Page 70 of The Beast King's Bride

I go very still. “Is he… Maab, if you did anything to him…”

Cackling with glee, she allows me to lower her to the ground. “You should have seen your face. He is alive. I want him to see you before your time is up. See you on a leash. See you crawl on your knees. Begging for your life. Begging for the lives of your subjects. That will be sweet.”

I swallow bile. “The game isn’t over,” I say.

“Isn’t it? Give me one reason why I shouldn’t take over here and now.” Still holding my hands, she bares her sharp teeth at me. “I thought you said you found the answer to my riddle, the answer to the curse, but then, if that is the case… where is the girl?”

“You mean Princess Elayne,” I say.

“That is no answer. You can’t keep avoiding my questions.” She releases my hands, leaving red welts on the backs of them, then pulls my braid over my shoulder and strokes it, a pensive look on her face, the gesture oddly, shockingly intimate. Then she turns to face the prostrate crowd. “If she is your answer, then why isn’t she here, proving she cares? Maybe she isn’t the right girl, after all. You misread the riddle, got the answer wrong.”

“It is the right girl,” I say with numb lips—because she can taste lies and if I lie it is all lost—but she only cocks her head to the side, licks her lips.

“You believe that,” she says and the crowd starts to sit up as her attention returns to me. “You believe in this Elayne. But that still doesn’t mean that she is the right one. Where. Is. She?”

There is only one answer to that question—that Ash chose not to come, did not care enough, does not care for me or my kingdom. Ash is not the right one, no matter what I think.

But right then there is a susurrus, a commotion, and the crowd starts to part from here to the door—the Lesser Faeries, the ogres, the goblins. Even the griffin turns its great eagle head to look as the guards at the door part, and I cannot help the hope flaring in my chest, leaving me breathless because there she is, dressed in the same royal blue as I am, her chestnut hair swept back, her eyes fixed on me.

Ash is here.

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