Page 45 of A Reign of Roses
I stalled at his words, my eyes still on that bustling hallway, my blood turning to solid ice.
My first thought was that my father was lying to his people. He’d done it before. Countless times. He was the kind of leader—the kind of man—who would tell his subjects anything so long as it served him. He’d tell them all to slit their throats if it would award him more lighte, more power, more coin…Certainly he wasn’t above dressing some unassuming Fae girl up and presenting her to his court as the captured full-blooded Fae?
Within a fraction of a second, a different, far more horrific thought drifted in:He’s going to display Arwen for them. Her rotting, impaled corpse. His crowd will cheer as he—
No.
I was sick. Sick, twisted, depraved—that kind of barbarity permeated only my mind, not reality. He wouldn’t…evenhecouldn’t—
As the masked revelers around me boomed their cacophonous cheers, and morbid curiosity won out, I lifted my head to the banquet table.
A gold-draped woman stood in an elaborate matching mask beside my father.
It’s not her. Don’t do this to yourself. It’snother.
But…the woman’s curled brown hair falling softly down her back, and the gentle shape of her jaw, and those full, worried lips…so similar. Standing there, body bound tightly in some garish gold monstrosity that hugged her hips and too-thin limbs and displayed her chest as if it were a feast for any lecher’s eyes. Her lovely flushed cheeks. Her long, elegant neck. Her chest, rising and falling—
Everything inside of me halted.
No mask—not even the lavish gilded one that covered half of her delicate face—could hide those warm olive eyes from me.
Alive.She was alive.
Where devastation had run rampant—all of it, cleared out in a single instant. My vision blurred with hot tears. My knees buckled, and I locked them to stay upright. Was this real?
I took in the sweaty, delighted faces and grotesque piles of food and barrels of spirit. I was here. In Solaris. And so was she.
Arwen—my Arwen—was alive.
Even with the White Crow, I’d never allowed myself to have hope. But I doubted the woman I beheld now had ever given up on me. That thought alone—how she might recount the days she spent steadfast in her belief that I’d come for her, soft hand laced in mine as she spoke—it nearly sank me to my knees.
But I stood firm, holding her shadowed eyes as she observed the roaring crowd with nothing but loathing.
“In honor of our sacred Solstice,” my father said beside her, “we swear a hallowed oath to bear heirs worthy of this palace.”
His words slammed me back to this plane. This reality—heirs.
The crowd, still hollering with glee, cheered louder as Lazarus edged toward her. “True Fae heirs that will restore this great realm. Heirs that will bestow more lighte, thestrongestlighte, back into its soil. And we’ll begin our quest…”
Arwen flinched as he reached for her. Stroked her cheek. Her neck. Her arm.
I dug my toes into the floor to keep from launching myself at him. From becoming a human barrier between her and his fucking hands. He wastouching herwith his fuckinghands.
Lazarus grinned as he cupped her backside with familiarity before a rabid audience. “Tonight,” he promised.
No—no.
A harvesting ceremony.
That’s why he’d put her in that vile, degrading costume. Why he’d fondled her before his entire court.
I pushed past a squealing woman in a ghoul mask as Lazarus grasped Arwen’s face in one hand. Not gently. Not a touch between a king and his queen. But with malice. So tightly I could see the flesh of her cheeks draw inward, could see her recoil from his touch and try to yank herself away. But he was stronger, and he jerked her toward him.
I was barreling through a grunting, squealing crowd when he planted his lips on hers.
My stomach coiled into feverish knots, and I froze.
My eyes, locked on a more gut-wrenching sight than I had the stomach for.
