These Twisted Bonds (These Hollow Vows, #2)(95)

I swallow hard. This is what we were afraid of—this stalemate.

“Convince the golden prince to surrender his crown to the girl,” she tells Finn.

“No,” I whisper. There has to be another way. “I can’t sit on the throne anyway. It would be a pointless loss.”

“His death would be step one.” Her smile is wicked and angry. “Then you’d forfeit your own life to pass the power and crown to Finnian, where it belongs.”

Next to me, Finn snarls. “That’s not an option.”

I swallow hard. Maybe it should be.

“Dear Prince, you know how this works. The power becomes one with the life, and only once the life is surrendered does the power move on to the heir. Isn’t it time you made a sacrifice for your kingdom? For once?”

I can feel Finn shrink, and I want to claw her eyes out for hitting him in such a tender spot.

“Not before we’ve exhausted all other options,” he says. “Open a portal to the Underworld so that I may ask the Great Queen Mab herself how to save our kingdom.”

The priestess stares at him for a long time, and I hold my breath. I know the others have been planning for a way to proceed without whatever divine intervention Mab might offer, but I also know that if they’d come up with a true alternative, we wouldn’t be here and Finn wouldn’t be planning a treacherous trip to the Underworld.

The priestess holds Finn’s gaze. “No.”

Finn flinches.

“You were supposed to be king,” she says. “You were supposed to rule alongside Juliana. She is worthy. You were once worthy. Prove that you are again. You’ve failed our kingdom, and now that white-haired Seelie trash lives in our palace and this human filth holds the power of our crown. I will not—” She gags, grabbing her throat as if she’s choking, and then blood spills out of her mouth and her eyes roll back in her head.

Finn’s arm darts out in front of me and he urges me to step back, away from the throne.

“What’s happening?” I ask him.

“The High Priestess swore an oath to Mab when she took residence in this temple,” he says. His eyes are wide as he watches her convulse. “There are consequences to taking that oath and then refusing to act in the best interest of the court, refusing to do Mab’s will.”

The High Priestess suddenly stops convulsing, and the air in the room shifts as something else, something other slides into her body, and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

Blood spills out of her mouth and splashes onto the marble floor as she leans forward and stares at us with the whites of her eyes. “At the northernmost peak of the Goblin Mountains,” she says, but it’s not the priestess’s voice. This is a voice from far away and all around. It’s the voice of all the shadow priestesses, and it sends chills racing across my skin and my heart stuttering in my chest. “In the cave beneath the roots of the Mother Willow, the portal waits.” She turns her head and stares into my eyes, globs of clotted blood falling to the floor with each word. “Go there, Abriella, child of Mab.”

Finn’s snaps his gaze to me, wide-eyed and staring, but I can’t take my eyes off the dead woman speaking to me.

“The Great Queen waits for you. Bring your tethered match,” she says, “and the power of your blood combined will open the gates to the Underworld. Go learn how to save your kingdom.” The priestess falls forward to the floor, into a pool of her own blood.

“Mother!” Juliana appears at the back of the sanctuary and races to her side, rolling the priestess to her back. “What did you do?” she shouts at Finn.

“Nothing,” he says, but he doesn’t take his eyes off me. “I did nothing but ask for a portal to see Mab.”

Juliana presses her hand to her mother’s chest. “Please, Mother.”

“I’m sorry, Jules,” Finn says, flicking his gaze to her briefly. “I didn’t know this would happen.”

She lifts her head, and tears roll down her beautiful face. “I don’t understand.”

“She swore an oath to protect this land and to serve the court. I don’t think the gods liked her refusing me—us.” He takes my hand and squeezes hard. “It seems that Mab wants to see her descendant. Abriella is a child of Mab.”

Juliana’s head snaps up, and she stares at me in shock. “That can’t be. She was human.”

“It appears there’s more to the story,” Finn says reverently.

Shaking her head, Juliana strokes her mother’s cheek with bloody fingers. “Leave. Just leave me.”



Finn practically pulls me out of the temple, leading me past the guards and down the steps, where Pretha and Kane are being restrained by guards, as if they’d sensed something wrong and had been trying to get to us.

“What happened?” Pretha asks, shrugging out of the grasp of the guard holding her.

“We’re leaving,” Kane growls at his guard, pulling out of his hold and following us toward our horses.

“We need to get back to the Unseelie palace,” Finn says. He grips my hand tightly, as if he’s afraid I might disappear.

“Explain,” Pretha says. She tugs on Finn’s arm and makes him stop. “We felt something awful.

Something big, but they wouldn’t let us in.”