Page 67 of Across an Endless Sea

“And the child would be the heir to both lands, finally uniting my realm and bringing it back under the control of Balor’s great bloodline once more.”

Don’t look at her. Don’t fucking look…

Rose’s creamy skin has turned ashen and clammy. She looks ready to vomit as she turns her wide, terrified violet eyes on me. I can’t bear to see the hope there. The pleading.

She’s asking me to go against my king—my father—to save her. To turn my back on everything I’ve worked on and honour that oath I made to her as a child.

Suddenly, the weight of her stare is matched by the stares of the rest of the room. Expectation lingers in the air, and I can practically see the warriors waiting to watch me fall. To prove, once and for all, that I’m just a fairy bastard, not a true Fomorian.

So I do the only thing I can.

I turn away.

Searching for a point in the hall that might allow me to drown this whole thing out. A chip in the stone wall, a candle, anything.

But my eyes are like magnets. Nothing in the realm is strong enough to stop them from returning to Rose. I just can’t focus on anything else when she’s in the room. So, I see the exact moment her frail hope fades and her eyes narrow at the king. I know she’s about to do something very stupid when she leans into Elatha.

Her knee comes up, but my father is expecting her move. With a neat side-step and a chuckle, he motions the warriors behind him to come and restrain her.

“Let’s get the ceremony over with. Someone get me a blade that’s not steel,” he orders. “Can’t have her dying of iron poisoning before her fever hits.”

Rose’s fever…

Ancestors. She’s going to end up like my mother.

The thought, so unexpected and out of the blue, makes me take a step forward.

Elatha meets my gaze over the top of Rose’s struggling head. His black eyes measure me, daring me to prove myself the weakling he’s always known I was. Next time, there will be no leaving the Deep Caves once my year is up. I’ll be chucked down there to rot in the dark and trembling earth.

Snapping now will prove everyone right. There have always been whispers that I’m not worthy of being heir; that I don’t have the stomach for it like Bres did.

A true heir would shut the fuck up and cheer along with the rest of this blood-soaked court.

My jaw clenches, and I bow my head. I’ve squeezed my burned hand so badly that it’s gone numb, so there’s nothing to disguise the pure terror echoing down the bond. Rose wasn’t even this scared when I captured her.

Because she thought I’d protect her. Like I fucking swore I would.

The unwelcome memory of her snuggling against me in my furs last night wraps around my throat and threatens to choke me. Once that image breaks through, they all do. Rose peeking out from behind her wolf in the dungeon. Covered in blood and distraught in the forest at our first meeting. Shy and blushing in my bathing pool.

Those softer memories are replaced by a vision of the future. One where the skeletal husk of Rose lies chained and forgotten inside a cell deep in the mountain with her wings twisted and mangled. The vision morphs, her purple eyes turning blue and glassy until I’m looking at the wasted remains of the female who birthed me.

I can’t let it happen. I know I should, but Ican’t.

Fuck!

I raise my head, and meet my father’s gaze again as I open my mouth to object—to distract him—to dosomething.

But I’m too late.

Two warriors have Rose pinned between them and her arm forced out at an unnatural angle. Elatha has already cut himself, and is lowering the knife to her wrist next.

All of them are unprepared for the black ink which explodes out of her forearm as the blade bites down. The blast of power knocks me backwards, and my head slams against hard stone for a second, turning my vision white.

When I come to, the great hall is consumed by the biggest fucking snake I’ve ever seen in my life. Not any snake, either. Anathair. A giant serpent whose deadly bite delivers such agony that it’s supposed to be worse than burning alive.

Its coils are wrapped protectively around Rose as it hisses at the rest of the room, baring long needle fangs dripping with the sheen of venom at her attackers.

Her púca,I realise.This is his work.

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