Page 96 of What did you do?

“Noooo!” I screamed.

I landed on the floor, but it felt like my heart had dropped further. Agonizing sorrow took hold of me while I struggled to breathe. My mind eventually defaulted to an all-too-familiar numbness as I stared at the dangling tooth—mydangling tooth.

“Fantastic. I want whatever is left of his head. Tell Victor to make a display by the throne so everyone can see the Smoke Slayers are all gone for good—well almost,” she said, looking at me with a smile. “Take her to Malvar.”

The guards stalked to where I had backed myself into a corner. I let them take me without a struggle, scenes from my childhood and my time in Unseelie playing over and over again as I stared at the woman I had fought so hard to please all these years for nothing.Nothing.

One of the guards roughly gripped my bare ass as they shoved me out the door. I didn’t care.

Tenebris was dead. Mendax was dead. My mother was dead, Adrianna was dead, soon I would be dead.

Eli would be dead too.

I wasn’t an official Seelie, and my time was running out. I wouldn’t get my heart back in time.

I had nothing.

I was nothing.

24

THE PAST

Caly

“Meet me back here at three or you’ll sleep in the alleyway again,” Commander Von barked out the window of the rusty Buick LeSabre.

The lights from the yellow and purple neon signs glinted off his shaved head, my own mousy reflection staring back from his aviator sunglasses. Responding only with a solemn nod, I stepped back, into a puddle where the glistening black asphalt had crumbled away.

The large fae removed his hands from the steering wheel with an emphatic drop to his lap.

It had only been a few months since Commander had taken Cecelia’s place in the home, but I had already learned not to give him access to my back.

He looked out over the top of his aviators in a silent dare as I glared at him.

“What did they do?” I asked hesitantly.

This had been the first hit I had struggled with. It was a double tonight: two elves who had done something to cross thequeen, what I didn’t know. That wasn’t the part I was struggling with though. It was an elderly couple that ran a bar in a less-than-ideal part of the city.

Pain radiated across my face, and I fell back onto the gritty pavement with an animallike cry.

“It’s not your job to know why; it’s your job to know their weakness and how to kill them. Do not question the queen’s reasoning again.” Commander pulled back the hand that had just punched me in the face and wiped it across the front of his shirt before driving away, leaving me curled up in a fetal position on the ground. The late-night drizzle had picked up once again, slowly covering my black dress in a heavy dampness.

“Hey!” the scary fae shouted only a few feet from where he’d taken off. “Bring me back her tongue, or I’ll use yours again!” His deep, throaty laugh traveled on the wind as he drove away.

I lay in the puddle and cried. For how long, I had no idea. Time had been different ever since Mom and Adrianna left me. Everything felt endless and long. It was getting harder and harder to stick with the plan, but every time I felt like crying and breaking, I knew I couldn’t.

I would never get back up, and then I’d die a dopey human.

I thought Saracen had started to have doubts about me going to Seelie. Last week she had shown up right when I was dragging that Peter kid’s body into the woods.

“I didn’t order this hit,” she said, crossing her arms and tapping her foot.

“I know—he said I didn’t have any parents because I was so ugly,” I responded flatly.

“We agreed that you would stop killing everything that looks at you sideways once training began. That was the deal if you wanted to be my assassin here. I had no idea what a vicious, little thing you were,” Saracen scolded. “I’m starting to wonder if you are a demon of Tartarus, instead of a peaceful Artemi!I thought you were just angry about your mother’s and sister’s deaths. It was a great idea for me to have an assassin here, and I thought it would help you let out a little anger, but I’m starting to worry you’re too dark, child. When your powers come, you will be an absolute weapon of destruction if you continue like this. You’re ten and already have the countenance of some of the most horrendous fae I know.I could never trust that you wouldn’t turn your powers and hate against me.”

I froze. I had thought this would work.

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