I didn’t need her bloody Forest.
I knew exactly where I belonged.
In a land of myths and monsters. With a prince who had helped me find freedom.
I turned on my heel and started for Tearmann, each step bringing me closer to my future. A future I had chosen for myself. I would miss the cottage Rían had made for me but held fast to the hope that someday I would see it again. If I could shift a dagger, I could learn to evanesce. I had faith in myself—in whatever magic now lived inside my veins. I would find a way.
“Oh, Aveen,” the Queen called.
The smile in her voice left my footsteps wavering. Slowly, I turned. Her bloodred lips twisted in a sneer. Wind whipped my hair across my cheeks, stinging my eyes. The Queen stood all alone against a backdrop of death. “Tell my son I look forward to making him pay for what he stole from me.”
“You stole his heart first.” Returning something stolen to its rightful owner wasn’t against Tearmann law. According to the stack of books on the subject that I had found in Gaul’s library, returning a stolen item to its rightful owner wasn’t a crime.
She shook her head. Her feathered skirts fluttered, yet her hair remained in an undisturbed mahogany sheet. “I didn’t steal Rían’s heart. He gave it to me.”
That wasn’t true. It couldn’t be. “You’re lying.”
Her soft chuckle left my heart pounding. “She was a pretty thing for a human, his Leesha. With fiery red hair and green eyes. But his human broke the law.”
I didn’t want to hear this.
And yet I couldn’t move.
“Rían knew his duty was to his people. He knew what needed to be done. He knew and he refused. Begged me formercy.” She spat the word as if it were a vicious curse, her black-tipped fingers curling into fists. Black blood leaked from her palms, dripping onto the waving grass at her feet. “I begged for mercy once. Do you know what the humans did?” A heavy pause stretched between us. “They cut out my sister’s heart with a cursed dagger and burned her body to ash.”
I didn’t want to feel sympathy for this monster. For this woman who had taken everything from the man I loved. Who had stolen mothers from their children. Fathers from their families. Daughters and sons.
This Queen who had ripped away countless lives without mercy.
But a monster wasn’t born a monster.
A monster was made.
“When my weak, pathetic son refused his duty, I was forced to do it for him. He was a dramatic boy back then, always wailing about one thing or another. He said, ‘If you take her heart, take mine as well.’” A smile. “So I did.”
No . . .
No no no no.
“So, I would like you to remind my son, that the penalty for theft is death.”
“He will come back.” Rían was a true immortal. The underworld couldn’t keep him unless she used the cursed blade hidden inside my skirts. A cursed blade she would never get her hands on.
The Queen’s smile became a sneer. “He won’t be coming back from this.”
My hand fell to the dagger.
She was too far away. I wouldn’t catch her off guard. She’d kill me before I even got close.
The penalty for theft is death.
My mind cleared, the panic in my chest loosening as the fortune teller’s words rang through my mind.
For the only way to save him was at her own expense.
I stared straight into the Queen’s soulless black eyes and said, “Rían didn’t steal the heart. I did.”
Then I stepped backward off the cliff and plummeted toward the sea.