“Don’t,” the faerie youth begged when I lifted the dagger. “Don’t!”
I took a gasping breath, my lips shaking as I quailed. Saying “I’m sorry” wasn’t enough. I’d never been able to say it to Andras—and now … now …
“Please!” he said, and his eyes lined with silver.
Someone in the crowd began weeping. I was taking him away from someone who possibly loved him as much as I loved Tamlin.
I couldn’t think about it, couldn’t think about who he was, or the color of his eyes, or any of it. Amarantha was grinning with wild, triumphant glee. Kill a faerie, fall in love with a faerie, then be forced to kill a faerie to keep that love. It was brilliant and cruel, and she knew it.
Darkness rippled near the throne, and then Rhysand was there, arms crossed—as if he’d moved to better see. His face was a mask of disinterest, but my hand tingled. Do it, the tingling said.
“Don’t,” the young faerie moaned. I began shaking my head. I couldn’t listen to him. I had to do it now, before he convinced me otherwise. “Please!” His voice rose to a shriek.
The sound jarred me so much that I lunged.
With a ragged sob, I plunged the dagger into his heart.
He screamed, thrashing in the guards’ grip as the blade cleaved through flesh and bone, smooth as if it were real metal and not ash, and blood—hot and slick—showered my hand. I wept, yanking out the dagger, the reverberations of his bones against the blade stinging my hand.
His eyes, full of shock and hate, remained on me as he sagged, damning me, and that person in the crowd let out a keening wail.
My bloody dagger clacked on the marble floor as I stumbled back several steps.
“Very good,” Amarantha said.
I wanted to get out of my body; I had to escape the stain of what I’d done; I had to get out—I couldn’t endure the blood on my hands, the sticky warmth between my fingers.
“Now the next. Oh, don’t look so miserable, Feyre. Aren’t you having fun?”
I faced the second figure, still hooded. A female this time. The faerie in black extended the pillow with the clean dagger, and the guards holding her tore off her hood.
Her face was simple, and her hair was gold-brown, like mine. Tears were already rolling down her round cheeks, and her bronze eyes tracked my bloody hand as I reached for the second knife. The cleanness of the wooden blade mocked the blood on my fingers.
I wanted to fall to my knees to beg her forgiveness, to tell her that her death wouldn’t be for naught. Wanted to, but there was such a rift running through me now that I could hardly feel my hands, my shredded heart. What I’d done—
“Cauldron save me,” she began whispering, her voice lovely and even—like music. “Mother hold me,” she went on, reciting a prayer similar to one I’d heard once before, when Tamlin eased the passing of that lesser faerie who’d died in the foyer. Another of Amarantha’s victims. “Guide me to you.” I was unable to raise my dagger, unable to take the step that would close the distance between us. “Let me pass through the gates; let me smell that immortal land of milk and honey.”
Silent tears slid down my face and neck, where they dampened the filthy collar of my tunic. As she spoke, I knew I would be forever barred from that immortal land. I knew that whatever Mother she meant would never embrace me. In saving Tamlin, I was to damn myself.
I couldn’t do this—couldn’t lift that dagger again.
“Let me fear no evil,” she breathed, staring at me—into me, into the soul that was cleaving itself apart. “Let me feel no pain.”
A sob broke from my lips. “I’m sorry,” I moaned.
“Let me enter eternity,” she breathed.
I wept as I understood. Kill me now, she was saying. Do it fast. Don’t make it hurt. Kill me now. Her bronze eyes were steady, if not sorrowful. Infinitely, infinitely worse than the pleading of the dead faerie beside her.
I couldn’t do it.
But she held my gaze—held my gaze and nodded.
As I lifted the ash dagger, something inside me fractured so completely that there would be no hope of ever repairing it. No matter how many years passed, no matter how many times I might try to paint her face.
More faeries wailed now—her kinsmen and friends. The dagger was a weight in my hand—my hand, shining and coated with the blood of that first faerie.
It would be more honorable to refuse—to die, rather than murder innocents. But … but …
“Let me enter eternity,” she repeated, lifting her chin. “Fear no evil,” she whispered—just for me. “Feel no pain.”
I gripped her delicate, bony shoulder and drove the dagger into her heart.
She gasped, and blood spilled onto the ground like a splattering of rain. Her eyes were closed when I looked at her face again. She slumped to the floor and didn’t move.
I went somewhere far, far away from myself.