My stomach dropped. So that was the prophecy. The House of Meriadoc—my family name. I was the only one left. And apparently, I was supposed to bring a reign of death.
The dancing women swept closer, spinning maelstroms of snow. Flakes glinted in the air around them.
Beira reached for my chest, a clawed finger pointing at my heart. Shit. She was about to kill me, wasn’t she?
I scuttled back a little more, my bare skin freezing to the icy ground beneath me. Wet skin on ice was like licking a pole in winter—you were just stuck there, skin melded. Her claw prodded at my sternum.
I ripped a little skin from the back of my thighs as I shifted away, but I kept my gaze trained directly on Beira’s eye.
Something about the eagerness in her eye, her desperation—
She had a certain hunger in her expression. She reminded me of Karen, our phantom guardian. But why?
I thought it was the sense of loneliness.
Beira hunched over, her claw poking into my skin.
You have luck. Her breath misted around her head.
I couldn’t say I felt lucky right now. Maybe luck meant something else to her. If the stories were true, she’d gone mad in the prisons. Her mind had become twisted from isolation.
Luck. She didn’t seem to suffer from the physical cold, but maybe she just needed… love? Affection? Friends, maybe.
“We can be friends,” I offered in desperation. A bitter wind whipped over me, stinging my skin.
Her breath sounded damp in her throat, a rough, rattling sound. Now, she was digging her claw into the flesh over my heart, the iron seeping into my blood. Red streaked down the front of my chest, and I tugged frantically at the magical ropes binding my wrists behind my back.
The dancers whirled closer, white hair whipping around them.
She was lonely. Of that much I was sure. And I had someone in my life. I had Gina. That’s what she meant by luck.
Gina had given me a ring for luck…
“Wait!” I said. “I have a present for you.” An icy shudder rippled through me as her claw threaten to scrape my bone. “I have a present. A good luck charm. It’s for you. Luck. For you.”
Her claw stopped pressing in.
A present? Whispers fluttered around my mind. Luck?
With my stiff muscles, I slowly shifted my body enough to give her a view of my hands—of the ring. My underwear was pure ice now, and the blood on my chest had already frozen.
“A ring on my finger,” I said. “It was a gift from a friend to me. For good luck. I’ll give it to you for luck. To my new friend.” I craned my head to look at her.
She blinked at me, her bloodshot eye close to my face. Then, she looked down at my hands. She reached out, claws scraping my fingers as she pulled the ring off. A girlish smile curled her lips, and she brought the ring to her face.
“Luck,” she repeated, speaking the word out loud, her voice scraping at my eardrums. “Luuuuuck.”
The snow-white dancers twirled closer to me, kicking up snow that shimmered in the moonlight. Their red eyes no longer looked quite as vacant. In fact, now they looked hungry, intent on me. Ravenous.
Then, Beira fixed me with her single eye once more.
You won’t hurt the Ankou again.
The world had started to seem hazy at this point, the light dimming. I saw only white hands reaching for me, the dancers closing in.
I wanted to lie down on the ice. I just needed to fall into deep sleep.
“My heart is true.” The words came out of my frozen lips from nowhere.
Without another word, Beira kicked me back into the portal. I sank into the salty seawater once more.
The cold had pierced right down to my marrow. As I fell under the water, memories of my old life flitted through my mind—the glittering fae of a drowned court. A ball, thrown by my mother, me wearing a crown of flowers. My mother had made it for me herself: buttercups, daisies, and a pale purple spring squill.
That night, she told me I was the most beautiful fae she’d ever seen. She told me I might rule the kingdom one day, and I didn’t need a king to do it. I’d been so sure she was right.
The memory took root in my mind and grew more vivid, until I felt myself dancing and twirling along with the others, exhilarated by the music pounding through my blood, drops of dandelion wine on my lips. Lights floated above us, twinkling in the skies.
I hadn’t needed a man, but it was nice to dance with them.
And among the guests, among the flurry of faces, I glimpsed a newly familiar one—a powerful fae with an angelic face and eyes the pure blue of a Mediterranean sky.
The cold sank through my muscles and bones until I was sure I was pure ice. Was I dying in here? The water would envelop me and pull me deeper.
In the dark water, I caught a glimpse of long, white limbs, hair pale as snow, fingers straining for me. The shock of it snapped me out of my memories.
One of the dancers had followed me into the portal. Her bony hand gripped tightly to my ankle, fingernails piercing my skin. A long tongue shot out of her mouth, lashing the skin on my thighs. Sharp pain followed, shooting up my leg.
Chapter 10
A pair of strong arms pulled me out of the seawater, and I looked up into the golden face of the Ankou. In some twisted way, it felt like a relief to see him.
When I looked down at the portal, I saw the snow-white hag climbing out of the water, a hungry look in her red eyes. The pale creature had followed me all the way through.
The Ankou dropped me on his bed, my back resting on his pillows. My underwear was still iced to my body, hair frozen to my shoulders. My limbs had gone numb—apart from the shooting pain in my legs where the wraith had licked me.
In a daze, I watched as the Ankou grabbed the snow wraith by her neck and pulled her from the portal.
Then, in a startlingly fast movement, he twisted her head sharply. The crack of bone echoed off the stone arches above us.
The creature’s neck jutted out at an odd angle, and her red eyes dimmed to black. The Ankou dropped her limp body back into the portal. Once her corpse sank under the surface, the portal disappeared within the silver ring. The floor smoothed over into flat sandstone.
My breath puffed through my chattering teeth.
The Ankou turned and looked down at me, his prisoner.
“I h-h-h-hate you s-s-s-s-so much,” I managed.
His attention was fixed on my thigh. Beneath my tan skin, it looked like my veins had been poisoned by a dark toxin. No wonder it hurt like the dickens.
The Ankou climbed onto the bed, staring at my legs, and then he climbed between them. He gripped the poisoned thigh. The dark blood was climbing higher up my body, moving to my hip. Fire shot through my veins, my nerve endings ignited.
“Don’t touch me,” I said through gritted teeth. The fury I managed to convey surprised even me. It was the wrath of a queen and not a frozen, half-naked wretch.
Apparently, it surprised him, too, because he pulled his hand away like I’d burned him.
His deep blue eyes met mine. “If I don’t, the poison will kill you within thirty seconds.”
This was where Giles Corey would say more poison.
Except—screw Giles Corey. I was pretty sure he’d beaten one of his servants to death. He made terrible decisions.
“Fine,” I said at last. “Do your healing thing.”
He gripped my poisoned thigh tightly. With his other hand, he began to trace a slow circle over my skin. One of his hands was a vise on my thigh, the other light as a dandelion puff.