These Twisted Bonds (These Hollow Vows, #2)(129)

My heart aches. I can’t look at Finn for more than a few seconds. This is the right thing to do. An entire court rests on our shoulders, and considering all that’s been lost thus far, what is this sacrifice of ours? It’s not much. And . . . I have hope. We might not have a way around this today, but there’s a chance the magic will make room for it—room for us—in the future. Magic is about change, Finn said. About possibility.

When Kane and Jalek return and give the all clear, Sebastian takes my hand and leads me into the cave.

“Are you having second thoughts?” I ask.

“No,” he says. “I know my duty.” Finally, he smiles at me. “I just wanted to be alone with you for a minute.”

“Okay.”

He turns to me and holds my hand in both of his. The position reminds me of the night we said the vows to create this bond. How appropriate, since today we make it permanent. “You are better,” he says, “and more deserving of this crown than I will ever be.”

“Don’t.” I flinch. “Don’t say that.”

“This is all my fault. I’m the one who got us into this position. I should’ve found a way. I should’ve—” He swallows. “I owe you so much. You . . . you taught me about love and friendship.

The real kind. I never had that before you. Thank you for—” He looks up at the ceiling of the cave, studying the many stalactites that hang there. Or maybe he doesn’t see them. Maybe instead he’s seeing our history play out in his mind. The good moments and the bad, the joyful and the painful.

“You’re going to make an amazing queen. I am honored to play a part in that. And I’m sorry.” He swallows hard and squeezes his eyes shut. “I’m sorry for the all the secrets I kept and all the pain I caused you. You deserved better.”

My heart clenches. Because I feel him. I feel sincerity and how much he wants me to understand what he’s saying, how desperately he wants me to believe his love. “Sebastian, it’s okay. I want to do this.” I take a step toward the river, and he comes with me.

“They’ll see her when they look at me,” he says. “The Unseelie will see Queen Arya when they look at me. They deserve better too.”

“We’ll prove that you’re worthy,” I promise. My stomach twists with the grief I feel through our bond.

He holds my hand tight, so tight in his grip it would hurt if I weren’t so distracted by the waves of emotion flowing from him. He reaches out and brushes his fingertips across my neck before pulling the green fire gem from beneath my dress. “I almost expected you to destroy this.”

I’m struggling to follow his volatile mood, but I shake my head in response. I’m surprised I didn’t destroy it in those early days, when my anger felt like it might eat me alive. “Somehow I knew I needed it. It amplifies my power, right?”

He huffs out a breath. “It would if it were a fire gem, but it’s not. You’re just that strong.” His smile is tender. “Mab’s bloodline was always stronger than Gloriana’s. It made my mother crazy.

That’s why she was so obsessed with collecting fire gems and stealing Unseelie power.”

“If it’s not a fire gem, then what is it?”

“It’s something else.” In one sudden movement he yanks it off my neck, snapping the chain. He studies the gem in his palm. “My mother dedicated her life to finding fire gems, but in her quest to collect as many as she could, her servants found another element beneath these mountains. An element even more scarce than the fire gems . . . When Mab died in the Goblin Mountains, the gods saw the injustice and mourned the loss of a loving mother in a cruel world. They brought her back to life and gave her the choice between magic and immortality, or a mortal life with a court of her own.”

“And she tricked them into giving her both,” I say. “Finn and Kane told me the story. What does any of this have to do with the fire gem?”

Sebastian lifts his gaze from the substance in his hand. “This isn’t a fire gem. It’s a bloodstone.”

I shake my head. “Mab destroyed the bloodstones.”

“Mab was tricky, but the gods were trickier. They hid the remaining bloodstones deep beneath the mountains where they’d be shielded from her powers. My mother never believed that the gods would allow Mab to destroy them all, and for years she’s had her Unseelie captives search for the sacred stones. I claimed and hid this one before she knew they’d been successful.”

“What are you trying to say?”

He closes both hands around the gem and repeats an incantation under his breath three times before opening them again. Now, instead of a gem, he holds a pool of liquid in his palm. It rolls around like mercury and is the gray-blue of a stormy sea. “I’m trying to tell you that all this time you were wearing the very thing that could’ve given you back your mortality and allowed you to pass on the crown. I’m saying that even now, you could take this sacred water of the bloodstone into your body and become human again. But if you do, there’s no turning back. You could never become fae again.”

All I wanted a few short weeks ago was to be human again. To be free of this power and have the choice to live in Elora with Jas. But now . . . “Why didn’t you tell me about this before?” I ask. “That first night I came to you and asked you to dismantle your mother’s camps?”