Terror charged through me.
I’d misjudged his speed. His instincts were quicker than a snake’s. Too fast for me to be able to catch him off guard. I’d even stabbed him, but it hadn’t been enough. My heart pulsed. I’d had one chance. I would never get another.
I glanced at Raven. She gaped up at me, tears streaming down her face.
“Run,” I whispered, but she stayed right where she was. She knew just as well as I did that she’d never get away. We were both trapped.
“Apologies to my court.” King Oberon spoke in a booming voice that shook with power. “You were provided with a just reward for your loyalty and service to me. Unfortunately, my betrothed thinks she can defy me.”
The watching court responded with brutal silence.
It made my skin itch. After the past hour of constant, overwhelming sound, the lack of it now seemed to creep into my bones, scraping the very core of me.
The king leaned down, pulled me tighter against him, and hissed into my ear. “You don’t seem to understand your place here, mortal. You and your kind are nothing more than vessels. If I say you do not have names, you do not have names. If I say that a member of my court may use one of you to procreate, then he may. I have warned you. I have given you a chance to obey. Everything that happens now is your doing.”
He nodded toward the back corner of the wall where Morgan stood with an ashen face, her hand on the hilt of her sword. “Kill the mortal.”
I sucked in a breath and tried to yank my wrists out of his impossible grip. Despite what Morgan had said about my safety, the king fully intended to kill me. I’d done the unthinkable—I’d tried to murder him. They’d discard me like an empty sack of grain, and then find someone more pliable. Someone they could dominate and subdue.
Morgan strode through the Great Hall, passing through the crowd of silent fae. She didn’t meet my eyes. How could she? Her blade would take my life. Morgan had tried to pretend that she stood apart from the rest of them, but when it mattered, she was everything they were. And more.
She was the king’s sword.
Morgan stopped beside Raven. The fae who had surrounded her pulled the poor girl from the floor, and that was when I realized the king hadn’t meant me. Horror shook my bones.
“No,” I whispered.
“Oh, yes,” he hissed, his lavender-scented mouth against my ear. “You have forced my hand. You must see just how little you mortals matter to me.”
I fought against him, my heart raging in my chest. Raven’s terrified eyes met mine across the hall, and every single fiber of my being ached to do something, anything, to stop this.
Morgan pulled a dagger from her belt. She held it to Raven’s neck and sliced.
Blood drenched the blade, and Raven’s eyes went dark as the life left her body, faster than a breath. Morgan let go, and Raven hit the ground. I sucked in a choking gasp.
Tears blinded me. I closed my eyes and jerked my chin away.
As cheers filled the hall, revulsion roiled through me. Vomit bubbled up in the back of my throat. I couldn’t stay here. I needed to escape. They would have to kill me, then, just as they’d done to my father. I’d die before I’d marry this monster. And the anger I’d felt before was nothing compared to the rage now boiling inside of me, its gnashing teeth desperate to rip through this entire kingdom.
“Silence,” the king commanded as the cheers died down. “One more thing, just in case the mortal’s death has failed to demonstrate to my betrothed what her place is in this court. Bring out the head.”
My stomach twisted; my mind replayed the king’s words.The head, the head, the head.Terror clutched my heart. I could barely breathe.
The head.Whose head? Oh light, oh light, I didn’t want to know. I couldn’t look. I knew whoever it was would bring me to my knees.
But when the doors swung open, I couldn’t turn away.
A guard strode in, his hand fisted around a tangle of chestnut hair. Her face was dirty, bloodied, and bruised, but I’d brushed that hair so many nights that I’d know the color of it anywhere.
He threw my sister’s head right at my feet.
My legs buckled. All the fight went out of me.
The howl that ripped from my throat was the loudest human sound the court had heard in almost four hundred years.
And the king’s victorious smile was the last thing I saw before I blacked out.
Ten