“I’ve told you too much,” he said as he got to his feet. “Perhaps I should have drugged you first. If you were clever, you’d find a way to use this against me. And if you had any stomach for cruelty, you’d go to Amarantha and tell her the truth about her whore. Perhaps she’d give you Tamlin for it.” He slid his hands into the pockets of his black pants, but even as he faded into shadow, there was something in the curve of his shoulders that made me speak.
“When you healed my arm … You didn’t need to bargain with me. You could have demanded every single week of the year.” My brows knit together as he turned, already half-consumed by the dark. “Every single week, and I would have said yes.” It wasn’t entirely a question, but I needed the answer.
A half smile appeared on his sensuous lips. “I know,” he said, and vanished.
Chapter 43
For my final task, I was given my old tunic and pants—stained and torn and reeking—but despite my stench, I kept my chin high as I was escorted to the throne room.
The doors were flung open, and the silence of the room assaulted me. I waited for the jeers and shouts, waited to see gold flash as the onlookers placed their bets, but this time the faeries just stared at me, the masked ones especially intently.
Their world rested on my shoulders, Rhys had said. But I didn’t think it was worry alone that was spread across their features. I had to swallow hard as a few of them touched their fingers to their lips, then extended their hands to me—a gesture for the fallen, a farewell to the honored dead. There was nothing malicious about it. Most of these faeries belonged to the courts of the High Lords—had belonged to those courts long before Amarantha seized their lands, their lives. And if Tamlin and Rhysand were playing games to keep us alive …
I strode up the path they’d cleared—straight for Amarantha. The queen smiled when I stopped in front of her throne. Tamlin was in his usual place beside her, but I wouldn’t look at him—not yet.
“Two trials lie behind you,” Amarantha said, picking at a fleck of dust on her blood-red gown. Her black hair shone, a gleaming darkness that threatened to swallow up her golden crown. “And only one more awaits. I wonder if it will be worse to fail now—when you are so close.” She gave me a pout, and we both awaited the laughter of the faeries.
But only a few laughs hissed from the red-skinned guards. Everyone else remained silent. Even Lucien’s miserable brothers. Even Rhysand, wherever he was in the crowd.
I blinked to clear my burning eyes. Perhaps, like Rhysand’s, their oaths of allegiance and betting on my life and nastiness had been a show. And perhaps now—now that the end was imminent—they, too, would face my potential death with whatever dignity they had left.
Amarantha glared at them, but when her gaze fell upon me, she smiled broadly, sweetly. “Any words to say before you die?”
I came up with a plethora of curses, but I instead looked at Tamlin. He didn’t react—his features were like stone. I wished that I could glimpse his face—if only for a moment. But all I needed to see were those green eyes.
“I love you,” I said. “No matter what she says about it, no matter if it’s only with my insignificant human heart. Even when they burn my body, I’ll love you.” My lips trembled, and my vision clouded before several warm tears slipped down my chilled face. I didn’t wipe them away.
He didn’t react—he didn’t even grip the arms of his throne. I supposed that was his way of enduring it, even if it made my chest cave in. Even if his silence killed me.
Amarantha said sweetly, “You’ll be lucky, my darling, if we even have enough left of you to burn.”
I stared at her long and hard. But her words were not met with jeers or smiles or applause from the crowd. Only silence.
It was a gift that gave me courage, that made me bunch my fists, that made me embrace the tattoo on my arm. I had beaten her until now, fairly or not, and I would not feel alone when I died. I would not die alone. It was all I could ask for.
Amarantha propped her chin on a hand. “You never figured out my riddle, did you?” I didn’t respond, and she smiled. “Pity. The answer is so lovely.”
“Get it over with,” I growled.
Amarantha looked at Tamlin. “No final words to her?” she said, quirking an eyebrow. When he didn’t respond, she grinned at me. “Very well, then.” She clapped her hands twice.
A door swung open, and three figures—two male and one female—with brown sacks tied over their heads were dragged in by the guards. Their concealed faces turned this way and that as they tried to discern the whispers that rippled across the throne room. My knees bent slightly as they approached.
