Chapter Thirty Jasalyn

Chapter Thirty

Jasalyn

I SCOWL AT THE FAERIE who fancies himself the next Eloran king. "You're here for the child queen? The one the Seven fear so much?"

His eyes flash, and the intricate lines tattooed across his forehead, marking him as the Chosen One, glow, giving me my answer.

"My friends among the Seven wanted me to dispose of her." My smile stretches across my face. "Just like they want you dead."

He only lifts his chin a notch higher.

"They underestimate me, though. There's something I need more than your queen. Are you prepared to bargain?"

His nostrils flare. The cockiness in his eyes makes me want to slowly slice him to bits just to prove who's in charge, but the little Kincaid girl wasting away in my dungeons is more important to me than my pride.

My seer tells me that this male, this Eloran faerie with his arrogance and ice-blue eyes, has the power to make her want to live.

"I'll make a deal with you," I say. "I'll release your queen in exchange for you. You will take her place in my dungeons and befriend the Eloran girl I'm holding there."

"Why?"

I cock my head to the side. "Do you truly care? Kendrick the Chosen, who will sacrifice anything for the future of his realm. Would you not do this small thing? You want your queen released, and I need my girl to live. Now and after I'm gone."

"What do you have in mind?"

"She isn't taking well to being a prisoner. She needs... a friend. What better friend for her than a charming young man from Elora?"

Kendrick arches a brow. "A man?"

"I can't send you in there as a faerie, certainly not when she's so afraid of our kind. I need you to go in there as the human version of yourself. You're to give her hope. Courage. You're to be the reason she wants to wake up tomorrow. And after. You'll watch over her, and I will hand you the Magical Seven on a platter."

"You free my queen today, and I'm at your service."

My eyes fly open. Rage, as black as night and twice as fearsome, pumps through my blood. The room tilts sideways, and my stomach lurches.

Kendrick sits up beside me. "Are you okay?"

Not at all.

"What's wrong?" He brushes my hair back from my face. "Talk to me."

I lock my gaze on his fae ears. His glamour is still in place, but his forehead is unmarked where he wore a tattoo in my dreams. To reassure myself, I reach up with my unbound hand and skim a finger from temple to temple.

He shivers and his eyes drift closed for a beat. "Jasalyn."

"It was just a nightmare," I say—to him? To myself?

This is Kendrick. This is the man who is rallying against the evil fae who have destroyed his realm— my realm.

You'll watch over her, and I will hand you the Magical Seven on a platter.

No. It was just a dream. A nightmare. An elaborate concoction of my broken psyche.

"You would never hurt me," I whisper.

His blue eyes look haunted as he brings our bound hands to his lips, brushing a kiss across my knuckles. "I'd rather die."

The curtains are thrown open, and light pours into the room. "Get up, Hale," Remme grumbles. "We're heading to—Oh. Shit. I'm sorry. I'll just—"

"Wait, Remme," Kendrick says, adjusting the sheet over me with his free hand.

I shift under the covers and study his face. "Did it work?" I ask. "Do you remember?"

He nods, but there's something sad on his face I don't quite understand. "It worked."

"You two spent the night together, and you thought he might forget?" Remme asks. He frowns. "How could he forget a night with you?"

"Hey, Remme?" Skylar calls from the hall. "Have you seen Hale? Shae's back and needs to talk to him, but he's not—" She appears in the door and freezes when she spots us in Kendrick's bed together. "Oh. Jasalyn. How did you sleep?"

Kendrick sits up, chest bare. "Good morning, Skylar. Good morning, Remme. We saw you both last night and explained that Jasalyn's ring won't come off, but you don't remember because, obviously, she was wearing the ring, just like you won't remember this, but please get the fuck out anyway." He adds a smile to soften the command.

Remme's brows creep up his forehead as he looks back and forth between us. "I knew it was a matter of time."

I lift up our bound hands. "Nothing happened. We slept next to each other so Kendrick would stay connected to me and wouldn't forget. Now please go?"

He nods. "As you wish, Princess."

"Do you need anything, Jasalyn?" Skylar asks. "I could run you a warm bath?"

I bite back a smile. This is going to get old fast, but right now it's still amusing.

"I'm good," I tell her. "Why don't you get yourself some breakfast, and we'll meet you downstairs."

"Oh. Okay. Thank you. That's so kind of you. I'm so lucky to know you."

We wait while they back out of the room and close the door behind them.

"Wow," Kendrick says, dropping back onto his pillow. "If she was able to remember that, she would absolutely hate it."

