And then, against my will, my own hand would plunge a dagger into his heart, and I’d scream.
I heard the lock slide open on the door and sat up. I didn’t want to look desperate for water, to let Morgant know how happy I was to see him, but it was hard to hide my relief.
Except when I saw him standing in the doorway, I found him empty-handed.
I arched an eyebrow. “I see you’re starving me again.”
“It was the Queen’s orders.”
“Why?”
A line formed between his brows. “She said that if you don’t have magic, you are no good to her.”
“Then why are you here?” I asked sharply.
“The queen plans to throw you off the top of the tower.”
I rose on shaking legs, staring at him. “She promised to let me go if I killed Torin.”
He’d gone completely still, like a beast of prey, and his amber eyes had darkened to a caramel shade. “She will let you go, as promised. But she will throw you from the tower first.”
Darkness flickered through me, and Torin’s blue eyes burned in my mind, framed by black lashes. “What did you do with Torin’s body?”
If I could figure out how to return to Faerie, maybe I could wrap him in a blanket and return the broken king.
“We’ve kept him where everyone can see him,” said Morgant.
A hot violence coiled through me.
Behind Morgant’s head, the thorny vines writhed and snaked over the stone walls.
Morgant’s eyes darted as he caught the movement, and his muscles tensed. I didn’t give him a moment longer to think.
Love makes us do terrible things…
I flicked my wrist, and the sharp tendrils snapped around his throat, drawing blood. My lip curled back from my teeth as I sent the vines surging upward.
Morgant kicked his legs in the air, and I stepped back. A river of magic flowed into my body, surging from the tree roots upward and washing the fatigue from my limbs.
“Morgant, I plan to make this hurt until you tell me what I want. And if you do tell me the answers I’m looking for, I will let you live. Where is the Sword of Whispers?”
His face had turned beet-red, and his feet slammed against the stones. I flicked my wrist, uncoiling the vines to let him drop on the floor. He fell hard, with a crunch. “I learned my interrogation techniques from you, Morgant. Thanks for that.” My tone sounded acidic. The vines coiled around his throat again. “How do I get out of the Court of Sorrows?”
He coughed and reached for his bleeding throat. I tightened the noose around his neck again, choking him until his face started to turn purple.
“One more chance, Morgant. How do I get out of this kingdom?”
When the vines loosened enough for him to talk, he said, “The Veiled One, Cala, can tell you. She’s here in the castle. The Sword of Whispers is here, too. Everything you want is in the castle. Cala is in the Dusk Tower, to the west.” His blood poured onto the ground. “We’re not like the Seelie. They live for pleasure. We live for duty. Our strength comes through love.”
It was such a startling declaration that I couldn’t bring myself to finish the job of directing these plants to rip him in two.
Or maybe it was the small kindness he’d shown me by bringing me a bath and soap.
But that moment’s hesitation gave him the chance to rise from the ground, reaching for me, and it happened almost without me realizing I was doing it. The earth began to shake, and stones topped from the walls. The enormous tree that formed half my prison cell was groaning, shifting. The towering cell rumbled around us, and stones tumbled from the walls. Morgant’s arms flew over his head, shielding himself.
That was all the time I needed to slip past him and into the castle tunnels, to taste freedom on my lips.
I breathed in deeply, sprinting through the dungeon’s corridor .
I hoped I was ready for this because I still felt as though most of my power was entombed by rock, desperate to break free.
Heat and tingles raced down my shoulder blades.
26
SHALINI
Ice and snow clung to the trees around the cabin. In the remote forest, everything around me was encased in white. The snow turned the trees into misshapen mounds like frozen ghosts. And the fact that I’d started talking to the frozen ghosts was probably a good indication that I was spending too much time by myself.
In the cabin, I kept imagining that the frozen dead surrounded me. Long icicles hung from the tree boughs like ragged spirits. They glistened in the sunlight, making the boughs bend under their weight, until a frozen gust swept through, sending an icicle crashing to the ground with a hollow thud. Every time that happened, I jumped.