Page 15 of The Queen The Fae Forgot
“We stand beside you, Princess. Your Highness. Aurra.”
All three of them moved slightly towards me as. They rose. Finch was clearly itching to swoop in and leave a kiss on my parted lips, but he—somehow—managed to restrain himself.
Zev, meanwhile, had pressed his hand to his chest, to the place where his tattoo should have already faded, but from the look in his eyes, he still felt the racing of my heart alongside his own.
Shiel’s hand reached out to cup my chin, tilting it up slightly so he could once again hold my gaze.
“Everything about our world is likely to come undone in the days to follow. But know this. Whatever that may be, whatever may come, I stand beside you. We stand beside you. I meant the promise I made to you in the Southern Court, Aurra. My men and I, we make a promise with you again. We will stand beside you to the very end, whatever end that may be.”
Surprisingly, I believed it. I believed his promise. I believed him.
I’d once made a promise myself, never to trust a fae.
I was about to break that promise, and more surprising still, I was not afraid.
CHAPTERSIX
A new silencefollowed us on the way to the queen’s chambers.
I was grateful, at first, that we weren’t once again led to the echoing cavern of the throne room—right up until we crowded into the far more intimate breakfast salon where I was expected to join her, and somehow found the closeness of our quarters even more intimidating.
The queen’s wing was decorated with lavish furnishings, the walls adorned with intricate tapestries that depicted scenes from stories much like the one that had terrified me so much back in the Southern Court. They were as brutal as they were beautiful, contrasting against the bright, crisp white of the palace walls. At least the scattered red of the rubies inlaid into the windows painted the floors and walls with an appropriate scatter of blood-red streaks.
The queen sat at the head of a low table, her posture relaxed in a way that wasn’t so disarming as it was unnerving, mostly thanks to her once-again unreadable expression. She was a regal figure, still, with her sharp features and piercing eyes trained on me in that way that seemed to see right through me.
She was a stunning sight, even now, draped in a silk dressing gown adorned with so many jewels that they almost seemed to weigh her down. Her hair was pulled back in an intricate braid, and her lips were painted a deep, blood-red, though the hour was still early. The color had smudged slightly at the corner of her mouth, the red transferred to tips of her fingers, now lowering back down to the rim of a bowl of dark dried fruit.
“Ah, my daughter, welcome,” she said, the sound of that so unnerving, too, on her tongue, that it was all I could do to stop the tight tendrils of fear from racing down the full length of my spine. It didn’t sound like a term of endearment when she said it. It sounded more like a threat. “So glad to see you’re awake. Eckhardt and I had just begun to worry that you might not.”
Of course, she sounded anything butworriedat the idea.
The very sight of me standing before her seemed to disappoint her to her very core, to the place where even the most carefully controlled emotions couldn’t stop the smallest of sighs from slipping between her lips as her eyes lifted for a second from mine to the three fae standing at my back.
“And I see you’ve brought your loyal guard dogs.”
I was half surprised Shiel didn’t draw his sword at that.
He stood unphased, unmoving, this posture as rigid as a statue completely unaware of the disrespect being hurled his way.
“And I’m surprised you didn’t.”
The response rolled off my own tongue as I glanced up at the noticeably vacant space over my mother’s own shoulder—the place where my flame-haired uncle usually resided.
When her eyes flickered back to mine, I swore I saw for a moment all that rage and hate that she’d briefly shown me back in the throne room. It swelled up in a single spark, the heat of it burning so bright I thought it was about to burst into flame.
I felt a sudden urge to run, to flee from this place and the weight of her gaze, but I pushed it down. I had come too far to back down now. From the way I felt Zev’s hand on my lower back, just for a moment, I knew he felt it too, even if it was just through that bond of ink between us.
His touch calmed me, erasing the momentary panic just as quickly as that spark extinguished in the queen’s eyes and was once again replaced by a glare so blank it was almost as uniquely terrifying.
“You should be careful how you speak of what little blood you have left, it’s only because of that blood that you stand here, before me, at all.”
This time, I did feel the others stiffen.
But before my fae guardians could be forced to defend me, the queen held out her hand and gestured towards the empty seat across from her.
“I didn’t call you here to exchange insults, I came here to discuss the way forward. So, please … sit.”
When I didn’t immediately move, Shiel stepped forward, his hand on my back as he guided me towards the table. I felt a jolt of electricity shoot through me at his touch, and I wondered if he felt it too. It was enough to snap me back to my senses and force me to clear my head as took my seat, however reluctantly, still. My eyes never left the queen. They remained locked on her, looking for any slight shift I could read. I saw nothing, but that didn’t stop me from feeling the tension in the air, as thick and suffocating as it had been the day we arrived.