With sharp jabs and blunt shoves, the red-skinned guards forced the three faeries to their knees at the foot of the dais, but facing me. Their bodies and clothes revealed nothing of who they were.
Amarantha clapped her hands again, and three servants clad in black appeared at the side of each of the kneeling faeries. In their long, pale hands, they each carried a dark velvet pillow. And on each pillow lay a single polished wooden dagger. Not metal for a blade, but ash. Ash, because—
“Your final task, Feyre,” Amarantha drawled, gesturing to the kneeling faeries. “Stab each of these unfortunate souls in the heart.”
I stared at her, my mouth opening and closing.
“They’re innocent—not that it should matter to you,” she went on, “since it wasn’t a concern the day you killed Tamlin’s poor sentinel. And it wasn’t a concern for dear Jurian when he butchered my sister. But if it’s a problem … well, you can always refuse. Of course, I’ll take your life in exchange, but a bargain’s a bargain, is it not? If you ask me, though, given your history with murdering our kind, I do believe I’m offering you a gift.”
Refuse and die. Kill three innocents and live. Three innocents, for my own future. For my own happiness. For Tamlin and his court and the freedom of an entire land.
The wood of the razor-sharp daggers had been polished so expertly that it gleamed beneath the colored glass chandeliers.
“Well?” she asked. She lifted her hand, letting Jurian’s eye get a good look at me, at the ash daggers, and purred to it, “I wouldn’t want you to miss this, old friend.”
I couldn’t. I couldn’t do it. It wasn’t like hunting; it wasn’t for survival or defense. It was cold-blooded murder—the murder of them, of my very soul. But for Prythian—for Tamlin, for all of them here, for Alis and her boys … I wished I knew the name of one of our forgotten gods so that I might beg them to intercede, wished I knew any prayers at all to plead for guidance, for absolution.
But I did not know those prayers, or the names of our forgotten gods—only the names of those who would remain enslaved if I did not act. I silently recited those names, even as the horror of what knelt before me began to swallow me whole. For Prythian, for Tamlin, for their world and my own … These deaths would not be wasted—even if it would damn me forever.
I stepped up to the first kneeling figure—the longest and most brutal step I’d ever taken. Three lives in exchange for Prythian’s liberation—three lives that would not be spent in vain. I could do this. I could do this, even with Tamlin watching. I could make this sacrifice—sacrifice them … I could do this.
My fingers trembled, but the first dagger wound up in my hand, its hilt cool and smooth, the wood of the blade heavier than I’d expected. There were three daggers, because she wanted me to feel the agony of reaching for that knife again and again. Wanted me to mean it.
“Not so fast.” Amarantha chuckled, and the guards who held the first kneeling figure snatched the hood off its face.
It was a handsome High Fae youth. I didn’t know him, I’d never seen him, but his blue eyes were pleading. “That’s better,” Amarantha said, waving her hand again. “Proceed, Feyre, dear. Enjoy it.”
His eyes were the color of a sky I’d never see again if I refused to kill him, a color I’d never get out of my mind, never forget no matter how many times I painted it. He shook his head, those eyes growing so large that white showed all around. He would never see that sky, either. And neither would these people, if I failed.
“Please,” he whispered, his focus darting between the ash dagger and my face. “Please.”
The dagger shook between my fingers, and I clenched it tighter. Three faeries—that’s all that stood between me and freedom, before Tamlin would be unleashed upon Amarantha. If he could destroy her … Not in vain, I told myself. Not in vain.
“Don’t,” the faerie youth begged when I lifted the dagger. “Don’t!”
I took a gasping breath, my lips shaking as I quailed. Saying “I’m sorry” wasn’t enough. I’d never been able to say it to Andras—and now … now …
“Please!” he said, and his eyes lined with silver.
Someone in the crowd began weeping. I was taking him away from someone who possibly loved him as much as I loved Tamlin.
I couldn’t think about it, couldn’t think about who he was, or the color of his eyes, or any of it. Amarantha was grinning with wild, triumphant glee. Kill a faerie, fall in love with a faerie, then be forced to kill a faerie to keep that love. It was brilliant and cruel, and she knew it.