These Twisted Bonds (These Hollow Vows, #2)(110)

Time feels like it moves in slow motion, but I focus on putting one foot in front of the other.

Sometimes we climb. Sometimes we descend. Sometimes the terrain is so flat and repetitive that I think the monotony itself might break me.

There’s no sign of the monsters the others warned us about. Just endless, bleak desolation.

When it feels like we’ve been walking too long in an endless loop and my instincts beg me to run back to the portal, I think of those children, of Lark, of all the innocents who will be imprisoned and enslaved if we don’t continue.

When I’m sure that we’ve walked miles and miles to nowhere, the towering rock on either side of us falls away into the mist and reveals a dark and gloomy forest.

Mist winds around the trees and crawls among the roots. My heart races.

“You okay?” Finn asks.

I nod and continue on. “If I’m Mab’s descendant, does that mean Jas is too?” I ask, if only to give me something to talk about that will take my mind off this unnatural place.

“I don’t really know,” he says. “If Mab’s blood came from one of your parents, I suppose so.”

My lips twitch. “Before Mordeus imprisoned her and made her so afraid of this world, Jas would’ve really gotten a kick out of this—the idea that we’re descendants of some great faerie queen.”

“The Great Faerie Queen,” Finn says. “And I’m sorry—sorry that Mordeus hurt her, made her afraid of us.”

I swallow hard. “So am I. But I hope . . . I hope one day I get to see her again. Somehow.”

“I’ll make sure of it. We can teach you to glamour yourself—or have a priestess do it for you.” He squeezes my hand. “I know what she means to you.”

“She’s all I had for so long.” I watch my feet and take step after step. I feel like every sacrifice I’ve ever made for my sister has brought me to this moment. That I was preparing for this—whatever is next for me, whatever I can do to save this kingdom.

“Tell me about Jas,” Finn says, stepping ahead of me, pulling his blade from the sheath at his side to cut through a web of vines in our path. “What’s she like?”

I smile. “She’s wonderful. Jas makes everyone around her happier. She’s loved stories as long as I remember. Even when she was a toddler and we didn’t think she could understand, she’d sit curled in my arms as my mother told me about the magical land of Faerie. I think Jas liked the sound of Mother’s voice and the cadence of the tales she’d weave.”

His gaze, always so busy searching for threats, stalls on my face for a moment. “Do you think your mother knew that you had a role to play in our world?”

“I don’t know.” I shrug. If I’m right and I’ve been here before—if my mother brought me to the Underworld—then surely she knew something.

A hawk made of mist swoops down in front of our faces. I jerk my head back but don’t dare slow my feet. Finn squeezes my hand.

“Is any of this real?” I ask.

“That depends on your definition of real,” he says. “Just don’t look down.”

Because he said it, I do, and there, on either side of the mist at our feet, the ground has fallen away, revealing a massive drop into nothingness. My steps falter.

“Eyes up, Princess,” he says, gently tugging me along.

We walk and walk, until my legs burn, until I doubt that we should have come at all.

I have hardened my resolve for the hundredth time when the mist and the shadows fall away and the mountains re-form around us. Until suddenly we’re standing in the center of a— “This is a throne room,” I whisper, eyeing the stone dais before us and the gnarled throne of tree roots that sits atop it.

“Queen Mab,” Finn says, tilting his face up to the skies that are neither skies nor ceiling. “I am Prince Finnian, son of Oberon, and this is Abriella, child of Mab. It is she who holds the power of the Unseelie crown, and I am her tethered match. We come seeking your guidance so that we may save your kingdom.”

The throne is empty, and in the next moment black flames surround it, flickering to reveal the hazel-eyed female. Her hair is the color of a blazing fire, and it flows down to her waist, weaving in and out of the black flames like some strange dance.

I’ve been here before. Seen those black flames before.

On her eighteenth birthday, Mab said, and the words hurt my ears. She will become her true self. Do not try to prevent it.

Beside me, Finn drops to one knee, and I am so shocked I don’t think to follow until he tugs on my hand.

“You may rise,” Mab says without moving her lips. Her voice isn’t something I hear with my ears, but an echo in my head. “I so rarely get visitors. Come closer and let me see your faces.”

Finn and I slowly stand and take two steps closer.

The black flames around Mab retract. Only now do I see how pale her skin is—almost gray—and her lips bloodred. She cocks her head at Finn and smiles ruefully. “You have your father’s eyes, but that skin, like the desert sands, that comes from your mother. She wasn’t the one your grandparents picked to rule beside your father.”

Finn swallows, but I feel tension rolling off him. “She was a good queen nonetheless,” he says.

“Too bad she had to die so young.” Mab’s smile steals any sincerity from her statement, and one thing is clear: she might want the best for her people, might be the only one who can help us save her court, but she is not the benevolent ancestor I imagined. Child-me was right to be afraid.