Page 129 of The Crown of a Fallen Queen
“Apparently not, but you can kill them. That’s good enough for now.”
Four cupids detach from the cloud, that number downright ridiculous compared to the throng of winged cannonballs that rained down on us in Deiltine. Seth quickly tears them down with his lightning, and sure enough, they die rather than respawning, bleeding instead of breaking into glass. No second wave comes behind them, but their disgusting bodies mar the pristine, sacred island with their dark, viscous blood.
“Why were there only a few this time?” Seth asks.
“I didn’t use much magic,” I explain. “But you figured out the loophole. And now I know exactly what thread still holds my curse together.”
He arches a brow. “I’m the loophole, right?”
“Not quite. You said it in the sceawere—your mother doesn’t do subtle.”
We pass beneath the trailing leaves of the Hawthorn, where a burst of color awaits us—dozens of blue, red, and pink lotus flowers blooming on the surface of a shallow pond. The water comes from Eros’ Fountain, the purest spring in all of Faerie, nestled at the base of the tree. It gushes up between two thick, exposed roots before spilling gently into the crystal-clear pond below.
Garlands of pink and purple moss fall from the Hawthorn’s primary branches, the substrate allowing veiled violas, white plumerias, and ghost orchids to flourish in the shade.
I stride over to the trunk of the trees and press my palm to it. “On that first night, before the cupids hunted me down and tried to tear out my heart—before they chased me out of Faerie—Freya cut herself to seal her vow. She rammed a special arrowhead into my heart to take my crown, and she must’ve used her blood toweave the curse, too. Her blood is the loophole. You can kill the cupids because you share her blood.”
Seth’s jaw clenches. “But if you’re right, they’ll keep coming until she dies.”
“Willow told me your mother only had weeks to live. Does that upset you?” I watch his reaction closely, and to his credit, he doesn’t brush off the question. He doesn’t shrug. He just holds my gaze without fail.
“Not if it means you’re safe,” he declares in a solemn tone.
But that’s beside the point, I realize.
If he can harm the cupids—if the curse sees Freya’s blood and his as the same—then they won’t vanish until every last drop of her blood is gone from the worlds. Including his.
Unless...
“If we marry, maybe they’ll disappear,” I murmur. “Marriage is a sharing of flesh, blood, and bones. Maybe then, I’ll finally be free of them. I’ll at least be able to kill them, I think.”
I kneel down to the earth and focus back on the reason why we came.
It’s customary to bury Faelings under the protection of a realm’s sacred Hawthorn, and Spring has the best, most beautiful one. Percy loved it here. It was our secret place to chat and work out difficult decisions when I was queen. We shared many picnics in the shadows of those branches, admiring the heaps of tumbling moss and the flowers that nestled and thrived within them. When the ugliness of court politics became too much, we escaped to this little cocoon of beauty.
I peel away the crust of moss at the back of the tree and dig a small hole in the earth with my hands, right between two roots, just large enough to cradle Percy’s shroud.
A sob quakes my chest as I tuck him safely inside. One handful at a time, I fill the hole, each grain of earth striking theshroud like the last sand falling through the hourglass of our time together.
“Do you want to speak?” Seth asks.
“I can’t.”
I lost a piece of myself I can’t replace.
“Can I say something?” he asks, kneeling beside me.
I hold back a sniffle and nod.
Seth doesn’t hesitate, his voice confident, yet soft.
“The tiniest man I’ve ever known turned out to be one of the grandest. No taller than my hand, but he walked into cages and stared down monsters. I’ve seen High Fae with mountains of power cower when it mattered, but Percy never did.”
My bottom lip trembles, and I cross my arms over my chest. “I don’t know how to say goodbye. I’ve been lonely, but never alone. Percy was there, by my side, since I was born. How am I supposed to face life completely alone?”
Seth slides closer until our legs touch and wraps me in his arms, pulling me against him. I breathe him in. He smells of warm skin and morning rain, wrapped in a sizzle of crushed leaves.
“You don’t have to be alone,” he murmurs against my ear. “By the spindle, I’ll be right here—for as long as you’ll have me.”
