Page 157 of Faeling
Ravenna shook her head. “Your future holds so much. Anazai. A child. And—” this was more speculation than anything, but Ravenna again wasn’t ashamed “—I don’t think you’re the only one who escaped.”
“You’re as cruel as she is.” Leita’s words were hardly more than a whisper, but they struck Ravenna with the force of a hammer blow.
“I saw it all. You will just have to live to see it.”
A tear escaped Leita’s eye. She immediately went to wipe it away, the manacles forcing her to lift both hands.
This time, Ravenna did feel shame. She’d meant it when she told herself she had to stop being the reason for so much suffering. This…she could start with this.
Heart heavy, she reached to clasp the manacles. It was a gamble, but one she had to take.
Tracing her finger in a tight pattern, the first manacle clicked and unlocked. “They are spelled to release only by the touch of the one who locked them,” Ravenna explained as she traced over the second manacle. She wasn’t sure how the scholars had worked that out, only grateful that they had.
When the irons released into her hands, Ravenna tossed them aside.
Leita didn’t immediately spring up and run for the tent entrance, and so Ravenna pressed on.
“Now we can speak as equals.”
“Because we’re queens?” Leita derided. Her hackles were back up, her knees curled to her chest as she rubbed her wrists.
“Because we both know what it is to lose everything.” Sliding from her seat onto her knees, Ravenna took Leita’s hands in her own. The woman watched on in surprise as Ravenna bent to press her forehead into the backs of Leita’s hands, an ancient gesture of supplication and humility.
“What are you…?”
“Amaranthe has taken everything from me. My future, my peace, my parents. Now she’s taken myazai,too, the only good—” Ravenna bit back more tears, pressing her forehead harder into Leita. “I want justice. I want revenge. For my parents, for Vallek, for the girl I could have been. For you, too.”
Ravenna raised her head, unable to hold back her tears. Leita stared back at her, glassy eyes searching Ravenna’s for deception.
“We’ve been running our whole lives, the two of us. From her—but from the fates, too. I think…it’s time we stop running. I think it’s time we make our stand.”
Leita shook her head slowly, her expression troubled. Uncertain.
A frantic, dangerous kind of fluttering hope seized in Ravenna’s chest.
“I’veseen it,Leita,” she said, hearing the desperation in her own voice. Her throat clogged with it, with more tears, with theneed to make her understand. “You will live. I swear it. You will live and she will die. I’ve seen it. All my life, I’ve seen her fall.”
“What about you?” Leita murmured.
“I don’t know. I don’t care, so long as Vallek is safe.” Squeezing Leita’s hands, she begged, “Please. Please help me. I know now I can’t kill her alone. But together—together we can do it. We can end this.”
Leita swallowed hard. “You swear you saw myazai?”
“Yes.”
“On your mate’s life, you swear it?”
“Yes!”
Leita squeezed Ravenna’s hands back. “And you swear, on his life, that you have seen Amaranthe die?”
“Yes.”
All the breath seemed to rush out of Leita’s lungs at once, her back bowing as she leaned over Ravenna. Magic rushed around them, slithering under every blanket, pot, and chair, writhing up every tent post, and wrapping round Ravenna’s wrists and ankles. Leita held her there with magic, a tendril winding round Ravenna’s throat, as she gazed into her eyes.
Ravenna held still, allowing this powerful fae to do as she liked. She could look and take what she needed.
Leita’s eyes glowed eerily, and in their ghoulish light, Ravenna saw the shadow of her kinswoman. The power of a royal fae, even uncrowned, was terrible, a force equaled only by nature itself.
