Page 133 of Wrath of the Fae Queen
In their center lie the people dearest to my heart.
My eyes fly to Aldrin, collapsed on the floor.His normally tanned skin is deathly pale, with black streaks of poison crawling across it in jagged, branching lines, slowly growing. They even mark the whites of his eyes. Blood trickles out of his mouth as he attempts to drag himself across the ground toward Titania, his fingers digging into the grout between the tiles, but he is too weak to make much progress.
Silent tears pour down my face, but I am too stunned to move.
I can’t even breathe.
My heart is breaking.
Around Aldrin are our closest friends, all dying from the toxins circulating in their blood. Cyprien keeps trying to pull himself up on his hands and knees but collapses each time. Silvan and Jasper clasp hands, one coughing up blood while the other fumbles and fails to grasp the hilt of a dagger strapped to his lover. Hawthorne and Lilly don’t even move. Klara stares at her husband with unfocused eyes, an arm outreached toward him, and Drake goes absolutely wild within his cage.
I can’t drag my eyes away from Aldrin.
This can’t be how it ends for us.
I will not exist in a world where he does not live, but I cannot see a way out of this. I can’t allow the villain to win in my story, though, even if I have to give everything to stop her. Even if I die expending myself.
Fury rises within me, boiling my blood, tightening my muscles for a fight, awakening the feral beast that is my magic.
They cannot continue to abuse people without consequences. To take and take, bleeding dry all the good in the world. People like them do not deserve to live, and I will be their judge and executioner.
This fucking cagewill nothold me back.
I roar with frustration as I grip the bars, thrusting my flaring magic into them. I scream with agony that tears through my body and rips my heart into pieces. The sound is animalistic.
I have never felt more feral in my life.
I want to tear the world apart with teeth and claws. I want to burn it all to the ground.
My blood races through me, burning me from the inside out and turning to pure fire.
Aldrin stares simmering fury at Titania, but freezes his slow crawl toward her when he hears me. He turns, horror dawning on his face as our eyes lock. At the fact that I will witness his downfall. He tries to speak, but nothing comes out.
My magic flares brighter at the way his eyes widen, then glaze over. It is a monstrosity I can no longer control. Raw power gushes from my fingertips. There is so much filling up my cage that it rushes around me in bright orange torrents. I generate more as the cage greedily drinks it up, every bar of its golden structure illuminated.
Leonardo steps out of that crowd of soldiers, Belladonna and Valentine flanking him. I could murder them all for betraying us.
The Starlight King’s dark eyebrows are slashed down over his face and his lips are pressed into a thin line. “You made apromise that there wouldn’t be an audience.” He throws an arm out to indicate myself, Drake and Sasha.
“An audience? To what? Your betrayal?” Titania laughs with glee. “That was never a part of the bargain, and I just couldn’t help myself. I do love a good show, and what is better than making my prisoners watch their loved ones die?”
The Starlight King has enough conscience to cringe. “This is no betrayal. As far as I see it, this is one leader helping another catch a fugitive. You did say the election was falsified, the civil unrest caused by these fae.”
Titania rolls her eyes. “Yes, yes, yes. All that and more.”
Leonardo glances down at Aldrin with something like disgust on his face, curling his lips to reveal fangs, then back to Titania, the expression not changing. “You view the attack of the Assassins of Belladonna and Nightmares at your…ballas an insult from my court, and I have assured you that they were never under my rule. That the entire league defected from the Starlight Court. But I would like you to take this offering of your enemies as a royal apology and a gesture of my goodwill. Let us clean the slate between us for an ongoing alliance.”
An ongoing alliance.
He promised the same damned thing to Aldrin.
My anger flares to unknown heights, making me shake with adrenaline. Sizzling smoke rises from where my hands grip the golden bars, but I don’t know if it is my flesh that burns or the enchanted metal. I can hardly see through the waves of my magic that thrash around me, distorting the air like steam, but it almost appears like the bars are warped.
The entire world could end right now, this realm could combust, and I wouldn’t care so long as I got to hold Aldrin one last time. So long as I could save him.
I would give it all up for that chance.
“Like this bargain doesn’t benefit you!” Titania’s aggravated voice reaches me, seeming disembodied because I cannot drag my gaze away from Aldrin. “What about the term where the Spring Court can never wage war on the Starlight Court in my lifetime? Or shall we speak of the hefty trade agreement with both Spring crops and human goods that practically robs me blind?”
