Page 29 of The Crown of a Fallen Queen
Sara frowns. “If you mean to say that she’s, in fact, a woman—one we know you’ve had quite a few dealings with—we do."
“Is that why I couldn’t find my way inside the castle? Did you think I’d switched sides?” I muse, a little hurt.
Is that why I’m here? So Elio can keep an eye on me?
Sara eases my doubts with a straight-cut answer. “Not at all. All direct entry points inside the castle are now warded against everyone but the king and queen.”
“That’s inconvenient,” Seth winces.
Sara gives a heavy sigh. “Immensely. It’s a total zoo, here and everywhere?—”
Elio enters through the door on the opposite side of the room, interrupting her sentence. His platinum blonde hair is in disarray as he hurries over to me, the chill of winter he usually carries with him tame by comparison. “By Thanatos, I’m so glad to see you in one piece, Devi. How was your trip?” He wraps me up in a heartfelt hug, and the silky lapels of his midnight-blue suit brush my cheek.
I draw back and meet his gaze. “Eventful.”
His expression darkens, and he motions us toward the little nook at the back of Sara’s office, where four periwinkle armchairs surround an oval-shaped coffee table. He looks good. Better than I’ve seen him in decades. The patch of snowflake at his neck has melted, and the permanent frown stuck between his brows has been smoothed away. The light beneath his skin shines bright, just like it used to back in the day.
I hold my breath, my heart in my throat. So alive and healthy, he reminds me of the old Elio, the man he was before he left for the Winter Court. Before the ugly business with Ethan happened, and his wings were so brutally clipped off…
“We were attacked by a nightmare,” Seth says, jolting me back to reality.
Elio unbuttons his jacket and sits beside Seth. “I was afraid of that. Damian’s trying to isolate a small portion of the sceawere to allow safe passage between a few key locations. Until theShadow King reclaims his playground, no one should step into the in-between unless absolutely necessary. For now, I’m afraid most travel across the continent will be limited to sea and land routes.”
I rub my neck and exhale a loud, “Bloody hells,” shocked by how much the worlds can change in the span of a few days.
I knew all of this, in theory. We’ve all studied the previous wars in school and argued different points of view or decisions made during those difficult times. No matter how much we enjoy playing warlords, trying to fix past conflicts after the fact, it’s not the same as living through them in real time. It’s easy to think we could have done better when we already know the outcome. All students of history, no matter how passionate they are, want to believe the same horrific patterns their ancestors wrestled with won’t get repeated. That the people in charge have learned from those mistakes, when they seldom have.
We all want to believe the world as we know it cannot change as drastically as that.
That war isnotcoming.
But, cutting off easy travel between realms is war-room 101—straight out of every Fae rebel-slash-dictator playbook there is. I finally drop into the cushy armchair, landing with a sigh. “The Tidecallers have done it this time. Started a full blown war.”
Seth winks in a playful manner. “I told you so.”
The rest of us exchange a heavy glance, and we all sit in silence for a minute. When I agreed to Seth’sterms of engagement, I was only thinking of revenge. I was focused on using him to take back my crown. Take back my life. I never stopped to consider that the monarchy might not survive. If Faerie falls, there won’t be any crowns left to fight over.
Seth presses his thumb to his bottom lip. “And the Lord of the Tides? He’s ashe?”
Elio nods. “Willow Summers, the Summer King’s sister.”
“Didn’t she die a long time ago?” Seth asks.
The look Elio gives me says it all—he knows I hid the truth from him, and he resents me for letting him believe Willow was dead. There’s no anger in his voice, but his icy gaze burns with quiet reproach. “When you told me Willow had once approached you with wild, revolutionary plans, and that you had been tempted to join her, you failed to mention she was in leagues with the Tidecallers.”
Heat rises to my cheeks, and I lick my lips. One of my best-kept secrets is now common knowledge, and while it’s hard to hold Elio’s accusatory gaze, it’s also a relief not to have to hide this from him anymore. The weight of the lie, of all the half-truths and omissions—finally slips off my shoulders, leaving me raw but lighter.
“And not only in leagues with them. She probably resurrected them, stoked their ideology back to life in any pocket of unrest she could find,” Sara adds.
I chew on that possibility. Sara’s probably right, but my friendship with Willow transcends such things as politics. We’ve been through hell together.
Most people, present company included, see crowns as symbols of order and safety, but I’ve seen first-hand what power does. How it corrupts and consumes. It makes me feel like a traitor among them that I don’t immediately flinch at the thought of tearing it all down.
“Our political system is rotten, and I almost joined the Tides, that is true. Willow was a smart, charismatic leader, with a lot of wonderful ideas. She understood that the magic, the gods, the very fabric of our world, needed regional monarchies to prosper. Her dream was not to get rid of them entirely, but to make the system fair to everyone.”
“Why didn’t you join her?” Seth leans in, looking genuinely curious.
“She was a succeed-at-all-costs kind of leader. She didn’t mind sacrificing anyone—even herself—to the cause. She wholeheartedly believed true change couldn’t be attained without tremendous loss of lives. I was all for killing Freya, Ethan, and a few other political monsters, but Willow didn’t care about collateral damage, only the end result?—”
