Page 30 of The Crown the Fae Forgot
As if sensing my uncertainty, I felt first one hand wrap around my hand, and then a moment later, another.
It still took me a moment longer to realize why.
It wasn’t simply that they’d sensed my sudden trepidation. That feeling—the dread, the fear, the unknowing—it had taken hold of me more than I’d realized.
I hadn’t realized that I’d stopped at the very bottom of the staircase winding up into the tower overlooking the square, not until the touch of the two fae now looking down at mefrom either side brought me squarely back to the reality I’d temporarily abandoned.
We’d journeyed past the throat of the creature, now we stood at the entrance to its stomach. Zev stood to my right, his chest rising and falling alongside mine, his heartbeat matching mine where they mingled between our palms. Finch stood to my left, his own heart racing even faster than mine, his feet itching to move, to drag me forward, even as he forced himself to stand as a sentinel at my side.
Shiel stopped too, several paces ahead, one hand already on the stair rail while the other lifted to beckon me after him.
He should have been rushing me, hurrying me onward with all the urgency the great clock overhead demanded.
But, instead, Shiel’s face had softened. His hand outstretched to me was not a demand, it was an offer. A question. A Choice.
I saw him half-consciously sizing up the guards now waiting behind my shoulders, saw Zev and Finch watching the advisor now waiting several paces up the stairs. I saw the bags at their hips, felt the clothes donned beneath my gown, ready for running.
But instead of running, however tempting that urge might have been, I squeezed Zev and Finch’s hands in my own before letting them go—only so I could reach out and take Shiel’s.
So, he could take me up, lead me forward, to claim that destiny.
The staircase wound so tight and high that it wasn’t long before the monotonous steps leading upward were enough to make my head spin. If it weren’t for Shiel’s hand in mine, I’d surely have been lost to that dizzy climb.
But then, just as the winding stair began to feel truly endless, as if we’d always been climbing and always would be, we finally reached the end of it.
The room at the top was small and square, open to the elements on all sides thanks to the open windows overlooking the crowded festival below. Three of the lady’s advisors waited for us at the top, they worried hands only stilling the moment they finally saw me emerge from the staircase below.
This close to the clock, I could actually hear the seconds ticking closer. I couldn’t see how near the hour drew, but from the urgent way all three pairs of hands reached out to me to draw me foreword, it had to be close.
Four mirrors had been placed at the four corners of the tower. Aside from that, the only sign of the lady’s hasty preparations were the dark circles under her advisor’s eyes. Their hands reached out to pull me forward with a clumsy fierceness that only exhaustion could summon, and since I was well past the point of resisting, I let them—right up until I saw them stop Shiel from following.
I saw how quickly the rage flashed in his eyes, how his was the first hand to twitch towards the weapon concealed at his side.
I saw, more surprising still, how quickly my own hand shot out to stop him.
I met his gaze with the same intensity he’d bestowed on me earlier, and the confidence I didn’t truly feel was enough to make him stand down.
The very last thing I wanted was to be left alone up here, but there was no time to argue. There was no time to run now. No time but to see what happened next, to put fate in the hands of yet another fae who had more reason to hate me than most.
The soldiers that had gone ahead of us were ushered back too, made to crowd in the stairwell below so that only I and the four advisors remained. A trapdoor was closed over the opening to the stairs and I was moved to stand in the middle of it. The clock tower bell hovered over my head, not so close that I couldreach out and touch it, but close enough that I couldfeelthe weight of it hanging over me, as if I couldn’t ignore just how truly close it was to crushing me if it so chose.
Even from this great height, I could still see the festival crowd spreading out below me.
It didn’t clamor only at the front of the lady’s manor, where the clock tower faced, but all around. The entire court had come out in force, every one of its brightly colored inhabitants crushing ever closer to the base of the building that seemed to grow more monstrous in size by the minute—and yet, at the same time, smaller than ever.
It was as if I was at the very center of the whole world, the very air around me so saturated with a growing, humming energy, that I wasn’t sure if I was about to be consumed by it, or if it was going to tear me apart.
All around me, the four advisors each took their place beside one of the mirrors, carefully positioning themselves so that they didn’t block my own sorry reflection.
Andsorryit was. Even in the midst of the Midsommar’s magic as it swelled to reach its highest peak, it was hard to ignore the sight of the girl in the mirror. For all her fancy clothes, for all the fae food that had filled out her cheeks and started to hide the ribs that had once been on display to count, she was still nothing to look at. She didn’t look the part of the heir-to-be.
She didn’t look like a princess.
She certainly didn’t look like a fae…not even a Wildness fae, with their striking, if not beautiful, features.
She just looked…ordinary.
I felt guilty of thinking it, for growing so self-absorbed in the moment that I should have been concerned with literallyanythingelse, but it was the stark contrast of that ordinary face in the mirror in the midst of all that was anythingbutordinary that made it so impossible to look away from. Ordinary in themidst of such beauty and power…it looked less than ordinary. It was a blemish. A smudge. A mistake that should be erased.
