Page 45 of The Fae Queen's Captive
“I don’t know, maybe?” I reply. “‘Sacrifice a life without ending it,’ that’s what Felipe said he read once.”
“Cernunnos had a power like that. Dionysus too,” Morven says. “And any new aspects of them would also gain their dying and rising power. Unfortunately, I’m coming up dry on how to turn any of us into a god at the moment.”
“Okay,” I say, “so let’s take dying and killing out of the equation. How else do you pay a life? How else do you sacrifice it?”
“I don’t know,” he says, a little impatiently. “I’m not exactly the sacrificing type. I’ve never given up anything in my life, and even when my sister was chosen to wear the crown by our court and I wasn’t, I stayed. I didn’t even think of leaving home because I couldn’t bear to. I couldn’t bear to give it up.”
Home.
Home.
It hits me like a sear of lighting, like an arrow bolt to the neck.
I step forward.
“What are you doing?” Morven says, stepping with me.
“I have an idea.”
“Is it an idea that will actually work? Or is it an idea that’s going to end with my sister dead and me being the worst king ever to sit on the antler throne?”
“I have no idea if it will work, but it’s all I’ve got,” I say. “Unless you want to wait around for the worst to happen?”
He lets out a heavy, put-upon sigh. “If my sister dies tonight, I will make sure Maynard sings theworstsongs about you.”
“I’d expect nothing less,” I say, and then I start walking toward the circle, grateful to hear his nimble, rhythmic footsteps behind me.
The moment we step into the circle, I feel the frisson of power suffusing the space.
Electricity, potential.
Like the air itself is humming, vibrating with a song older than I can possibly imagine.
Morgana’s eyes widen when she sees me, and fear—real fear—chases across her face. “No,” she whispers. “You’re not supposed to be here. You’re supposed to be back home. Safe.”
Sholto, Idalia, and Ynyr are all watching me, and I notice Morven steps slightly in front of Sholto, blocking the tall advisor from being able to reach me quickly. I’m almost touched by his protective instinct, but then I see the look on Morven’s face. It’s very plainly anif you don’t save my sister, I will kill youexpression, and that’s fair enough, I guess.
I set my eyes on Morgana, and my pulse speeds hot and quick. If I looked beguiling to her when I was bound and spread on the stone slab, then she looks perfect to me now—her hair blowing in the wind, her eyes flashing, the antler torc highlighting her long, graceful neck.
“I’m here for you,” I say, my voice pitched so only she can hear. “But I have to know one thing first. Did you always plan for me to be the tithe?”
Her brows lift; her mouth is soft and unhappy. “Yes, Janneth,” she answers as quietly as I asked. “From the moment I accepted your bargain. The long year of watching you and wanting you…falling in love with you. I knew what you’d be marked for. What I’d do to you.”
It hurts like peeling off a scab, like pulling a splinter free.
It hurts, and yet there’s something freeing in it.
She draws in a breath. “Except then you came here, then I truly knew you, and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t use you to pay the debt. I…” She puts her hands palm up, almost helplessly. “I love you. So here we are.”
I step closer, my heart beating fast but my mind clear, the air cold and bright in my lungs. There is horror in this place, and there is horror in her, and yet it matches the need inme. Though I doubted someone could take me as messy and needy and sprawling as I am, here is the proof.
The queen loves me. Enough to die in my place when she had planned to kill me all along.
“Here we are,” I murmur. “HereIam. And here I’ll stay.”
A line appears between her eyebrows, and it’s so close to the expression Morven just gave me that I want to laugh. “Janneth,” she says. “You must leave. I don’t want you to see…” She looks down, and I see at last the dagger belted to her waist. It is sheathed in velvet embroidered with symbols that I don’t recognize; the faint sliver of the blade visible above the sheath is dark and dull. Iron.
The only iron I’ve ever seen in Faerie.
