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18

EVA

E va knew before her eyes opened that she was back in Faery, and her heart had further to fall than ever.

Why had she let herself hope for happiness? She’d known that this would happen, that the Queen was jealous and petty and would want her back the instant she found joy.

For a brief moment, the memory of that bliss bolstered her again. Margo. Sweet, strong Margo, who had always loved her and never spoken of it. Bruno. Growly, charismatic Bruno who stole her heart and set her on fire with his first glance.

Her mates.

They loved her.

“I know you are awake.”

The Queen’s voice made the scars on Eva’s back twitch in pain.

“My Queen ,” she said, opening her eyes and sitting up. Faery was as bright as ever, the summer day like a punch in the face after the cozy winter of home. Wisteria in rainbow hues hung from the open rafters, and glistening birds the size of thumbnails darted in and out of the room.

Eva was unsurprised to find a cuff on her ankle, linked to a fine golden chain. The Queen held the other end of it, toying with it and swinging the end in a mesmerizing arc.

Eva was not the slightest bit enthralled, she was amazed to find. She had been afraid that she would fall at the Queen’s feet at the first sight of her, begging her to allow Eva to return and restore her place at her side, but she felt only annoyed.

“Your magic is back,” the Queen observed, stringing the fine chain between her fingers. “Or some small portion of it, at least.”

Eva could not keep herself from reaching back, hoping and fearing and craving the feel of her wings again. Only scarred skin met her fingers.

Faery magic was fickle and variable, sometimes a sweeping power, sometimes a specific gift or talent, and sometimes, like now, a tiny spark that Eva recognized beneath her breastbone. It was the faintest echo of what she’d had before. She might be able to spin a basic illusion, maybe secure a few stitches in physical cloth. She could certainly not fly, or fight her way free of the delicate chain at her ankle.

“Eva…darling…”

The Queen’s voice was thick with her own great magic, and Eva could feel it coiling around her, grasping and caressing…and finding no purchase.

They blinked at each other and Eva saw something in the Queen’s eyes that she’d never seen there before: uncertainty.

Eva didn’t have to reach for her, didn’t have to worship her. She looked into those gem-green eyes and didn’t feel adoring despair, only pity. The Queen didn’t know what love really was, only devotion, and she didn’t know how to have that without coercion. “I’m so sorry,” she blurted.

“For leaving me? For breaking my heart and cleaving a hole in Faery itself?”

Eva’s sympathy strained. “Don’t be dramatic,” she said impatiently. “I didn’t do any of those things.”

It was the second time that she’d surprised the Queen, and no less startling.

“No matter,” the Queen said proudly. “You are back where you belong now, and I will not be so careless with you this time.”

Eva felt her heart sink. “I-I do not want to stay here. I want to go back to—” my mates , she wanted to say, but she hesitated at the last moment. Would she put Margo and Bruno in peril if she pointed the Queen’s ire at them?

“The human world?” the Queen guessed in disgust. “You want to go back to that ugly, magicless place? They have mosquitos! And poverty!”

Eva had known poverty. She had been at its mercy and made terrible deals to escape it. She was still paying off the debts it left. But she had also known hope, and the compassion of people like Harriet.

“Their food has calories ,” the Queen added with a sniff. “You are better off here, and since your judgment cannot be trusted, I will hold you here until you see the sense of it and love me again of your own will.”

“No,” Eva said firmly, with all the courage she had learned.

“No?” The Queen said the word as if she was unfamiliar with it, and maybe she was. Her court was full of magic bound to her rule.

“No,” Eva repeated boldly. “I will not love you again. I never did, not the way you wished I would. I was never whole with you, and I will never willingly stay with you again.”

The Queen rose and bristled, her angry power causing the flowers to shrink into themselves and the birds to flee. Even the brilliant fae light seemed to dim in the face of her fury…and Eva was not afraid. The Queen’s fury was like a storm breaking over stone, energy that would wash away after it had tantrumed itself out.

There was no substance to the Queen, not now that Eva knew what true love and true loyalty was. “You cannot keep me,” she said softly. “I am not yours.”

“If you are not mine, you will certainly not be anyone else's,” the Queen snapped, and she swirled and vanished with the scent of honey and burnt sugar.

The chain at Eva’s ankle shimmered with no end, but the shackle remained. Eva settled back on the bed as the flowers shyly opened again in the wake of the Queen’s departure, and a few brave birds flitted in to taste them.

The magic might hold her here, but it could never touch her heart again.