Seven Black Diamonds (Seven Black Diamonds #1)(74)

“Then why not tell me that?” Alkamy said from behind him.

Any words he might have known vanished as he saw her standing there watching him with tears in her eyes. She didn’t move from the doorway of her bedroom. Her robe was loosely tied, and her hair fell around her face like a dark veil framing perfection like no one else in this world or the other.

“Just once, Zephyr. Say it to me,” Alkamy half ordered, half pleaded.

“I can’t.” He stood and went to her.

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want you to get hurt,” he whispered.

She shook her head. “I love you. Everyone knows. You think Endellion doesn’t already know?” Alkamy crossed her arms over her chest. “I’ll stand by your side, do whatever you ask. I always have. I always will. If that means you being with Lily, I can accept it. I did accept it years ago.” Tears started to slide down her cheeks. “None of it means that I don’t need the words. Say them.”

“I love you,” he swore. In that moment, he wished he could be more like Lilywhite and Creed, that he could ignore the consequences and do what he wanted, that he could take Alkamy and run far from their responsibilities. But standing there with Alkamy in his arms, with words of love on his lips, didn’t change reality or duty.

A sound from Lilywhite’s room made Zephyr look into the half-open doorway. Creed looked back at him from his seat on her bed. He was clothed, so perhaps they hadn’t done anything to further complicate this mess.

He kissed the top of Alkamy’s head, and then he turned so he could see Lilywhite instead of Creed. “I love Alkamy, but I won’t sentence any of us to death at the queen’s order. That’s what it means to love someone: being willing to give them up to keep them safe.”

Lilywhite held out the object she’d been carrying then. “I told you my mother had left me a book. The others all read it last night while you were . . . sleeping.”

Zephyr looked down at it, read the title, and then glanced at her.

“Read the first bit,” Lilywhite said. “Then we’ll talk.”

Silently, he walked over to the sofa. Alkamy sat next to him, her hand in his, while he read what he quickly realized was a story of the past written by the missing heir to the Hidden Throne.

The Book of Secrets

Iana Abernathy

It was almost dusk when the Unseelie Queen started to swim toward the shore. Today was the last swim until her daughter was born. Children weren’t meant to be born into the churning sea—even children like hers. Although the babe wasn’t due quite yet, Endellion was near enough to her birthing time that from here on out, she’d restrict herself to land.

Her daughter would be the beginning of a new era, the start of a treaty that had taken both Unseelie and Seelie decades to create. As part of that treaty, Endellion had lain down with the Seelie King, Leith. The Queen of Sea and Sky would bear the daughter of the King of Fire and Truth.

The two fae monarchs agreed that their daughter would one day rule the two courts as one.

Endellion took a deep breath and dove down again, enjoying the lightness the water gave her now heavy body. Her hair was still unbound after her visit to Leith, and her stress was temporarily set aside in the aftermath of his affection and the joy of the sea. It wasn’t the sort of peace she’d known in past centuries, but she was closer to content than she’d been in more recent decades.

The burden of making decisions for her subjects had been heavy on her shoulders. Both the Unseelie and Seelie fae had been hidden away for several centuries, no longer meddling in the affairs of men. But faeries—as beings of nature—were left suffering from the consequences of the plague of humans that had spread over the world. The seas grew murky with poisons, and the soil had been exhausted from toxins that were discarded carelessly. To save their kind from the poisonous world, the two courts retreated to a series of islands hidden near the great whirlpool, the Coire Bhreacain.

With some subtle urging, the British queen had declared the Gulf of Corryvreckan “unnavigable,” so Unseelie and Seelie Courts had hidden their islands near the Corryvreckan. The two fae courts were learning to find peace on the chain of islands they’d divided between them. They mostly kept to their own kind, but there were those who traveled between the isles.

Endellion herself had been diving into the twisting waters of even this whirlpool since before the mortals knew it existed. She was of the sea. In her long life, there was no ocean that she’d not visited. She drew her strength from the waters and from earth, much as Leith found his strength in air and fire. Their daughter would share the strengths of both courts, and so be able to safeguard both Unseelie and Seelie.

The queen surfaced on the far side of the gulf when a screech of metal drew her eyes to the left. An over-large vessel had sailed into waters too treacherous and too shallow. The rocks that marked the edge of the hidden islands shredded the underside of the ship.

Endellion dove to try to avoid the sinking heap of metal, but a piece from the hull of the ship smashed into her, sending her deeper than she would have gone with a babe growing inside her. As she kicked toward the surface, her skin grew tight from the oil that coated the water. The poison spilled into her sea, choking her, clinging to her skin.

Rage filled her as her body went into shock.

Blood mixed with oil as her daughter’s birth began—too soon, in water too deep, in seas too poisonous.