Ambrosia (Frost and Nectar, #2)(41)

It was such a startling declaration that I couldn’t bring myself to finish the job of directing these plants to rip him in two.

Or maybe it was the small kindness he’d shown me by bringing me a bath and soap.

But that moment’s hesitation gave him the chance to rise from the ground, reaching for me, and it happened almost without me realizing I was doing it. The earth began to shake, and stones topped from the walls. The enormous tree that formed half my prison cell was groaning, shifting. The towering cell rumbled around us, and stones tumbled from the walls. Morgant’s arms flew over his head, shielding himself.

That was all the time I needed to slip past him and into the castle tunnels, to taste freedom on my lips.

I breathed in deeply, sprinting through the dungeon’s corridor .

I hoped I was ready for this because I still felt as though most of my power was entombed by rock, desperate to break free.

Heat and tingles raced down my shoulder blades.





26





SHALINI




Ice and snow clung to the trees around the cabin. In the remote forest, everything around me was encased in white. The snow turned the trees into misshapen mounds like frozen ghosts. And the fact that I’d started talking to the frozen ghosts was probably a good indication that I was spending too much time by myself.

In the cabin, I kept imagining that the frozen dead surrounded me. Long icicles hung from the tree boughs like ragged spirits. They glistened in the sunlight, making the boughs bend under their weight, until a frozen gust swept through, sending an icicle crashing to the ground with a hollow thud. Every time that happened, I jumped.

There hadn’t been much time to prepare for my trip here. Moria had quickly gone on a rampage, trying to ferret out anyone who might be loyal to Torin. Now, I was stuck here, whether I liked it or not. The only way out of Faerie was with a monarch’s permission, and Queen Moria would sooner execute me than let me leave. Apparently, I was a demon lover.

A month ago, Aeron had rushed me to this remote safe house. Orla was kept in a separate location, Cleena in yet another. We were, I think “high profile” targets. Princess Cleena was once Moria’s closest friend, but she’d loathed her ever since Moria had tried to slaughter her in the arena. Funny how that can put a real damper on a friendship.

Now, the crackling fire, a single book, and my frozen spirit friends kept me company. The idea that I’d been bored before in early retirement now seemed quaint and ridiculous.

A wild howl carried on the wind, and I hugged myself, shuddering. The mournful cry of the banshee carried on the winter winds.

I swallowed hard. Someone was going to die. And if Cleena didn’t gain control of her banshee scream, it could end up being her.

Aeron hadn’t said this out loud, but I think we were supposed to know as little as possible about the others in hiding. That way, if any of us were caught, they wouldn’t be able to torture answers out of us. Whenever that disturbing thought occurred to me, I’d turn to my frozen spirit friends and ask them to kill me with their icicle hands before I was captured.

Was I losing my mind?

Yes.

The highlight of my day was sitting in front of the fire. Aeron, bless him, had supplied me with an automatic fire lighter, and while I sat in this cabin, he ferried himself among the safe houses, checking on everyone, supplying them with food as best he could. Whenever someone in town would get tarnished with the epithet “demon lover,” he’d try to bring them to safety before they were captured.

He wouldn’t tell me about the ones he couldn’t save, or what he saw going on by the castle, and that told me it was a particularly grim situation. This was, after all, a culture in which people casually said things like, Oh, Sir Durian, yes, I decapitated his son in a duel, or and then we slaughtered the human sacrifices after the party.

My teeth chattered. At first, when Moria had taken the throne, everyone had assumed that spring would come. That was the entire fucking purpose of having a queen on the throne. We waited for the warmth, for the thaw, but Moria wasn’t sitting her cute little ass down on that stone.

The thing was, like any good tyrant, Moria knew that if people were happy and comfortable, she’d lose her grip on power. She needed their rage and fear, or they might start to question her legitimacy. Hang on a minute, why are you queen…?

If people were comfortable, they might welcome Torin back again if he returned. They might forget to be angry at the demons, and she needed them desperately united against a common enemy—one only she could defeat.

Only by the constant threat of an attack by the Unseelie could she exert this control, so when people asked her why they were still freezing in their beds and why the cold gnawed at our bones, she still had her scapegoat. The demons were to blame, along with every traitor who might support them.

I turned back to the spluttering fire and knelt, rubbing my hands together and breathing on them for warmth. Aeron had brought me one other amazing treat: he’d managed to smuggle a single book out of the castle library, an eighteenth-century Gothic romance called The Cursed Monk. For something written centuries ago, it was surprisingly dirty, and I wondered if the subject matter had been on purpose. Aeron was, after all, something of a monk himself, sworn to chastity. It was hard not to think of some of the dirtier passages in the book as what might happen if he finally let that vow go.