Page 107 of Court of Lies and Deceit

“We were never going to win,” Isera snaps back, her calm façade at last shattering. “We need the Unseelie Court if we’re going to even stand a chance against the entire fucking Iceheart Dynasty.”

“We agreed to—” I begin, but she cuts me off.

“I don’t care. This was my decision, and I made it.”

“But it was not your decision to make!” The words tear from my chest so violently that I have to suck in a deep breath to refill my lungs. Anger and frustration course through me as I stare at her while raking both hands through my hair. “Fuck. After Lavendera, I thought I was done getting double-crossed by people I thought was my friend.”

“I am not your friend,” she growls back at me. “I don’t have any friends. I don’t have anyone. No parents. No partner. Nofriends. No one I love and no one who loves me.” She stabs her hand at us all. “And that is why I am the only person in this whole dysfunctional fucking group who can make the tactical decisions we need without letting emotions get in the way.”

“It has nothing to do with emotions! It has to do with trust. And common fucking sense! There is no way in hell we’ll be able to win whatever twisted game that Orion comes up with for us.”

“That’s just a risk we’re going to have to take. Weneedthe Unseelie Court.”

“We alsoneedour freedom.”

“Freedom is worthless without revenge. Or have you forgotten what they did to us in there?”

“Of course I haven’t. But you didn’t even give us a choice this time. You chose for us!”

“Because it’s the right choice!”

“Foryou! What about?—”

“You don’t understand!” she screams the words at me. At us all. So shockingly loud that the windows rattle.

Her chest heaves, and her eyes are wild and desperate and so out of control that I actually stagger a step back. I have never seen her this unhinged before.

And then something inside her seems to justcrack.

Pain floods her face. Pain and heartbreak and guilt so deep it could’ve drowned the world.

“You don’t understand,” she repeats, her voice breaking on that last word. “I hated her.” She draws in a shuddering breath, her eyes desolate as she looks back at us. “I spent a hundred and fifty years hating her.”

It takes a moment for my brain to catch up with this change in topic. Her? Who?

Then it clicks.

Oh. Elena Shaw. Her mother. She won the last Atonement Trials a hundred and fifty years ago, and before she left, she tolda ten-year-old Isera that she was coming back for her. But of course, she never did.

“And while I was hating her, she wasthere!” Isera stabs her hand towards the wall where somewhere far beyond, the Ice Palace sits on the roots of the mountain above the city of Frostfell. “Suffering. Being drained of magic and tortured and humiliated. And she was thinking about me!”

Her voice breaks again, and she sucks in another unsteady breath. Her blue and silver eyes are storms of emotion as she stares desperately at us all.

“And what did I do?” Pain pulses in her eyes. “While she was being tortured and humiliated and while she was thinking about me, what did I do? I was wishing her misfortune! Once I realized that she wasn’t coming back, I spent a hundred and forty-three years praying every day that her life was fucking awful.”

A sob rips from her chest. Then her knees buckle, and she crashes down on the ground. Bracing one hand on the smooth wooden floor for support, she presses the other over her mouth as more sobs tear from her throat.

“All this time, I hated her for abandoning me.” Tears stream down her face. “But she didn’t. She was trapped there, being tortured and humiliated, and suffering. And I hated her.” She chokes out the words. “She died with me hating her.”

For a few seconds, we all just stand there as if frozen in time, staring at her in shock.

My heart beats hard against my ribs. This is why she was catatonic those first few weeks in the Ice Palace. Not because we were prisoners or because of what the Icehearts were doing to her. But because she realized what had really happened to her mother.

Pain tightens around my chest, and I take a hesitant step towards her. “Isera?—”

“No,” she snaps, cutting me off.

Her eyes flash with fury again as she forcefully wipes the tears off her cheeks and struggles to her feet. That fury crackles across her whole face like ice until she once more looks like a Goddess of Death who has clawed her way out of hell to rain death and destruction down on whoever is unfortunate enough to cross her path.

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