“You want to be king again.” I said the words flatly. “But the sacrifice you made—”
“The spell required that I give something up to get inside the tomb. It didn’t require that I don’t try to get it back at some point.” Laurie’s jaw worked, and there it was again, a glimpse of something beneath the twinkling mask he always wore. A darkness that matched my own. A hunger. His eyes burned into mine as he added, “I am going to be king again, Fortuna. You may think me entirely smokescreens and games, but I am good at leading my people. It’s my purpose.”
I didn’t know why I was surprised. I thought back to the story he’d told the night we spent at the Seelie Court. He was the firstborn son of a great ruler, which meant that he always knew what his future looked like. He spent all his days striving to become worthy of it.
Where does that leave me? The question popped into my head, and I barely stopped myself in time from saying it out loud. It felt like someone had shoved a thorn through my heart. I frowned, wondering why Laurie’s plan hurt me so much. It wasn’t as if we had any sort of future together. It would be a relationship doomed before it even began.
Our incompatibility had nothing to do with what we were, but rather, who we were. The lives we wanted. Things that neither of us should have to give up. If Laurie became king again, it would effectively end whatever was between us—I didn’t want to be Queen of the Seelie Court, or even part of it. I wanted a life of the beautiful ordinary and the blissful mundane.
This was one secret Laurie wouldn’t ever discover, I decided. If he knew I had real feelings for him, or that I’d considered the possibility of us, he might do something stupid. Like try to fight for me.
“Has it ever occurred to you that it’s possible to have more than one purpose?” I asked instead, keeping my face void of all feeling. “Have you even tried finding another one?”
Laurie didn’t need to think about it; I could see the answer in his eyes, a hardness that only people with a fierce belief in something had. The sort of belief that superseded all else, even love. Part of me hoped Laurie would admit it and drive the wedge between us even further.
But he’d apparently reached his limit for truth-telling.
“Now is not the time for this conversation.” Laurie finally opened the door. “We should go. At least we accomplished one thing tonight.”
Collith heard the tail end of his sentence. “What did you accomplish?”
I moved into the hall as Laurie answered, “No one can doubt that you two have reconciled. Hopefully this provides an additional layer of protection once you return home.”
I glanced at him sharply. Though Laurie wasn’t looking at me, his smirk told me everything I needed to know—he’d figured out what I’d done with Collith earlier tonight. He could probably smell it. The thought made me cringe. Faeries.
“Plan B is officially in motion. Up to the roof we go.” Oblivious to my mortification, Laurie put his phone away. He gave me a long-suffering look. “Before you ask about your horrible backpack, I’ll make sure someone picks it up. Sorcha, perhaps.”
Collith fell into step beside him, and the two of them walked in front of me, shielding all of us from view. Laurie seemed to know exactly where we were going. He kept us away from the crowds… and Belanor.
“You saw Sorcha tonight?” I asked quietly, thinking about the glimpse I’d caught of Laurie and Sorcha. Thinking about anything besides what had just happened with Vulen.
Laurie glanced at Collith as if he were considering whether or not to trust him. After a few seconds he said, “I’ve appointed her as my new Whisperer, once I retake the throne.”
“Whisperer?” I echoed.
“A spymaster, essentially. You have to agree that she’d be well-suited for the task.”
A little too well-suited, I wanted to say. But then we were turning down a darkened hallway, and Laurie turned on his heel to face Collith. “See you back at the house,” he said.
Collith nodded, but he didn’t vanish. His eyes flicked toward me. I knew we were both thinking of what we’d done in that shadow-filled opera box. What could he say, though? Eventually Collith did sift, leaving a strange stillness in his wake. Then I hurried after Laurie, who had broken a doorknob and headed up a flight of stairs.
We went up, and up, and up. It took several minutes to reach a door at the top of the world, and Laurie broke that one, too. Wood splintered as he stepped into the cold. The rooftop was empty, I saw with relief. I kept expecting to look up and see Belanor in our path. But he was downstairs, still listening to the pretty music, utterly certain that I would be in his grasp by the night’s end.
“Right on schedule,” Laurie said. His head was turned to the left. I followed his gaze and went still.
There was the unmistakable outline of a dragon against the full moon, wings spread.
It was Tabitha in her second form, of course. She was our ticket off this rooftop and back to the Door. We hadn’t killed Belanor, so the opera house was surrounded by his guards. Tabitha would simply carry us right over their heads.
As she flew toward the opera house, Laurie moved to the edge of the rooftop, probably to flag her down. I hung back, still awed at the sight of a dragon soaring over a night-drenched city.
Within seconds of Laurie walking away, Collith appeared at the edge of my vision. I was surprised he’d come back—that hadn’t been part of the plan. Collith could sift. We’d implemented a plan B on the chance we failed to kill Belanor and I’d need a way out of the opera house. The sewers were no longer an option, thanks to my unpleasant encounter with the Rat King, and Laurie’s inner circle were still in hiding. Tabitha had been the only way.
“What about you?” I asked abruptly, knowing we only had a few seconds left. Collith hadn’t said anything, and the silence was too loud between us.
He turned his head. “What about me?”
“Will you follow in Laurie’s footsteps? Are you plotting to get your throne back?”
“I don’t know,” Collith said. The swiftness of his response made me frown. Collith smiled, but there was no humor in his eyes or the curve of his mouth. “I’ve surprised you.”
Hating that he could read me so easily, I shrugged and said, “I thought the Unseelie Court was everything to you.”
“Not everything.” Collith paused. “Not anymore.”
Before I could respond, his gaze rose toward the horizon. I turned just as Tabitha landed on the rooftop, her talons curling around the low wall. Laurie heaved a sigh and sifted, reappearing on her back.
“She’s been wanting to do something like this for years,” he informed us. Then, under his breath, the words so quiet I doubted Laurie meant us to hear them, “My mother is going to kill me.”
Without warning, he reached down and lifted me like I was one of the wispy clouds above us. I clutched his waist, unnerved at the sheer size of the creature beneath us. My skirt had ridden up, exposing one of my legs, but I didn’t care. As Tabitha’s muscles bunched and her wings snapped open, I looked toward the place where Collith had been standing. He was still there, his hands tucked in the pockets of his tuxedo pants. Strands of his thick hair stirred in a cold gust of wind.