Page 28 of The Queen The Fae Forgot
Thatcaught me off guard.
“You think I could bring a human here under any other circumstance and have a single fae care whether she lived or died?” he asked, only further serving to muddle the image that had been forming so clear in my mind. “You think she would be safe, anywhere, even with me—unless everyone around me thought that I cared about her enough to make them fear touching her?”
It was a fair answer. Too fair.
So I asked, plainly, what really concerned me.
“But do you love her?”
The arms holding mine went rigid. He hesitated, and that meant everything.
“Do you love my sister, your betrothed?” I asked again, and with the second question, his hesitation only grew more obvious.
I saw the way he fought whatever word was trying to force its way off his tongue.
Before he could answer me, however, that thing I’d felt approaching was suddenly upon us. In the silence of his struggle, I heard the footsteps on the other side of the door too late—and when the door finally opened, shattering the moment and bringing us back to reality, I knew that Icarus’ earlier premonition had been right.
Fate had arrived, and there was no escaping its grasp.
Ada, my sister, stood in the door just as Icarus finally gave me my answer.
“No.”
But it was too late. I’d felt the bond of my glamour break before the word was spoken, and I knew it for what it was.
I knew what that meant.
I knew why he struggled.
And that was why I fled.
CHAPTERTEN
He loved her.
Ada might not know I was once her sister, but if she hadn’t viewed me as an enemy before, she had to now. I’d seen the look on her face when she saw me and Icarus together. I’d been found in far more compromising positions with Icarus before, but this time felt different.
This time felt so much worse.
It didn’t matter that this time I was fully clothed, not when our intentions, that heat between us that radiated like the Midsommar sun, were all too obvious.
Even knowing that, feeling that shame and frustration and disappointment, and the betrayal of my sister was still not the thought that repeated itself over and over inside the darkest, echoing corners of my brain.
He loved her.
Icarus, the dark fae, loved my sister, Ada.
No bond between us, fate or otherwise, could trump that.
I felt hollow, emptied out, desperate. But more than that, I felt alone.
So, I fled towards the one place I still felt safe, the one place I knew I should have gone straight away. I never should have gone to Icarus. He’d left me only more confused, more muddled, my thoughts wound so tight that it was hard to see where one ended and the next began.
I ran through the castle, ignoring the guards and courtiers that shot me strange looks. I was too focused on getting to Shiel’s rooms, too determined not to let the chorus of voices in my head get to me, first. There was no bond between me and Shiel that could lead me to him, not like the one that had taken me so easily to the dark fae’s side.
Knowing that only served to humiliate me further.
My feet led me down winding corridors and up staircases until finally I found myself outside his door. It took me too long to get there, too long to follow the trail of whispers and wrong turns until I finally succumbed to demanding directions from a guard.
