Page 9

“Precisely.” He doesn’t sound offended. He sounds proud.

After a cold smile in Draven’s direction, he slides his gaze back to Alistair.

“You want to know why your court was conquered all those millennia ago while ours has remained free all this time? Because we had wards. You didn’t.

You just let anyone in.” His tone turns cruel and mocking. “Because you’re nice like that.”

Isera slams her fist into the tabletop. I jump at the loud bang and the rattle of silverware, and an apology is halfway to my tongue before I catch myself.

I’m so used to always apologizing and doing everything I can to make sure no one is upset that it takes me a second to remember that I don’t have to do that anymore.

I don’t have to make myself less and try to please everyone else just so that they will like me.

But the instincts are still there, even though I’m working on ignoring them.

Wood scrapes against stone as Isera pushes her chair back and gets to her feet. That terrible bottomless rage burns in her eyes, making her look like a vengeful goddess risen from the pits of hell, as she stares Orion down.

“You son of a bitch,” Isera growls, her voice low and vicious, as she presses her palms against the table and leans forward to glare at Orion. “You could have done something. You could have helped us. If both of our courts had fought together, the Icehearts would never have won.”

“Firstly, I was not king back then. I wasn’t even alive back then. My great-grandparents weren’t even alive back then.” He smiles, his eyes gleaming with cruel anticipation, as he holds her gaze. “But if I had been the king back then, do you know what I would have done?”

He pauses for a few seconds, but Isera doesn’t humor him with a reply. Once the crackling silence has started to stretch, he finally continues.

“I would have conquered your court while you were busy fighting the dragon shifters.” His smile turns ruthless. “Then I would have warded it, just like our court was warded, and then I would have made you all kneel at my feet while I ruled it all.”

Next to me, Alistair grinds his teeth while anger pulses across his face.

But it’s nothing compared to the cold fury in Isera’s eyes.

Very slowly, she pushes her chair all the way back and takes a step away from the table.

Her shoes produce slow ominous thuds as she starts towards the Unseelie King.

Orion’s smile widens. It’s a cold thing. Full of challenge and wicked taunting. “I suggest you sit back down.” His eyes glint as he drags his gaze up and down her body. “Before I put you on your knees instead.”

Ice explodes through the room.

I gasp, jerking back in panic as Isera shoots a shard of ice straight at Orion.

But it doesn’t even make it halfway to him before the room around me disappears.

Panic crackles through me like a lightning bolt as I suddenly find myself standing in the kitchen of my parents’ house back in the Seelie Court.

There is a pile of broken glass on the floor right next to me.

My chest tightens at just the sight of it.

Broken drinking glasses. Those are irreplaceable.

We weren’t allowed to have money, so we couldn’t just buy new ones.

And getting replacements for things that broke sometimes took years.

Which means we would be forced to drink from our hands for years to come after I broke these.

“I’m sorry,” I hear myself saying.

The sound of my own voice sends a bolt of shock through me. I sound so young.

“I’m so, so sorry,” my younger self keeps saying in a choked voice.

I can feel tears rushing down my cheeks.

At last, my younger self looks up from the pile of broken glass, which lets me see the rest of the room. My heart jerks as I find both of my parents standing there, staring down at the destroyed glasses in shock, as if they broke just seconds before this.

Then they look up at me.

For a moment, only that surprise remains on their features. Then it starts.

I can see their expressions start to shift. Can see every excruciating change as their faces transform into mirrored masks of pure resentment.

Pain spears through me, so intense that it feels as if someone just punched straight through my chest and ripped my heart out.

The force of the heartbreak makes me stagger backwards.

But the scene before me doesn’t change. The younger me remains standing in the exact same place.

I try to look away from my parents’ expressions, but I can’t.

No matter how much I move my head, the younger version of me keeps looking in the same direction.

Which means that I am forced to watch it too.

“No, no, no, please,” my younger self pleads in a voice full of panic and desperation. “Please, don’t hate me. I didn’t mean to… Please, I didn’t mean to?—”

“You always ruin everything!” my mother snaps from where she is standing on the other side of our kitchen table. That awful soul-shattering resentment burns in her eyes like flames as she stares at me. “Why can’t you?—”

The scene around me disappears in a flash. It’s so jarring that I stumble backwards. My foot gets caught on the edge of a carpet, and I just tumble down on the floor in a heap of limbs.

My head spins and my heart aches with pain. Blinking, I try to clear my vision and get my wits back, but the room around me is blurry. I wipe a hand over my eyes and it comes back wet. Stunned, I slide my hand down my cheek and find that that is wet too. I must have started crying at some point.

“You bastard!” Isera screams, her voice hoarse and sounding like it’s going to break any second. “I will fucking kill you for?—”

Her words are cut off abruptly.

I snap my gaze in the direction her voice came from.

For a few seconds, I can’t make sense of anything that has just happened this past minute. Then at last, realization comes crashing into me.

Orion has nightmare powers. He can pull bad memories from our heads and make us relive them. I can’t remember the exact day that I just saw in my vision, but there have been plenty of days like that in my life, so I know that it is a real memory that Orion has dug out.

He must have done the same to everyone else, because they are all scattered across the room, looking dazed and disoriented.

My gaze darts to Isera, who must have figured out what Orion did to us faster than the rest of us. But she is no longer threatening him. Instead, she is cowering on the floor, gasping and whimpering in fear. Orion towers over her, his black and silver eyes glowing with magic.

Then he cuts off the flow of his magic again, and Isera collapses to her hands and knees.

I drag in an unsteady breath, still trying to clear my own head.

Orion leans down and wraps his hand around Isera’s throat. With commanding moves, he pulls her up by the throat so that she is on her knees looking up at him instead.

“Watch your mouth,” he warns. Threats drip from his voice like dark poison, and his expression is one of merciless power.

“With my magic, I could break you within a matter of hours. I could make you so desperate that you would kneel and suck my cock just for a chance at a moment’s reprieve from my power.

You live and breathe only because of my mercy, so I would be very careful if I were you. ”

Isera drags in ragged breaths, her chest heaving. But there is no fear on her face as she holds Orion’s stare. Quite the opposite. She is glaring up at him with a promise of pain and death in her eyes.

A vicious smile slides across her lips. “If you ever stick your cock in my mouth, I will bite it off.”

I tense up, half expecting him to kill her right then and there. But to my surprise, he just slides a slow and deliberate look up and down her body.

“Yes, you really would, wouldn’t you?” he muses.

But he doesn’t look angry.

He looks intrigued .

I stare at him. At Isera. At the beautiful but now messy dining room with knocked over chairs and dazed fae and dragon shifters scattered across the floor.

What kind of madhouse have we ended up in?