A Deal with the Elf King (Married to Magic, #1)(101)

There’s the seed of space that my consciousness goes to within the throne. It’s the seed from which the throne was born. In that place I felt the life of past queens, the energy of the world.

Lilian wrapped a piece of dark bark—bark that mirrors the heartroot and that seed at the core of the redwood throne—on a necklace with filament. It was the necklace she hid in the box. A necklace of magic that Eldas couldn’t understand.

She commissioned her statue at the center of Quinnar to have her kneeling. Not because she intended queens to be subservient, but because she was showing the way everything came to be…and how everything would end.

“That’s it.”

The two flowers that bloomed instantly when I first touched the plant seem to wink at me, as if overjoyed that I’ve pieced it all together. Carefully, I scoop up the pot cradling the unassuming plant. I can almost see the phantom memories I first witnessed when I touched it, reaching out to me.

I saw Queen Lilian taking the heartroot and planting it the first time I came in contact with it. This is what she was planting in the statue. I know it. I feel it with every part of me. This was what the redwood throne grew from, and what will help bring balance in the Natural World.

“Did you plan for this all along, Lilian?” I murmur. A human woman who negotiated peace with a warring Elf King. She was clever. She pulled the heartroot intentionally into just Midscape. She made the worlds out of balance. Lilian built in a way out for the Human Queens for when the time was right—when peace was stable and Human Queens were no longer needed as trophies. She left the clues behind—starting the tradition of journals, the statue, using the heartroot that would trap memories of her—hoping someone would find them.

I’m going home.

Rushing back into the laboratory, I put the plant down and sweep Willow up into a tight embrace. He goes rigid, startled, and just as he moves to return it I’m already pulling away. “Thank you, thank you,” I say.

“What?” He blinks.

“It’s because of you, because of the heartroot, because—oh, never mind. Listen, I need you to do something for me.”

“All right.” Willow nods slowly. “What?”

“Take this.” I carefully snip one of the flowers. His eyes widen. “And make it into an elixir for Harrow.” The heartroot has helped in my healing of Harrow to date. The flower will be just what he needs—a merger of the plant’s body and mind properties.

“The flower, but it’s for…” He trails off.

“Poison, I know. I can’t explain why I think it’ll help,” I say apologetically. “Please just trust me because I need to focus on my other work.”

“Oh…okay.” Willow slowly begins to move, doing as I instruct. Meanwhile, I’m running through my plans. I search the laboratory for everything I might need to sacrifice to equilibrium to make the heartroot propagate faster.

My hands pause before the magic pours from them. If this works…I’ll be headed home before nightfall. I’m dizzy from excitement and apprehension.

Then, another thought crosses my mind. If this works, it will be the last time I see Eldas. My fingers tremble and I swallow hard.

The cycle must end, I remind myself firmly and get back to work.

Before I know it, I’m standing before the door to the throne room. Rinni has made herself scarce this past week. Maybe it’s because I’ve been locked away in my room. Or perhaps it’s because Eldas finally told her everything and I was right in thinking she’d take his side. Perhaps, when I’m gone, she and Eldas will try again at romance. The thought makes me ill and I focus instead on the heartroot in my hands.

“You’re late,” Eldas says curtly as I walk in. “I summoned you to sit on the throne an hour ago.”

“I know.” I meet his eyes and my chest squeezes further. Those icy eyes are the same that looked to me in the darkness with such longing…with what I had dared think might be love. “But it doesn’t matter. This is all about to end.”

The cycle.

Us.

“You figured it out,” he whispers, not even a corner of his mask slipping out of place.

“Yes, I’m leaving tonight.” I wait to see a flicker of emotion on his face. There’s a flash in his eyes, but one not even I can read. It could be just as easily relief as regret. And, because I don’t know, that’s how I’m certain I’m making the right decision. None of this will be clear to me until I’m back in a world I know, a place that makes sense, and I have some amount of freedom to sort through this mess of feelings trying to strangle me.

“Then I will grant you passage through the Fade,” he says slowly, “and hope that you never return.”





Chapter 36





It’s so late that only the very first haze of dawn has begun to kiss the sky.

Only Willow and Rinni have come to see me off. Eldas allowed me to depart into the night without so much as a goodbye. He dismissed me from that vast, lonely throne room with little more than a wish of good luck. No one else will see me off because this mission is still our great secret. If I succeed, Midscape will rejoice in a security it’s never known; it will no longer rely on a single person for the wellbeing of its lands. If I fail…Eldas will come to collect me before the coronation and no one will know his queen “tried to escape him.”