not draw her attention to it. Whatever was wrong with the throne, whatever had shifted in that skull, Mab didn’t need to know just yet.

One of Mab’s most loyal lay at her feet, his body broken nearly beyond recognition. Only the shimmer of his Fae Mark on his neck was visible, leading up to his striking black eyes. The rest of his flesh was a swollen mass of muscle and blood, the skin missing from most of him as if Mab had been determined to remove any signs of his disloyalty from his body.

Mab stepped over his body callously, her fear of me forgotten, making her way toward a centaur woman who hurried to tuck her child behind her. The lower half of her body was a dappled gray, her hooves stomping in warning as she backed the younger Lliadhe toward the throne room door. But the crowd at her back made escape an impossibility, leaving her to stare down the Queen of Air and Darkness with her jaw set in stone and chin raised high. Her hair glimmered like the flecks of a flame in the night sky. I closed the distance between us as quickly as I could navigate those frantically trying to leave, ignoring the Sidhe who watched in silence from the sidelines as if they would be safe from Mab’s wrath.

But what was once cold, cunning cruelty staring back at me in her dark, glimmering onyx eyes had shifted, changing to something feral and wild in one of her bouts of madness that struck like lightning periodically. Always a consequence of being threatened, of feeling like she was losing control over what she’d fought so hard to gain, she became a different creature entirely.

Something backed into a corner and fighting forsurvival.

Mab’s mangled hand twitched at her side, dripping blood onto the stone floor. At some point since I’d last seen her, the skin had parted, rotting away from her wrist where Estrella had severed it. As if the threads still lingered there, fighting to tear their way through her flesh and bone all over again.

I stepped in front of the centaur just as the Queen reached out with her shadows, taking the onslaught meant for the centaur. Even if Mab had wanted to, there wasn’t time for her to pull them back andattempt a different attack designed especially for me. They wrapped around my throat and squeezed tightly, cutting off the flow of air to my body. My hands flew to grasp them, to tug at them for a reprieve that I knew would not come. I struggled for breath, dropping to my knees before Mab as she commanded my obedience.

“Children are sacred,” I rasped, feeling the centaur guide her child away from the danger. I could practically feel the centaur’s hesitance, feel the similarity of what made Estrellahumandancing over my skin.

She didn’t want to leave me to suffer, not when I had taken a fate that should have been hers.

Not when I’d protected her child when no one else would.

It was in that moment that I recognized the beauty of the way Estrella saw the world, of the way she interacted with it and appreciated all life. She would not have hesitated to interfere and save the centaur and her daughter.

Because sheloved.

“Only Sidhe children are sacred. There are plenty of Lliadhe to go around,” Mab said cruelly, her words a reminder of the fact that the Lliadhe did not bear the same curse as the Sidhe. The witches hadn’t felt the need to control their population as a measure to save the world, not the same way they had my kind. They’d seen something in the Lliadhe I’d never stopped to consider. Something that we lacked.

Somethinggoodwhere we had only darkness.

“My Queen, if you kill him, your bargain with the Barlowe girl will be null and void. She will be beyond your control,” Eowyn said, stepping up as close to Mab as she dared. The younger girl had willingly served at Mab’s command for over a century, delighting in the suffering of those around her. She’d loved the torment and the screams, but Mab glared at her all the same.

Mab turned that callous stare away from her devoted follower, stepping closer to me until her fingertips brushed my cheek.

“I would gladly die if it meant she was free of you,” I rasped, using the rest of my energy to force the words free, counting on the knowledge I had that she did not. Her shadows loosened ever so slightly giving me the ability to breathe as that too-sharp mask she wore cracked. “We both know she will kill you if she returns to find me gone.”

Her lips twisted as she drew her shadows back, relinquishing me under the threat of Estrella’s retribution. I wasn’t positive aboutit before, hadn’t known if Mab was as aware of my mate’s potential as I was.

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