She lifted her chin to an angle between elegance and disdain. “Straight as an executioner’s blade.”
He laughed. “The queen’s death sentences are—like most words from faelips—open to interpretation.”
Adelyn bit her tongue again. She wouldnotbeg. As inspiration personified, she could not be moved by necessity or entreaty.
Though she longed to let her wrecked golden slippers move her far, far away.
The Ruiner crossed his arms over his chest, his gray-gloved hands gripping his biceps with knuckles aimed her way. “Don’t you wish to hear your options?”
She scowled at his malicious teasing. “Musetta I am, but I will not incite you to more enthusiastic methods of murder. Specifically,mymurder.”
Raze drummed his fingers. “The queen wants you out of her sight. Death would do. But exile accomplishes much the same results.”
Exile? Her heart twisted in her chest. “Exactly the same results for me. I cannot leave the faedrealii.”
Raze snorted. “Many musetta have journeyed out of court. Where do you think humans find their inspiration?”
His offhand reassurance gave her no comfort. “I never wanted to inspire humans.”
“And yet you’ve done it so well,” Raze purred. He fingered the torn neckline of her veils. “You are everything a man could want to inspire him.”
She leaned away, holding her breath against the stink of lightning that clung to him. Out from the gap of his sleeve, a hairy gray spider as big as his hand scuttled over her breast. She gasped as it pattered across her skin, but Raze’s grip trapped her.
The spider gathered the edges of the tear. With a few pumps of its spinneret, it laced the rip, then it vanished up Raze’s sleeve. Adelyn sagged back, and this time the vizier let her go.
He glanced over his massive shoulder. “William, come. And bring the key.”
A hysterical sob congealed in Adelyn’s throat. “Why ishehere?”
“He wanted to see you off. And to tell you—”
William elbowed Raze aside as only one of the queen’s lovers would dare. “Sweet muse, I had no idea it would end like this.”
“You are fucking our queen,” she snapped. “Yet you wrote a poem tomyeyes. How else would it end?”
William’s cherubic blonde curls bobbed as he ducked his head, though his ravenous gaze on her was anything but saintly.
Razetsked at her. “Poor boy, he just couldn’t help himself. You are musetta. You inspired him.”
She never bothered with humans. Why waste the breath of inspiration on creatures that breathed only a hundred years or so? Making her place in the faedrealii was hard enough since musetta had no real value themselves except what they inspired in others. Now she fastened her gaze on the iron key dangling from William’s fingers. She pitched her voice as musetta did, echoing the smooth slide of rich fabric or fine wine. “Free me, William.”
William hesitated. As a mere human, he shouldn’t have been able to resist her voice. Shouldn’t havewantedto. But her influence had waned under the shackles and the fear that pulsed like her iron-poisoned blood.
Raze chuckled. “William wants to keep you here. He forgets a musetta can’t be imprisoned.”
William scowled at the vizier, bold in his passionate idiocy the way the queen preferred her human lovers. Somehow they kept that callow foolishness, no matter how long she ensnared them. “I know she can’t stay. Ankha is so angry.” Awareness flickered behind his eyes, then vanished in a fae haze. “But I’ll make her forget.”
Raze waved one hand. “Everyone forgets. Makes it damn hard to get anything done around here. But before you tra-la-la along, unlock the musetta.”
Adelyn couldn’t hold back a moan of relief when William fumbled at her bindings and the manacles fell away. The fae who had survived the Iron Wars were resistant to more refined versions of the ore, but even the steel-born fae avoided raw iron. Tucking her burned wrists against her belly, she glared at William. “Thank you. If only these ode-worthy eyes of mine had never glimpsed you.”
His mouth twisted. “Sweet muse—”
“You doomed me. Also, your cadence was off and your rhyming sucked toads.” She put all the musetta force into her voice. “Go.”
He went with a wrenching sigh, as if she had torn the exhalation from him.
Raze laughed again. “You are unkind, musetta.”