His face only registered the pain for an instant before he was scrambling back to his feet. “Wait for me, Laurelis!” Belanor cried in Enochian.
But his twin was already vanishing through the doorway, the echoes of his laughter all that remained. Making a frustrated sound, Belanor started to go after them. I moved closer, sensing that the pivotal event was about to occur.
“Prince Belanor,” a voice called.
He paused, his head cocking. Searching for the speaker, Belanor’s silver eyes moved past every doorway within the enormous hall. His face, I noted, was smooth and unmarked.
A tall figure stood in the one closest to him.
If I had to guess, I’d say the female was in her late twenties or early thirties. Her skin was pasty, her cheeks and forehead marked by strange tattoos, black dots that lined her eyebrows, cheeks, and chin. Her blond hair was braided and she wore a dress of red satin, the neckline trimmed with brown fur. She was not a faerie—the tips of her ears were round, and her features entirely ordinary—but power rolled off her like mist. I resisted the instinct to take a step back, reminding myself this wasn’t real. Not for me, at least.
“Who are you?” Belanor asked. His expression was caught halfway between curiosity and caution.
I expected her to give him a sweet smile, but she only inclined her head as she answered, “I am a witch. I serve your mother. She sent me to see you, in fact. Would you like to see your future, Prince Belanor?”
Hearing this, he went still, and it was obvious that she’d piqued his interest. Belanor knew his brother would be king someday, and that knowledge had always left his own future unknown. Though his instincts urged him to go after his siblings, Belanor couldn’t resist the witch’s offer.
Which was exactly what she wanted, I thought, an alarm blaring in my head. She looked exactly as Savannah had in Denver, when she’d opened her door and we laid eyes on each other for the first time in years. Overly thin, skin drained of color and vitality. Classic signs, I’d learned, of dark magic. My stomach clenched, and I wished I could warn the small prince. At that moment, he wasn’t Belanor to me—he hadn’t yet become the person that would brand my body and bruise my soul.
“Come closer to the fire,” the witch bid, gesturing with one long-fingered hand.
Belanor hesitated. His gaze darted between her and the flames, his thoughts racing. He wasn’t afraid, exactly, but he was Fallen. We had been in hiding for millennia, and most of us were born with a natural ability to know when we were being hunted.
“I changed my mind,” he declared, stepping back. “I would like to go now.”
I expected the witch to pander or persuade. Instead, moving faster than I knew her kind could, she snatched hold of Belanor’s arm and started dragging him. “There’s nothing to fear, Your Highness! The Reading won’t take more than a minute or two, and your siblings will be so envious, wouldn’t you agree?”
She tried to disguise her impatience with a close-lipped smile, but there was an edge in her voice. Belanor heard it, too, and he wrenched away with a strength the witch clearly didn’t expect, because she lost her grip on him. The sound of his tearing sleeve filled the stillness.
“Unhand me!” Belanor cried. He began to turn, shouting as he did, “Guards!”
Dropping all pretense, the witch grabbed the prince again and swung him around. They struggled. Belanor opened his mouth to call for help again, but the witch muttered something, and he gasped as if she’d punched him in the gut. A coughing fit wracked his frail body, making it all the more impressive when he managed to tear himself free a second time.
Then, unable to check his momentum, Belanor went tumbling into the fire.
There was a grate in front of the crackling heat, but that toppled over as if it weighed nothing. Belanor’s body was on top of the grate as he fell. It protected most of him from the flames, but not, I saw with a wince, his small face.
The child’s screams filled the cavernous room, so piercing that they hurt my ears even now, decades later. I wished I could clap my hands over them. At least I knew why this memory was so significant—it was the day Prince Belanor Dondarte had gotten his scars. Why had he told me a neglectful nursemaid was to blame?
Swearing through her teeth, the witch yanked the child away from the heat. Belanor was still screaming, and I averted my gaze, unable to stomach the sight.
Then his screams changed, and I forced myself to look again. Taking advantage of Belanor’s inability to fight back, the witch had pinned him to the floor. There must’ve been a knife hidden on her person, because there was one in her hand now. She used her other to yank Belanor’s shirt down, exposing the smooth skin of his chest. She muttered under her breath as she worked, and I recognized Enochian words.
She was working a spell, but this was no Reading.
Suddenly I felt a burst of pain, and not even the magic high could soften it. The sensation was similar to someone planting their hands on my chest and using all their strength to push—if I’d really been standing in the memory, I would’ve stumbled backward.
Belanor was fighting me.
I drew more power to myself and imagined digging my heels in, but then he shoved me again. This time, it propelled me out of the prince’s head entirely.
I returned to myself with a grimace. I was standing over Belanor, and we were still surrounded by chaos. Laurie’s friends were holding their own, due in large part to the lumberjack, the dark-eyed male with the gun, and the greasy-haired female. Every time a shot went off, it seemed as if the sound was swallowed by the night sky. The gun must have a silencer on it, I thought distantly as I refocused on Belanor. I readied myself to go back into his head.
“How?” he rasped. His eyes were dull with pain, but this faerie continued to surprise me with his resilience.
The question made me pause. I searched Belanor’s expression, frowning. Past the pain, there was a familiar, burning intensity in the depths of his gaze. The moment I saw it, I realized that he just wanted to know which one of his tortures had worked. This faerie was on his knees, at my mercy, and that was all he cared about.
Gritting my teeth, I moved my hands from Belanor’s temples to bury them in his hair. I yanked his head back, exposing his throat, as if I meant to slice a sword across it. One of his guards saw what I was doing and shouted someone’s name, probably a Guardian that was closer to us. But every faerie around us was either unconscious, injured, or struggling against the manifestations of their phobias.
Knowing that time was not on my side, I allowed myself a moment to consider how I should proceed.
Whether Belanor had been lying to me about how he got his scars, or his subconscious had altered the truth to protect him, I couldn’t be sure. I was sure about the Seelie Prince’s fear of fire, though. I thought of how the fireplace had always been unlit during my time in that gilded prison. Funny how fear often revealed itself in the smallest, quietest ways. Ways that were all-too easy to miss if you weren’t looking for them.
I considered making Belanor believe he was being burned alive, but it wasn’t enough. Not after everything he’d done. Though every second came with a potential, devastating cost, I dove back into the prince’s mind. Belanor’s mental wall was back in place, but it was no match against my cold fury; I punched a hole through it, barely flinching. My victim made a sound of pain that I ignored, and I clawed past the echoes of the witch’s spell in search of other days or moments Belanor was hiding.