Page 68 of The Fallen Fae King

I hear the hitch in Daire’s breathing, even though I don’t look around. “See? Sweet and unhinged. It’s why we’re fated.”

“Do you forgive him?” Freya crawls across the nest to me, resting her hand on my shoulder. “Do you forgive us both?”

Should I give her the easy answer or the honest one?

I mustn’t die with lies on my lips.

“I love you.” I glance up at the moon. Crimson is now dripping over it. “I have given you both my protection. I have honored you as my King and Queen. I forgive your deception because I understand it. But I haven’t forgiven the death of my mother at Daire’s hands because of what it led to. I haven’t forgotten it. But I have found a type of acceptance.”

“I’m sorry…” Daire’s voice is choked.

“I don’t need your apology,” I say, simply. “We are all what we are. You may have taken from me, but you have also given to me. The scales are balanced.”

Above me, a patch of night sky has become darker than the rest.

It looks like shadows are clawing to get out.

It’s starting.

I become numb.

Everything truly is balancing…both starting and coming to an end.

I watch the stain spread across the heavens.

Suddenly, Daire shifts closer.

He sniffs, as if he can smell the ancient world seeping into ours. “What in the name of the Shadow Devils is that?”

“Not in the name of the Shadow Devils, my dear,” I quietly reply.

Daire grabs Freya’s hand and pulls her to sit next to me.

Constellations near the gap between the pyramids are losing their sharpness, their light swallowed by something unseen.

The darkness seems wrong.

It’s hungry.

A murmur rolls through the air.

But it’s not thunder.

Instead, it is something older — primal.

It vibrates through the stone beneath the plateau and the limestone pyramids. Bats wheel frantically away into the night.

I command the bats to fly with my moths as far as they can back toward the city.

Let them live at least.

Daire’s ravens caw but bravely remain with him, huddling uneasily on the top of the Eternal Royal Nest.

Above, the fabric of the sky begins to stretch like black silk being torn by invisible hands.

“What’s happening?” Freya’s voice is high and frightened. “Is this part of the ritual?”

“In a way.” I stare at the wound in the sky.