"I'm sure."

He rolls to his side to look at me, and my dream flashes to the forefront of my mind. Kendrick talking to Mordeus. Kendrick, as fae, promising to keep me from destroying myself so Mordeus could use me.

He cups my face in his big hand and rubs his thumb across my bottom lip. I attempt a smile, but I can't shake the dream. It's making me question this man who's saved me again and again.

"How are you feeling this morning?" he asks.

My dreams were nothing more than the ring messing with my mind, just like it distorts the perceptions of those around me when I'm wearing it. Or maybe it's the blood magic—maybe Mordeus is able to plant things in my mind as he draws power from me.

Whatever the reason, I'm sure there's an explanation. Kendrick was helping me plot my escape from the dungeons. He wouldn't have done that if he'd been working with Mordeus.

I shove down the surge of unfair doubts and suspicions. Kendrick deserves better.

"So far, so good," I whisper. The truth is, I already feel tired in a way that has nothing to do with the number of hours we slept. This ring isn't meant for the daylight, and every survival instinct tells me to stay in bed. Another kind of instinct is telling me to keep Kendrick here with me.

"Maybe the magic changes when you merge with the ring," he says.

"Maybe." His body is so warm next to mine under these blankets, and I focus on that instead of how real the dream seemed.

"So nothing happened last night, huh? Is that how you remember it?"

My cheeks heat. "Well, it's certainly nothing I'm going to talk to Remme about."

His eyes go dark as he skims his gaze down the front of me. "We need to get that ring off so I can kiss you again." Sitting up, he unravels the towel connecting our hands.

"What are you doing?" I'm so weak. How will I fake enough strength to get through the day?

"You don't feel well." He flicks his gaze to mine before focusing on our bindings again. "So we're going to have breakfast and then figure out how to get rid of this ring. Natan should hear back from his source this morning. I need you to tell him everything you can about the ring so we can figure out how to destroy it."

"Okay," I whisper. Could destroying the ring give me back all I traded for it?

The thing clutching me by the chest feels a little like hope with claws. It hurts to want something with this kind of intensity. And I'm a fool to have ever given so much away.

I let myself imagine days at Kendrick's side learning to stop judging myself for the fear. I let myself imagine how good it would feel to face my demons without this horrific crutch.

We're quiet when we climb out of bed. Kendrick turns away while I put on my riding pants and another one of Skylar's tops. He scribbles in his journal while I brush my hair into a high ponytail, but he watches me while I buckle into my boots.

I catch his gaze and wonder if he'll ever understand what he's done for me in our short time together. How hard it was for me to have someone so much as touch my arm before he came back into my life. How it's only because of him and his friends that I would even wish for a different set of stars instead of none at all.

How could I doubt him after all that?

The knock on the door pulls me from my thoughts.

"Hale, I need to speak with you." It's Natan, and he sounds unsettled. "It's about the ring."

Kendrick opens the door for him, and Natan comes into the room but slows when his eyes meet mine. "Jasalyn, how are you?"

I swallow hard. "I'm okay. Have you figured out a way to destroy the ring?"

He gives a jerky shake of his head. "Is that what you would like? I can go work on that right now."

"We need to know what you found out," Kendrick says, an impatient growl rumbling beneath his words.

Natan ignores him, his full attention on me.

"Look at Kendrick and tell him what you know about my ring," I instruct him gently.

Natan pulls in a deep breath before nodding and turning to Kendrick. "We used the ring's echo to track its match, and traced it to the Eloran Palace."

"Who's wearing the other one?" Kendrick asks.

"I don't have that answer, but I have my suspicions." Natan toys with the braided leather on his wrist, his hesitation like a piercing wail in the silence. "Princess, when did those scars of yours start appearing?"

I frown. "A few months ago, maybe? Did you find out more about the blood magic?"

"Did the scars appear before or after you got that ring?" Natan asks.

"They..." I search my mind to recall the first one. I was so exhausted because I'd stayed up late using the ring, and when I saw that first mark across my stomach, I felt nothing. No vanity, no surprise, no curiosity, nothing. It seemed fitting that the mark Mordeus had left in my mind was finally showing on my skin. "It was after." My words are too quiet. Suddenly, I want to end this conversation before he can say any more.

"Do you ever find yourself in two places at once?" Natan asks me. "Seeing through your eyes and another's at once? Do you find yourself knowing things—things you shouldn't know?"

My pulse skips a beat. Then two. I feel frozen and as helpless as I was at Mordeus's table, a prisoner in my own body as he used his magic to feed me.

