Page 31 of Broken Hearted (Cursed Fae #3)

Lorelei

O ne second, Isolde and the handsome Lord Zane were standing in front of me in the garden, and the next, Queen Liliana showed up and they disappeared.

“I knew I couldn’t trust you,” the Winter queen seethed, her face contorting into a reflection of rage as she stalked toward me.

I backed up a few paces, holding my hands up in surrender. “I didn’t know they would be here.”

She shook her head. “You can’t save us.” Her words hit me in the chest like arrows, piercing me deep.

“I want to,” I said more timidly than I’d intended to.

I wasn’t a warrior. It literally went against my magic. I gave life, I didn’t take it. But even so, I hadn’t lied. I did want to save our world.

As the queen advanced I backpedaled until my shoulders hit the tree behind me. I held my breath as Queen Liliana walked right up to me. “You fancied him, didn’t you? That lord who said he was coming for you?”

She’d heard?

My heart pounded in my chest. The letter Isolde sent to me had sounded unbelievable, but now I wondered if it were true.

“Are they our mates?” I dared to ask, my voice no louder than a whisper. “Is it true?”

We didn’t have mates in Faerie, but I still understood the concept. I’d only ever heard the term in fairy tales: myths and fables our parents read to us as children. It was said there was no connection stronger than mates. That it wasn’t just love that bonded the pair, but magic as well.

The queen’s upper lip curled so that she was sneering at me. “Yes. A small price to pay to bring peace for a hundred years.”

I whimpered at the confession, despair filling my heart. All these years, the Summer princess champions had been sent to Ethereum to kill their mates. And Queen Liliana expected the same of me now.

I shook my head, a tear falling down my face. “I can’t. I won’t hurt him.”

If the handsome man who’d come in the vision with Isolde was my mate, I wouldn’t harm him.

Queen Liliana nodded, a slow smile streaking her lips and causing a foreboding shiver to slither down my spine. “I know you won’t, delicate Lorelei. That’s why I’m going to use you as bait to bring him to me so I can carve his heart from his chest myself and end this once and for all.”

“What?”

No! I can’t let her use me like that .

I burst forward, intending to run, when she reached out with something shiny and cracked the side of my head.

I had about two seconds to process the fact that the Summer queen had just struck me, and then everything went black.