“Goodbye, son.”
She disappears in a flash of light, my sister with her.
For a long, pain-filled moment, Sebastian stares at the spot where she just stood, and Riaan watches him from his corner of this too small cell.
“Riaan?” Sebastian’s voice is deadly quiet as he turns to his friend. “You told her about Abriella.
She knew all this time.”
Riaan disappears and then reappears outside the cell. I had no idea he had that power, but now I realize that’s how he got us away from Kane. How they got us here. “I had no choice. She’s my queen, and soon she will be queen of all. At this very moment we’re sitting in a fortress built above the River of Ice. We’re positioned exactly between the courts. That way, when the Unseelie Court dies completely, when the last bit of its power has trickled to Queen Arya’s side, she will be prepared with Mab’s blood, prepared to reunite both halves to create a whole.”
“There’s nothing whole about a kingdom when half of it was destroyed for greed and power,”
Sebastian says.
Riaan’s back in the cell in a flash, right in Sebastian’s face. He plunges a needle into his arm, and Sebastian sags. “That’s better,” Riaan murmurs. “She wanted you more lucid for your little talk, but you can rest now.”
“You were supposed to be my friend,” Sebastian says, each word weaker than the last.
Riaan’s mouth is a flat, angry line. “And you were supposed to be king. You were supposed to put that first—above all else. Instead, you saved her.” He points a shaking finger at me. “You should’ve known this would happen. You should never have risked it. You were a fool. And now you’re a fool with a useless crown.” He sneers at his friend one last time before he disappears.
Sebastian collapses against the wall and closes his eyes.
I reach for him, hoping to offer him the little comfort I can, but I barely manage to move a single finger.
I’m in a tomb.
For the first time in my life, the darkness is not my friend.
I can’t move.
I can barely breathe.
My dreams are my only refuge.
Time has no meaning. I’m a child in the womb. I’m an old woman on her deathbed. I’m a shell holding nothing but decay.
Have days passed? Years?
I try to measure time through the mechanical whir of each new injection, each new dose of toxin.
Until I don’t wake. Until I can’t. I’m trapped in unconsciousness. Trapped in a body locked in an iron tomb.
I can’t even call this limbo sleep. There is nothingness. There is fear. But that hidden part of me, my shadow self, she stretches like a cat in the corner of my mind, slinks along the perimeter of this cage, cries to be set free.
Mab used her shadow self without her power, but mine refuses.
I reach for her and miss. I beg her to save me, and she laughs in my face.
Chapter Thirty
Use it, Abriella. Wake her up. Set her free.
The voice is one I recognize. One I traveled to the Underworld to hear.
She has power, the voice tells me. Don’t be afraid.
“Can’t,” I rasp into the darkness, but even as I say it, I’m reaching for my power, begging the shadows to play.
Accept the darkness, and she will wake, and she will serve you.
I’ve spent most of my life needing to be the very best version of myself. First for my sister and then for this realm I didn’t even understand. Nine years ago, after my father died and I was spared, after my mother left Jas and me to fend for ourselves in the mortal realm, I didn’t have time for grief or resentment, so I forced it down. Every selfish want and need was shoved to the side as I tried to protect my sister.
I was never good like Jas. I’m bitter and blackened, like the charred remnants of my childhood home. But Jas’s goodness—her sweetness and her joy—it was something worth fighting for. And I fought for years, giving my sleep, my health, even my life to protect that goodness.
Loving Abriella. Devoted Abriella. Caring, dutiful Abriella.
Mab wasn’t saying that I’m goodness personified. She was saying my power comes from being more than that. From my anger and my hurt. From my bitterness and charred edges.
My mother was trying to protect us by trading her life for seven years of our protection, but she still walked away.
Sebastian was trying to do what he thought was right for the Unseelie Court when he tricked me into the bond, but he still stole my human life.
And Finn . . . Finn, who deserves happiness and love unfettered by this mess we’ve found ourselves in. Even Finn planned to abandon me to protect his own heart, and I love him so much that I didn’t argue that I need him close, that I’ve lost too much already to give up the happiness I feel when he’s near me.