Page 95 of A Bargain with the Fae King

No.I step back, my brows winkling. It can’t be. They’re nothing alike, not in appearance or voice. She even feels different. There’s something though, an echo of recognition deep within me. This woman…

All at once, the pieces click into place. “You’re the witch!”

She folds and unfolds her hands in front of her. “They called me that. Yes.”

My pulse hammers in my throat.

“But how? You’re…” Super old. Dead. Not here.

She drifts nearer. “You seek the stone,” she says, ignoring me.

“Yes.”

Her head bobs as if in a nod. And then she turns, drifting down the path away from me.

“Wait!” I sprint after her.

She turns the corner. I follow.

My steps falter as we enter a wide circle with many paths leading off from it. Along one wall, the only one that’s not an opening, is a marble statue resembling the witch.

“You may ask one question,” her words ring through the clearing, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once.

One. I notch my chin higher. There’s only one that matters. “How do I find the stone?”

“That is your choice.”

My… I gape. “Wait, that doesn’t make sense.”

She turns and drifts away, heading for her statue.

“Wait!” Shit. No. That can’t be my only clue. I race toward her.

Her form begins to merge into the marble.

“Why did you curse the stone?” I blurt.

Her fading form halts, and so do I.

“You closed their doors and hid the stone to hurt them,” I shout. “Why?”

She turns and floats a few steps toward me. It takes everything I have to stand my ground. Tendrils of cold ghost along my skin before she says, “No one has asked me that.”

“I’m asking. Tell me…sister.”

Her form rises and falls as if in a sigh. “I loved a fae. A king.”

I barely stifle my gasp.

“My family rejoiced when he took me as his consort. He gave me gifts, paraded me in front of his court. He even built this maze for me here at my favorite home.”

A love story. My chest grows tight. She loved him. Then how…

“But he never loved me.” The hard, bitter edge that slips into her voice cuts at me. “He used me for his pleasure, his magic. I was nothing to him but a means to power.” Her eyes darken, going fully black as night. “He marked other fae. Took them in our bed. I could not let my sisters suffer the same fate.”

If Riven did the same to me… Bile burns my throat. “So, you stole the stone.”

Light flares from her form as she drifts higher. “It belonged to my coven. I used it, as was my right. It was ours!”

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