“After…” He fell silent. There was something about Laurie’s pause that told me he was unable, or unwilling, to say Collith’s name in this moment. It was the exact thing I kept doing. There was no logic in our tactics—if I’d learned anything these past few weeks, it was that not acknowledging something didn’t make it fade or weaken. In fact, it was the opposite. Keeping something in the dark only allowed it to fester and swell.
Avoiding the name only gives it more power. Collith had said that to me once. My life was nothing if not ironic.
“After Collith left,” Laurie said, speaking more firmly, “I needed a distraction. I wanted to stay busy. I searched for floundering nonprofits and invested in them. Got them running again.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Running a kingdom wasn’t enough?”
“Not this time.”
Laurie kept his gaze on the ceiling, his strong, aristocratic profile dark with a solemnity that looked strange on him. I forced my focus away from his beauty and mulled over his words. Distraction. Busy. So that was how Laurie dealt with his pain. For decades, every time he’d encountered conflict or disappointment, he’d focused on his Court. His politics. His position. No wonder he was so good at playing the game. It was his safe place, just as the dreamscape was mine. We all had a way of coping, and I’d just learned Laurie’s.
“Not to mention it was good for my image,” he added lightly, flashing me a crooked grin. It was as if he’d heard my thoughts again. For the hundredth time, I fortified the wall that protected my mind.
Once I was certain it was impenetrable, I frowned at Laurie. “Don’t do that. Don’t dismiss the good you’ve done and pretend it didn’t matter.”
“It matters, Fortuna. I never said it didn’t matter.” His grin was gone now, and I got the feeling that we were talking about something else. Then Laurie added, as if he couldn’t stand to be serious for any extended length of time, “I also like how the humans worship the ground I walk on every time I stop by.”
Normally I’d say something to cut Laurie down, bring him back to Earth amongst the rest of us lowly creatures, but not tonight. For the past few days, I had done nothing but survive. React. Fight. Iris and Maria may have healed my body, but my mind had to mend on its own. Right now, all I wanted was the sweet oblivion of sleep. I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t succumbed to it yet. I suspected it had nothing to do with the strange setting I was in and everything to do with the faerie that rested beside me. Laurie was a being that was ever-moving, always plotting, and never staying. Other than the day we’d spent reading Kindreth’s journals, I hadn’t had a chance to voice the questions rattling around in my head like a box of broken toys.
“How did it work? When you… stopped being king?” I asked lamely, wincing as I heard the words out loud. I’d been about to say, When you lost your throne. But Laurie hadn’t lost his throne, it had been taken from him. Because of me.
Just as I’d feared, his brow lowered; Laurie didn’t like talking about this. Surprisingly, though, he didn’t evade the question. “I walked into that tomb, and at first, I felt nothing,” he said, still focusing on the ceiling. I looked up at it, too, as if I could see the scene playing out while he described it. “I was expecting to feel the magic, like a wall or a rush of nausea. But the spell is more subtle than that. There’s nothing stopping anyone from actually entering the passage. Just a… quiet voice in your head, a sense that you don’t want to go any farther. It felt ancient. So ancient that I found myself cowering like a boy again. It inquired after the thing I treasured most. Loved the most. At that moment, I was powerless, and I pictured my throne. All those years of study, all those years of learning discipline, and a spell overpowered me in seconds.
“When I got back to Court, the palace was calmer than I thought it would be. I’d braced myself for chaos and panic, but courtiers just scurried past me like little mice. They wouldn’t even look in my direction. There was no great event or huge catastrophe to explain it. It was more of an unspoken understanding. My dethroning was treated like an… embarrassment. Like I’d been fired from a job.” There was still a faint note of bafflement in Laurie’s voice. As if, even now, he couldn’t quite believe it had happened.
Hearing that sent a ripple of guilt through me. Laurie sighed and concluded, “Mab arrived at the palace soon after that. Until Belanor takes the throne, she is Regent once again. It’s as if the last seventy years didn’t happen and I’m a child again.”
I knew Laurie wasn’t saying any of this to fill me with regret, but it did. I bit my lip, wishing that I’d done things differently the night we’d confronted Gwyn at the tomb. Maybe the spell would’ve taken my powers, which I had gone on to do myself anyway. Once again, I couldn’t think of what to say. After a minute I went with, “I’m sorry, Laurie. I’m so sorry.”
They were the same words Collith had used when he’d apologized to me. The same tone. The same inadequacy.
All traces of grief left Laurie’s face, and suddenly my roguish friend was looking back at me. “Don’t be ridiculous, please,” he said lightly. “Now, shall I be the big spoon?”
So many emotions went through me that they felt like a flock of birds flapping across a wide expanse of sky—fear, gratitude, more guilt. I held the edge of the pillow tighter, and my voice was soft as I said, “Thank you, Laurie. For coming for me.”
He either heard my sincerity or sensed the shift within me, because his eyes burned like silver fire. He looked over at me, and suddenly the distance I’d put between us felt like nothing. “I will always come for you,” he said.
I waited, expecting one of his usual endings to a serious statement. But Laurie was silent; his gaze dropped and lingered on my mouth. We were at the edge of something, I thought as my own gaze lowered, looking at his mouth, too. Possibility hovered in the shadows around us. Potential. Heat.
Then my thoughts began to trickle into the silence.
A few weeks ago, I’d been in a motel room with Collith, facing him on the bed exactly as Laurie and I were doing now. That night, I had opened a door in my heart to the Unseelie King. I had made a choice, albeit unknowingly, that would lead to blood, death, and pain.
Laurie didn’t move toward me, but I sensed the tension coiling in that hard, capable body. He lay nestled amongst his cream-colored sheets like a god, his skin and hair gleaming a tarnished gold from the nearby hearth. I wanted him—I couldn’t deny that anymore. Not that I’d been doing a great job of it until now.
But in our violent, magical world, the things we desired tended to be our undoing.
“Good night,” I said finally.
Laurie didn’t say it back. I hesitated, then rolled over onto my other side, turning my back on temptation. I still felt the subtle press of Laurie’s attention; his eyes lingered on the network of scars that covered me like a map. Every mark represented the recklessness and chaos that brought me to this moment, this bed. I may have gotten my powers back, but I wasn’t the person who had asked a dragon to burn them away. I wanted to be someone better. Someone worthy of forgiveness.
I closed my eyes and saw a flash of the place that was waiting for me. White-tipped waves, rustling green leaves. I hadn’t thought of Oliver all day, but now I filled my mind with him. I didn’t think of anything—or anyone—else.