Chapter 30

U nease pricked at her as she followed a guide back to her room. The hallways were unusually quiet, which only increased her nerves. The floorboards creaked with her every footstep, and from the corner of her eye she fancied she saw shadows shifting and dark fingers reaching for her. She took the last few hallways at a run, her heart pounding, and was relieved when she saw her bedroom door, two guards at attention outside. They opened the door for her without a word, and inside she found Lily restlessly flitting back and forth across the rafters of the ceiling, her glamoured wings shimmering bright in the candlelight, the chandelier swaying from the breeze she created. Rufus worried at a bone in the corner and when he saw Ember, he gave a pleased little snort and a quick wag of his tail, before returning to the far more interesting bone.

"Oh, Ember," Lily cried, flying to Ember, and throwing her arms around her. "I didn't know where you were. I thought perhaps someone had taken you."

Which, of course, they had.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you worry. It all happened so fast."

"The prince is …"

Lily broke off as the door crashed open and Cole burst in, a tornado of smoke whirling about him as though he were in the centre of a storm. He wasn't just angry. He was furious, apoplectic. Ember backed up quickly as he advanced on her, and Lily took her hand as if to give her courage. That sweet little gesture of support was enough to make her stand her ground. She was back now. She was safe.

"Where have you been?"

"In the castle," she answered, a little pertly. "I apologise for making you worry."

"In the castle?" he repeated in an awful mimicry of her, his voice high and quivering, every word laced with derision. "And where, pray tell?"

"I'm not exactly sure."

"You were with him," he snapped. "You were with that foul servant, my Blade. Only one place in the castle I cannot go and that belongs to him, only one place I cannot find you and that is by his side."

She raised her hands in placation, and he slapped them down, and then his hand shot out and he took a handful of her hair, forcing her head back. Her neck cracked and she let out a yelp of pain and terror. He shook her, once, twice, like a dusty mat. Her initial fear turned to anger, and she jerked away from his grasp, pushing Lily behind her.

"Don't touch me," she hissed. "Nothing happened."

"Where were you?" he screamed at her, but she refused to be cowed.

"In a crystal on a table in a hallway," she replied, almost lazily. She was weary of his unpredictable temper, bored with his moods. He wanted her at his side when he felt like it and pushed her away when he didn't, but she wasn't a toy to be thrown aside when he didn't feel like playing with her. It all felt so horribly familiar, and she resented it.

"He didn't lay a finger on me. He was a …"

She was about to say, a gentleman, but he let out a sharp laugh, one that jangled like rusty springs. "Of course he didn't! The only fae who would bother with a human is me, the only fae who would lower themselves to be with one is me. And what does that say about me? That I'm willing to lie in the filth and the muck? It says that I am not afraid of getting dirty, not averse to consort with the corrupt. I am the most worthy. I am the Sword."

He was panting with his hate, every word laced with venom, but she could see his anger wasn't really about her anymore. It was about Ashe.

"But I'm back now."

She tried to sound as gentle and as soothing as she could, hoping she could dissipate his fury. She'd often foolishly imagined that she had some influence over him, that he respected her. But she saw quite clearly now that no such influence existed. She may have given him some pleasure, but it was of the lowest, most detestable kind. It wasn't two souls connecting in an expression of mutual worship. It wasn't even a joyful act of physical release, for that at least would have been honest and primal and true. Cole was like an addict, pretending he was in control of the drug when, in actual fact, the drug was in control of him. He was with her because he needed her. He drank from her humanity because he had none of his own. And in doing so, it proved to him that he was powerful, untouchable.

Lily plucked at her and whispered, "It's the necklace. That's how he can find you —"

Cole lunged past Ember, seizing Lily in a brutal grip, and hurling her into the air with all his strength. She shot upward, her wings snapping outward. For a moment she hung above Ember, like a guardian angel, and then Cole drew the white sword from his side and slashed once, twice.

Ember shrieked as Lily burst into a thousand million tiny little fragments. Her wings went last, dissolving into a puff of colourful feathers that fell around her like holographic snowflakes. Rufus broke into a howl of terror and flattened himself on the floor. Ember collapsed, her legs refusing to hold her. She gaped up at Cole and scrabbled along the floor until her back pressed against the wall, as far from him as she could get. He covered the space between them in three angry strides, before bending and gripping her chin between fingers of steel.

"You do not defy me. You do not."

He kissed her then, a kiss full of loathing and longing that stole the breath from her lungs and when he pulled away, her lips were bruised, and she could taste blood in her mouth. He vanished, air rushing to fill the empty space. Ember shuddered, her entire body trembling with terror and grief. A single feather drifted across the floor in the gentle breeze and then it too, disappeared.

And Ember wept.