I stared at her long and hard. But her words were not met with jeers or smiles or applause from the crowd. Only silence.
It was a gift that gave me courage, that made me bunch my fists, that made me embrace the tattoo on my arm. I had beaten her until now, fairly or not, and I would not feel alone when I died. I would not die alone. It was all I could ask for.
Amarantha propped her chin on a hand. “You never figured out my riddle, did you?” I didn’t respond, and she smiled. “Pity. The answer is so lovely.”
“Get it over with,” I growled.
Amarantha looked at Tamlin. “No final words to her?” she said, quirking an eyebrow. When he didn’t respond, she grinned at me. “Very well, then.” She clapped her hands twice.
A door swung open, and three figures—two male and one female—with brown sacks tied over their heads were dragged in by the guards. Their concealed faces turned this way and that as they tried to discern the whispers that rippled across the throne room. My knees bent slightly as they approached.
With sharp jabs and blunt shoves, the red-skinned guards forced the three faeries to their knees at the foot of the dais, but facing me. Their bodies and clothes revealed nothing of who they were.
Amarantha clapped her hands again, and three servants clad in black appeared at the side of each of the kneeling faeries. In their long, pale hands, they each carried a dark velvet pillow. And on each pillow lay a single polished wooden dagger. Not metal for a blade, but ash. Ash, because—
“Your final task, Feyre,” Amarantha drawled, gesturing to the kneeling faeries. “Stab each of these unfortunate souls in the heart.”
I stared at her, my mouth opening and closing.
“They’re innocent—not that it should matter to you,” she went on, “since it wasn’t a concern the day you killed Tamlin’s poor sentinel. And it wasn’t a concern for dear Jurian when he butchered my sister. But if it’s a problem … well, you can always refuse. Of course, I’ll take your life in exchange, but a bargain’s a bargain, is it not? If you ask me, though, given your history with murdering our kind, I do believe I’m offering you a gift.”
Refuse and die. Kill three innocents and live. Three innocents, for my own future. For my own happiness. For Tamlin and his court and the freedom of an entire land.
The wood of the razor-sharp daggers had been polished so expertly that it gleamed beneath the colored glass chandeliers.
“Well?” she asked. She lifted her hand, letting Jurian’s eye get a good look at me, at the ash daggers, and purred to it, “I wouldn’t want you to miss this, old friend.”
I couldn’t. I couldn’t do it. It wasn’t like hunting; it wasn’t for survival or defense. It was cold-blooded murder—the murder of them, of my very soul. But for Prythian—for Tamlin, for all of them here, for Alis and her boys … I wished I knew the name of one of our forgotten gods so that I might beg them to intercede, wished I knew any prayers at all to plead for guidance, for absolution.
But I did not know those prayers, or the names of our forgotten gods—only the names of those who would remain enslaved if I did not act. I silently recited those names, even as the horror of what knelt before me began to swallow me whole. For Prythian, for Tamlin, for their world and my own … These deaths would not be wasted—even if it would damn me forever.
I stepped up to the first kneeling figure—the longest and most brutal step I’d ever taken. Three lives in exchange for Prythian’s liberation—three lives that would not be spent in vain. I could do this. I could do this, even with Tamlin watching. I could make this sacrifice—sacrifice them … I could do this.
My fingers trembled, but the first dagger wound up in my hand, its hilt cool and smooth, the wood of the blade heavier than I’d expected. There were three daggers, because she wanted me to feel the agony of reaching for that knife again and again. Wanted me to mean it.
“Not so fast.” Amarantha chuckled, and the guards who held the first kneeling figure snatched the hood off its face.
It was a handsome High Fae youth. I didn’t know him, I’d never seen him, but his blue eyes were pleading. “That’s better,” Amarantha said, waving her hand again. “Proceed, Feyre, dear. Enjoy it.”
His eyes were the color of a sky I’d never see again if I refused to kill him, a color I’d never get out of my mind, never forget no matter how many times I painted it. He shook his head, those eyes growing so large that white showed all around. He would never see that sky, either. And neither would these people, if I failed.
“Please,” he whispered, his focus darting between the ash dagger and my face. “Please.”
The dagger shook between my fingers, and I clenched it tighter. Three faeries—that’s all that stood between me and freedom, before Tamlin would be unleashed upon Amarantha. If he could destroy her … Not in vain, I told myself. Not in vain.