secret.”
“So I can gain my freedom, but only if I make no attempt to warn Elizabeth away from you.” I felt tears of anger and frustration building in my eyes and fought to keep them from falling.
He nodded. His eyes looked almost kind, but it was a total lie. “One of the hardest lessons to learn in life is that you cannot save everyone. I think that lesson is
A part of me knew he was right, but I refused to give up without a fight. I hummed a note. The magic came to my call, but it felt sluggish, and the room spun around me. The Erlking didn’t look even mildly alarmed.
“Magic takes its toll,” he said, “and you’ve used a lot of it today.”
“I bet I can manage one more spell,” I panted, though I wasn’t so sure. I barely had hold of any magic at all right now, and I suspected it took rather a lot to cast my special spell.
The Erlking sat down, completely relaxed despite what he’d seen my magic do earlier. “I honestly don’t think your spell will work on me.”
Like he would tell me if he thought it would.
His brow creased in thought, and he hesitated as if trying to pick his words carefully. “I was not born,” he said. “I have no parents, no memories of childhood, no memories of being anything other than what I am now. There’s a reason I’m immortal, and I think it may be that I’m not exactly alive in the first place. I am a force of nature, or a construct of magic, or an integral element of Faerie. But I am not something that can be killed.”
I let the magic go, but only because my whole body was shaking with the strain of trying to hold even a thimbleful of it. The Erlking sounded sincere, and maybe he really believed what he was saying. But I certainly wouldn’t put it past him to be making this up to discourage me from casting my spell. As far as I could tell, he’d never outright lied to me, but that didn’t mean he
“You have saved your friends and you have saved your father, against all odds,” he said. “Be content with that. Let Titania shoulder the burden of protecting Elizabeth. Titania and I have danced this dance before many times. Sometimes I win, sometimes she does. But in any case, you do not leave the child undefended if you look out for your own best interests for once.”
I hate giving up. Maybe I’m just a naturally contrary person, but I always feel like there’s a solution to every problem if only I dig deep enough. But I was tired of digging. Tired, period.
“What about Connor?” I asked. Part of my current agreement with the Erlking was that he’d let Connor go if and when I actually fulfilled my part.
“Do you honestly mean to suggest that one day you would have done what was necessary to free him?”
I sighed, my shoulders slumping. “No.” My voice was little more than a defeated whisper.
“He has been bound to me, to the Wild Hunt, for most of his life. I’m not certain how he would have fared had you managed to free him. Let him be.”
“And your mark? Will you get it off of me?”
He shook his head. “You have amply demonstrated your power, and it’s true that when word reaches Mab of what you can do, she might hesitate to attack you. But she might not. She is more capricious than Titania. You can still use my mark to summon me, should you ever need me. Even if we void our agreement, I am still your ally.” His face broke into a smile. “Whether you want me as one or not.”
I made an undignified snorting sound.
The Erlking pulled his knife out of his boot. Titania must have given it back to him after she finished slicing me open with it. I really wasn’t looking forward to another blood oath.
“We can seal our new bargain with a kiss, if you’d prefer,” the Erlking said, but not like he thought I’d go for it.
I shook my head and held out my hand, wincing in anticipation. “Let’s just get this over with.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
By the time I’d finished swearing my new oath with the Erlking, I was so exhausted it was all I could do to stay conscious. My legs refused to hold me up, and the Erlking ended up carrying me to the bedroom I’d shared so briefly with Kimber when we’d first arrived at the palace. We seemed to make it there in about ten seconds, which made me suspect I’d lost consciousness along the way, and the moment he laid me on the bed, sleep dragged at me so hard I couldn’t resist. The last thing I remembered was the Erlking sitting on the edge of the bed and prying off my filth-encrusted shoes.
My internal clock told me it was at least several hours later, if not a whole day or more, when I next woke up. My head felt about three feet thick, and my mouth tasted like something had crawled in there and died. My eyes were all crusty with sleep when I blinked them open.
Sunlight was pouring in the windows, confirming my guess that I’d been out for a long time. I tried a tentative stretch, which every muscle in my body objected to. I still felt like I could sleep another week, but as my brain cells began to wake up one by one and I started remembering everything that had happened, sleep seemed like a less likely option.
Licking my lips, trying to get the bad taste out of my mouth, I propped myself up on my elbows and looked around. Tears stung my eyes when I saw Kimber curled up on a poofy chair, her nose buried in an ancient-looking book that probably weighed as much as I did. She was so absorbed in the book she didn’t even notice me moving.
“I see you’re doing a little light reading,” I croaked, then cleared my throat as Kimber jumped and squealed, the book sliding off her lap and hitting the floor with a thump.
She put her hand to her chest and took a deep breath. “You scared the crap out of me!” she scolded.
Leave it to Kimber to get all absorbed in a book that looked like it had been printed in the 1800s. Yeah, looks could be deceiving in Faerie, but Kimber was enough of a brainiac that she read stuff like Shakespeare for pleasure.
“Sorry,” I said insincerely. “Go ahead and finish your book. I’ll just sit here quietly and wait.” To demonstrate my determination, I pushed myself up into a sitting position, and found the effort left me panting. I also noticed for the first time that someone had cleaned me up and put a flannel nightshirt on me. Oh, God, I hoped it hadn’t been the Erlking! I remembered him taking off my shoes.
“Take it easy,” Kimber said, and I blinked in surprise to find her sitting on the edge of my bed. She’d been clear across the room last time I looked.
“How did you get here so fast?” I muttered, and I sounded incoherent even to my own ears.
“You’re having a kind of magic hangover,” Kimber explained. “You’ll be sleeping and spacing out a lot for the next day or so. You must have used a buttload of magic. I’ve never seen anyone have it this bad. Not even Ethan when he’s showboated himself into exhaustion.”
I rubbed my crusty eyes, wondering how much Kimber knew about what had happened. Did she know I’d killed Henry? And
“Are you all right?” I asked her, because I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answers to my other questions.
“In the state you’re in, you’re asking
“Well, I had some pretty major doubts when you were captured and hauled back here!”
She made a face. “Sorry. Right. I’m fine. Everyone’s fine. They weren’t exactly nice to us, but they didn’t hurt us or anything. We were just locked up for a while is all.”
“Does ‘everyone’ include my dad and Finn?”
“Yeah, they’re fine, too.” There was something just slightly false in her tone, and it gave me a chill.
“Tell me the truth!” I demanded.
“Well, aren’t you the cranky patient?”
“Please, Kimber. Tell me what’s going on.”
“They’re fine,” she said, sounding more convincing this time. “They had a rough time of it while we were gone, but they’re fine now.”
I swallowed hard, trying not to imagine just what kind of “rough time” they’d been having. I might have
