Total pages in book: 147
Estimated words: 139662 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 698(@200wpm)___ 559(@250wpm)___ 466(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 139662 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 698(@200wpm)___ 559(@250wpm)___ 466(@300wpm)
“Sleep well, Princess.”
I step inside my room but hesitate before closing the door. “Why do you call me that?”
Misha’s eyes light up, and he grins. “Only because calling you Queen would be inaccurate,” he says, then turns and disappears down the corridor.
“What nonsense,” I mutter, turning into my room. A fresh sleeping gown waits on the bed, and I can feel the humidity in the air from the warm bath that waits in the connected bathing room.
I quickly strip out of my clothes and head to the tub, where I sink into the hot water, sighing as it envelops my aching thighs. When everything goes quiet around me, I feel Sebastian so intensely—his grief and sadness—that I want to cry. I miss him. I miss believing that he loved me, that I could trust him.
Hoping to keep my hair dry, I tie it up as best I can, but several locks are too short to stay and they fall in my face and around my neck. The curls tighten in the steam rising off the bath. I wash the rest of myself quickly, as if getting out of this tub will help me escape these emotions and this overwhelming loneliness.
By the time I’ve dressed in my sleeping gown and am under the covers of my bed, the light of the rising moon slants into the bedroom windows. Exhaustion pulls at me, but every time I close my eyes and try to relax, I picture that little boy screaming in the middle of the road, remember his horror racing through my own veins.
I don’t know why Misha thinks that I, of all people, could unite a divided court. Any loyalties Sebastian and Finn feel toward me are just complicated by the fact that I have something they both need. That doesn’t mean I could get them to work together, or that I would have any idea how. But I can’t deny that the queen can’t go unchecked. Not after seeing those camps. Not after hearing that little boy’s screams of terror tonight.
So maybe I can’t do everything. Maybe I can’t heal a broken land or mediate power struggles, but I could do something about those camps if I knew where to find them. And that would be worth asking for Sebastian’s help.
I finger a loose strand of hair at my temple and smile as the light catches on the threads of the goblin bracelet Bakken gave me. Dozens and dozens of thin silvery threads visible to no one but me glitter iridescent in the moonlight. I hop out of bed and find my knife. Using the sharp edge against the back of my scalp like a razor, I sheer off a short lock of hair and snap a thread on my goblin bracelet.
Bakken appears almost immediately. It’s the first time I’ve seen him since that night at the Unseelie palace. Then, with blood still on my hands from slaying Mordeus, I’d had to sheer off all my hair up to my jaw to get the goblin to take me to Finn’s catacombs.
I’m hoping tonight he’ll work for less.
“Fire Girl,” he says, grinning at me. “What do you have for me?”
I open my palm to show him the tuft of short hairs I’ve shaved from the back of my head.
Bakken scowls. “Don’t insult me, Fire Girl.”
“I’m mean no offense,” I promise. “But this is all I have, and I need to go to the Unseelie palace.”
“I don’t work for free.”
“Consider this a deposit,” I blurt, then swallow, hatching a plan on the spot. “How would you like a lock of Prince Ronan’s hair for the return trip?”
Bakken narrows his bulging eyes. He wants what I’m offering. “How do you intend to obtain the prince’s hair?”
“Leave that to me,” I say, a little breathless. I think this is going to work. “Please?”
It’s only as Bakken reaches for my wrist that I remember I’m dressed in nothing more than a thin sleeping gown.
Bakken brings me directly to a low-lit bedroom and vanishes again before I’ve even fully materialized. This isn’t the lavishly furnished bedroom I appeared in when going through the portal in the queen’s armoire. This one overlooks a rushing river flowing through a mountain pass, but it’s not the view that strikes me most intensely. It’s him.
The utter essence of Sebastian slams into me.
“Abriella!”
I turn to the sound of Sebastian’s voice. He launches himself out of bed. Before I can say a word or even brace myself, he’s gathered me into his arms and lifted me off the floor. He’s shirtless and warm, and it would be so easy to melt into him. Not just because I miss his warmth and love. Not just because I’m lonely and don’t want to live in this awful realm without him.
I want to melt into him because here, in the same room, this connection between us is more than a conduit of emotion. It’s as if he’s half of me, and I cannot bear the pain he’s feeling. It reminds me of myself seven years ago, of my grief in those days after I’d recovered from the fire. I’d almost died, yes, but my father had died that night, and the weight of that loss had been a constant pressure on my chest and shoulders, a grip around my lungs that made it impossible to take a deep breath.