Page 1 of Sweetling
Prologue
Magic crackled like sparks through the dry tinder of a summertime forest, bursting and popping across the pavilion with the zing of an electric storm. The overwhelming scent of petrichor clutched at Allarion’s throat as magic swirled in blue spirals through the marble columns and decorative cypresses.
For one horrible moment, everything stilled—the petals from the many cherry and apple blossoms hung in midair, the magic whorls stopped to sparkle with a macabre gleam, even the stars in the night sky seemed to cease shining.
Then, with all the force and devastation of a thunderclap, a crimson drop of blood fell from the vicious Fae Queen’s claws.
Her eyes, darker than a starless night and deeper than the bottomless pits that haunted this world, tracked as Maxim fell to his knees before her, a hole the very size and shape of her clawed hand gaping in his chest. Allarion watched his dearest friend’s heart beat one last time, exposed to the air and ripped to shreds by the Queen’s claws, then—
A horrid gurgling escaped Maxim’s throat, and the Queen swiped her wicked claws across that, too. Blood dribbled down his ruined front, and finally, Maxim slumped back onto the white stone pavers. His final breath was an agonized groan, and with the last of his last strength, he reached out to his human mate, dead already on the ground beside him.
The Queen had begun the day and her cruel plan with Aine, capturing her after years of trying to discover Maxim’s secret. The human woman had suffered torment after torment as the Queen’s plaything, but she refused to forsake her mate and child. Her bravery was seared across Allarion’s soul, having witnessed every terrible moment as the day passed and they waited for Maxim to come for his mate.
He indeed came. Alone.
Maxim stood before their Queen and declared her a traitor and a tyrant.
“You should have passed the crown long ago, crone. No one may say it, but all here know I speak true.”
The glamour veiling the Queen’s true face trembled, revealing a glimpse of a skeletal, haggard visage. Those perfect red lips had smiled just below sockets sunk deep and a shriveled nose. Black veins stood in relief against papery skin, and eyes gone milky with too much seen glared out.
In that moment, any who may have doubted it knew for certain—Maxim was right. Their Queen was corroded by magic, rotting from the inside.
The fae were the only folk left who could wield magic. It imbued everything, the ground, the trees, the rivers—it wove through the very fabric of the world.
Magic gave dragons and manticores their dual forms. Magic gave orcs their superior strength. Magic gave sirens their songs.
Yet none of them could see it nor even remembered it was magic that made them. Only the fae now could see these threads and harness them.
It was a gift and a burden. They had lived alongside it so long, used it in so many ways, the fae were now inextricably tied to magic. They needed it to sustain not just their long lives but their very existence. They did not drink. They did not eat. Magic and air were the only sustenance they needed.
Yet, this came at a terrible price. Magic would eventually corrode every fae from the inside out, like blades left too long to rust. Even the most powerful among them, their Queen, wasn’t immune. Exposed to the many tendrils and tethers that tied every fae to their ancestral lands, the raw power of magic was more dangerous to those who wielded it most.
The magic was shared amongst every fae, a circuit of shared burden that spread the tremendous strength of it. But that circuit needed a center, and that center had to be replenished for the health of them all. A Queen, no matter how powerful, couldn’t rule forever.
Century after century, for millennia, each Queen had passed her rule to a daughter or niece before sailing to the Twins, a set of islands off the coast of the faelands. There, she took the stone sleep, returning to the earth and rejoining the magic that threaded the world.
Amaranthe hadn’t.
She refused to give up her rule. She slew her own daughters, nieces, and sisters. Allarion had to wonder—had the magic corroded her, or had the rot always existed inside her. In the end, it didn’t matter, for the Fae Queen had long since outlasted her rule, festering magic and acidic ambition melding into a toxic sludge that inhabited the throne.
The fae withered as the magic soured within them, but none dared speak against her, the hub of every spoke in the faelands.
Until Maxim and Aine.
Allarion couldn’t turn away from their forms, their sightless gazes fixed on each other. Aine’s torture had lasted for agonizing hours—Maxim’s battle with Queen Amaranthe had lasted perhaps a handful of moments.
He’d known he stood no chance against a Fae Queen, not one as old and ruthless as Amaranthe. Magic oozed from her every glamoured pore, and she didn’t hesitate to use it viciously.
Without any to support him and stand against their Queen, Maxim had been dead the moment he entered the pavilion. All of them, a representative of every family residing in Fallorian summoned to witness Aine’s destruction, knew it. Still Maxim came for his mate, to be with her in their last moments. It was a sacrifice he’d predicted long ago, and both he and Aine accepted it.
With them would die their most precious secret—the location of their child. A half-fae child who’d foreseen the demise of Amaranthe and her court.
Or so the Fae Queen thought.
It’d been a carefully laid ploy Maxim and Allarion made years ago, one Allarion hadn’t liked making or speaking of. Sitting in the kitchen of the seaside home Maxim kept for Aine and their daughter, it hadn’t seemed like danger lurked close enough to make such plans. Sitting in that kitchen, listening to the women laugh and the waves crash against the cliffs below, Allarion hadn’t wanted to believe anything could touch this little sliver of paradise, even Amaranthe.
That was Allarion’s folly.
