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My hearth clenched. Why hadn’t she stayed? We must have only missed each other by days.

“She felt it was not wise to linger. I do not know if…” Gwen paused, choosing her words carefully. “I do not know if the rest of the court realized she was there. She appeared at my window late one night.”

“As a hawk,” I said, already knowing the answer.

She hadn’t felt safe enough to formally visit the Court of the Terrestrial Fae, even with her son newly named as its heir. The longing in my gut turned to rage.

Gwen unwrapped the small parcel she’d been holding, no larger than her palm. I recognized it from the first glint of silver. My family crest. Not the entwined Tree of Life and Serpent of Wisdom that symbolized the Kingdom of the Terrestrial Fae, but the single rose rising from the ground.

Earthborn. What I was—what we all were. My mother’s words echoed in my memory.

“Will you wear it?” Gwen asked quietly.

Her body was already half turned to the door when the sound of a thousand murmuring voices found my ears. We were out of time and we both knew it. The Offering was beginning.

“Get on with it,” I said roughly.

I had only the time it would take for her to pin the crest to my own wool-covered chest to compose myself. There was no way in hell I would allow the elementals to see my misery.

15

VEYKA

My head was still pounding from the tea. Too much nightbloom flower and too few of the willowood leaves to ease the pain. But at least I’d been spared from the arguments and posturing in my own damned bedchamber.

I knew what they were about. They hoped that if they talked about court politics enough, if they discussed the matters in detail, I would eventually show some interest.

None of them realized that most of the time, I just wanted it all to stop.

All the noise, all the talking, all the Ancestors-damned attempts to draw me back to the world of the living. I hated all of it. And I hated them a little bit for not realizing that and leaving me be.

But this, I could not avoid.

The Offering.

For seven thousand years, since the original treaties were signed between the Elemental and Terrestrial kingdoms of the fae, each generation an Offering was made.

Each kingdom produced an heir, an offering of solidarity and peace in Annwyn.

For the elementals, the right was inherited. My mother, my grandfather, my great-grandmother, back and back, an unbroken line of elemental fae since Nimue, the first elemental heir and one of the Ancestors.

Among the terrestrials, the honor was won. Through death and bloodshed, naturally.

But always, the Offering took place here, in the goldstone palace.

I had no idea how the Ancestors had determined it, and if rumors were true, the terrestrials resented that the High King and Queen always resided in Baylaur, rather than the terrestrial capital on Wolf Bay.

Nor did I really care about the why of it. I needed to be in Baylaur, in the goldstone palace, to seek revenge.

“Veyka?”

Cyara’s gentle but firm voice cut me off as my thoughts turned bloodthirsty.

She never called me Veyka. Always ‘Your Majesty.’

Her turquoise eyes met mine in the mirror. Carly had just finished with my hair, the silvery white woven with strands of gold and blue tanzanite to complement my eyes. Every female in the elemental court would be wearing her hair like this today. The more finery one could weave into the long braid, the better. A stupid, vapid status symbol.

I was tempted to shake out the whole thing and leave it loose just to be petulant, but Carly had dedicated more than an hour to it.