What Lurks Between the Fates (Of Flesh & Bone, #3)(49)

“She was loyal to Alastor, Twyla’s late husband. She is one Goddess I would not have stood a chance against in a fair battle. So while we were in the Autumn Court for Mabon, I slipped a drop of serpent’s venom into her wine at dinner, and then I crept into her room while she slept it off, and I cut her heart from her chest and fed it to my snake.”

“You have no sense of honor, do you?” I asked, shaking my head.

It only served to make me stumble, and my hatred over the fact that Mab was the sole thing keeping me standing grew. I adjusted my grip on the statue, holding onto her more tightly than before.

“Surely, you’ve noticed the statues that line the halls of Tar Mesa? Each one of them represents a God, a Goddess, a creature, or a Sidhe that I have slaughtered in my quest for power.”

She stretched her hand across the front of my face, touching a black nail to the bottom of my jaw and using it to turn my languid head to face her.

“I have been playing this game for longer than you’ve been alive, Estrella. You cannot win. I like to think Sarilda and I might have been an incredible team had circumstances been different. Instead, she is dead, her magic wasted. But there is still time for you and me to change our path. This world will never give us what we deserve. We must take it.”

“I will never become the very thing that I hate,” I said, my words slurring as I stared up at the statue of Sarilda.

I imagined she might have felt similarly if Mab had given her the choice. I imagined that was precisely why she hadn’t.

“Why put them on display like this?” I asked, my thoughts sluggish.

I needed sleep, but Mab’s warning about how she’d slain Sarilda in her sleep meant it wouldn’t come easily when I could finally find my way to my bed. I choked back my dread of such things, focusing on staying awake on my feet and not collapsing to the limestone in a puddle.

My gaze turned upward as I waited for her answer, finding the metal chandeliers descended from the ceiling. One hung in a circle above me, making me feel like I existed within it as the stack of candles got smaller in a cone shape toward the wooden beam above my head.

“Why would I not? Bodies rot, but these trophies last forever. They serve as a reminder to all who walk these halls—of what happens to those who oppose me.”

She gripped my elbow with her free hand, using the hook of hers within mine and her hand upon mine to guide me away from the statue of Sarilda. I kicked off the heeled shoes Nila had dressed me in, toeing them to the side as I walked. Mab didn’t comment as I forced my bare feet across the cold stone, letting that ground me more fully.

In my haze, I barely registered the fact that she walked with me at her side. Not as a victim trailing behind her, but assisting me as an equal for a moment, as if she wanted me to experience what life here could be in my venom-induced stupor.

“Why are you helping me?” I grumbled, glancing over my shoulder to where Malachi looked disgusted by my place at his queen’s side, certain he would be more than willing to drag me across the stone. I turned my eyes forward and focused on putting one foot in front of the other.

“Maeve was meant to be my heir,” she said, her nails gripping into my arm just a little too tightly. They indented the skin, leaving curved marks behind when she realized what she’d done and loosed her grip just enough.

“Fallon,” I corrected instinctively.

She continued as if I hadn’t spoken at all, ignoring the insolence she was growing far too used to. “But she doesn’t possess a drop of magic in her blood. There’s not a single trace of me in her.”

I shifted at her side as she stopped outside a single wooden door. It wasn’t as ornate as some of the others at court. Iron details stretched across the vertical wooden planks in the shape of a massive, curved M.

“You hardly need an heir if you never intend to step down from your reign,” I said.

The observation hung between us as she glanced down at me. I kept my eyes forward, ignoring her pointed stare on the side of my face. I didn’t dare ask where Fallon was, what Mab had done with her if she was such a disappointment. In my stupor, there was nothing I could have done to help her, anyway.

It was a battle for another day, a question for when I was confident I could understand the answer. It felt as if all the admissions of this walk would slip through my fingers by morning, lost to the haze of the venom circulating in my blood.

“An heir is not only a necessity, but a symbol of stability. In the event that something does happen to me, it will reassure my loyal followers that there is someone who will take my place. Someone strong enough to fill my shoes and keep hold of the kingdom in the same way I have,” she said, waiting for me to look at her.

I swallowed, my hand trembling as I finally turned to meet her stare.

“I would have considered naming you my heir if I thought you would proceed as I have, but you’ve made it very clear you have no intention of doing so. That is what you reject at every opportunity. The ability to rule over the world that sought to break you. But it’s not meant to be, so I suspect I will have to try again one day.”

“But you killed your mate,” I objected, comforted by the knowledge that she could not produce a second heir without him. The witch’s curse had done more than just limit all the Fae from producing more than one child. It had made it so that she had condemned herself to her one chance at an heir she deemed worthy.