The Queen?Kind?Now I knew she wasn’t real. I caught her wrists and forced her away from me so I could see her face more clearly. “Who are you?”
The young woman’s brow furrowed as her lips turned down at the corners. Lips the same shade of pink as her flushed cheeks. “Who am I? Rían, it’s me. Leesha.”
No. That couldn’t be. It wasn’t possible. “You’re dead. I saw you die.”
She blinked, a quick sweep of her thick, dark lashes. “I’m not dead, silly.” Her laugh was as throaty and sensual as I remembered. “I’m right here.”
The Queen moved next to the woman who couldn’t possibly be alive, snaking an arm around her shoulder, drawing her close. “I kept her safe just for you.”
This wasn’t happening. No one could bring back the dead, not even the Phantom Queen.
My pulse screamed in my skull as I tried to wrap my head around what the hell was happening.
Leesha washere.
Leesha wasalive.
The Queen toyed with one of Leesha’s soft curls, smiling as if she were caring, downrightmatronly. “Leesha, my dearest girl, from this day forward, I give you permission to cross the Forest whenever you wish.”
Leesha beamed at her before dipping into a low curtesy. “Thank you, my Queen. You are most kind.”
The Queen wasn’tkind. She was an evil, vindictive witch.
What sort of twisted game was she playing?
The Queen urged Leesha toward me. My body stiffened as my former lover looped her arm through mine and squeezed my bicep, the picture of giddy excitement. This couldn’t be happening. This couldnotbe happening. The way she clung to my arm felt wrong—so feckin’ wrong.
Thishadto be a glamour, except…her eyes.
Two centuries had passed since I’d seen this woman, and yet I recognized every fleck in their mossy depths.
Leesha smiled up at me as if…feckin’ hell… as if she didn’t realize she’d been gone for hundreds of years. “I don’t know what you were so afraid of. Your mother is lovely.”
Words failed me. Tadhg appeared to have been rendered mute as well, staring dumbfounded at the woman clinging to me. What was I supposed to do now?
The Queen’s pat on my shoulder was the closest thing to affection she’d ever shown. “Happy birthday, Rían.” With a flick of her wrist, she and her guards vanished.
My ears rang so loud, I couldn’t hear a blessed thing. Tadhg and I remained paralyzed, like we’d been frozen in this moment for all of eternity.
“I am so excited to finally be here,” Leesha said, her words ringing in my ears. “It feels as if I haven’t seen you in forever. Is Eava about? I do hope she made a large cake. I am starving.”
How could I answer any of her questions when I had so many of my own?
Where had the Queen been keeping Leesha? I had moved out of the castle the day she’d stolen Leesha’s heart, but surely I would’ve realized if she had been living there this whole time. And Leesha was human, yet it looked as if she hadn’t aged a bit since that fateful day. What sort of dark magic had the Queen used to keep her alive?To keep her from becoming one of the many rotting corpses left in piles along the southern gates?
She hadn’t been alive, though. I’d watched my mother tear the heart from her chest. She mustn’t have a heart.
My hands trembled as I tugged at the top of Leesha’s dress, exposing the swell of her breast.
“Rían,” she giggled, her cheeks flushing when she knocked my hand away and pulled her dress back in place. “Your brother is right there.”
The scar. She had one across her chest, just like mine.
The Queenhadtaken her heart. That part hadn’t been a dream.
I unhooked her arm from mine and told her that I needed to speak with my brother in private. Leesha kissed my cheek and skipped out the door as if she hadn’t a worry in the world.
“What’s the plan?” Tadhg asked.