Could Natan be referring to something like my dreams?

Kendrick's blue eyes are alight with fury. "Mordeus is pulling power from her, isn't he? He's using the ring to amplify the blood magic. That's why he needed her alive."

Natan gives a pained nod. "I don't have all the answers. This kind of magic is different than anything I've seen, but it seems the false king knew. Somehow he knew he needed Jasalyn—knew that there would come a point that she would be his only way to return to this world. Every bit of torture she endured in his dungeons was done to make her fear him and every faerie in that place. He needed her fear to be so great that when the time came and this witch found her, she would be desperate for a way to escape it."

"What are you trying to say?" Kendrick asks. "How could Jasalyn's fear and pain benefit Mordeus? What's the connection between the torture and his resurrection?"

"Her magic alone wouldn't be enough to resurrect him," Natan says. "But if she began taking lives that were pledged to Mordeus—either directly or through a proxy..."

My mind flashes with the image of a room full of tattooed insurgents falling to the floor. The pallor of death sweeping over their faces. "No," I breathe. Like the memory of a dream, the vision is there, then gone, slipping away like so many grains of sand.

Natan drags a hand through his hair. "We received word this morning about Mordeus's legion stationed at Feegus Keep."

The tremor that starts in my gut radiates out and down my arms until my hands are trembling. "They're dead," I say. "The night I went missing—that's when they died, isn't it?"

"We don't know for sure that you were responsible," Natan says, but I can tell he believes I was, even under the ring's enchantment.

"The bastard knew she was going to go after his people," Kendrick says, his jaw ticking. "He knew she'd use all the fear and hate and turn it on his guards, guards who tortured her on his orders."

There's a buzzing in my ears growing louder and louder. Magic is life. Life is magic. Isn't that the number one rule of this cursed realm?

I felt that magic. Every time I used the deadly power of the ring, I felt my victim's power funnel through me. The room spins, and I grip the foot of the bed so I don't fall down.

In my quest for vengeance, I brought Mordeus back.

I killed all those people.

I am the faceless plague.

I stumble back until I'm leaning against the wall. My head's spinning. This is all my fault. The deaths. Mordeus. The horror sweeping through my sister's court.

I'm responsible for all of it.

None of this would've happened if I hadn't bought this ring.

None of this would've happened if I hadn't so readily forfeited everything for revenge.

Bile surges in my throat, and I struggle to speak around it. "You're saying Mordeus isn't only pulling strength from me. He's alive because of me, because of what I've done ."

"That's not possible," Kendrick says. "To be the catalyst for his resurrection, she would've had to offer..." I feel the weight that falls over him the moment the answer clicks into place. When I meet his eyes again, there's nothing but devastation in those icy-blue depths. "What did you trade for that ring, Jasalyn?"

I want to crawl out of my skin. To escape the rot of my mistakes. To undo all the horrors I've wrought upon this world.

"Jas, what did you promise that witch?" Kendrick rasps.

Tears burn my eyes and the room swims. "It was nothing to forfeit a life I never wanted," I whisper. The whole point of the ring was to free me from my fear, and now there's nothing I fear more than what I've done because of it.

The irony cuts me off at the knees, and I sink to the floor.

"This wasn't you." Kendrick drops to his haunches before me. "If anything, it was that ring. But that's not you. You could never become like the monsters who gave you those scars."

No. Because I don't leave scars, only dead bodies.

"Jasalyn," Kendrick whispers. "This wasn't you."

But he doesn't understand. I wanted this ring because I wanted the power to be able to do just this. I traded everything for this curse. I wanted them dead. And now they are, and so many more.

"Mordeus is in the Eloran Palace?" I ask Natan.

"That is what I believe, yes." He shifts worried eyes between me and Kendrick. "The Seven must be protecting him while he gains strength."

"Why would they protect him?"

He sighs heavily. "The same reason they did anything for him before, even when he held what they needed most over his head. They stand to gain something."

I look to Kendrick. I have years of experience locking away my feelings, and I call on that now as I push to my feet. "And the sword—the one at Feegus Keep—that can get us to the palace?"

Kendrick's expression is bleak. He searches my face as he rasps, "Yes."

"And this sword—it can kill anyone? Even a resurrected king?"

He looks pained. "Yes, but so long as you're wearing that ring, the daylight will make you weak and—"

"We go today." I fight the panic and terror rising up in me with everything that I have and lift my chin. "I'm the reason he's back. I won't be the reason he gets stronger."