A Chill in the Flame (Villains #1)

Forty-three

Forty-three

Important milestones were often marked with fanfare—cakes on birthdays, gowns and blushing maidens and parties for weddings, banquets for coronations, hand-whittled bassinets for newborn babes, solemn blood oaths under the dying, crimson light of sunset. Then there were the things that happened in the quiet of the night, the events behind closed doors, the moments between whispers. Some changes took place in seconds, whether the heartbeats before and after someone called themselves a maiden, or the single inhalation as a dagger slipped between ribs. Others started so slowly, so softly, that day by day everything seemed the same, and then one day you looked around and systemic injustices had grown around you like thorny vines sealing in a garden. One false promise, one implication, one right at a time, things became stripped away until nothing remained.

Zita had been there for them all.

She’d worn the beautiful white gown when she’d married her husband—human, though he was. She’d loved him with the brightness and intensity of the sun, giving him her moments, her heartbeats, her milestones and monuments. She’d given him sons, raising their faelings with crowns on their heads and pride in their hearts, leading her kingdom by example. She’d hosted events at the seaside summer palace—a beautiful home where her father and father’s father and family for generations before had lived in the hottest months to escape the heat of the desert. She’d graciously extended the invitation for their friends and allies from the colder climates to make themselves comfortable and employ her servants, sleep in her bed, and look upon the ocean at sunset in the winter when she was away. She’d arrived to meet her friends and allies only to be met with an army of thousands and the announcement that no, they would not be leaving the summer palace, and that she and her royal caravan should turn around and go back to the desert. The middle kingdom, the Farehold fae, had staked their claimed in the land she and her kin had owned for thousands upon thousands of years.

Shielding was her secondary ability, and attempts to protect her loved ones from the sun nearly cost her life. She’d been on the trek, clutching her heart against the pain of betrayal, weeks and miles and sunsets away from the nearest healer, when her husband succumbed to heatstroke. They’d only had supplies for one direction of the journey, but were forced to march back empty-handed, their lands taken, their seat of power on the coast stripped.

She’d been there as word of fae forced north into Raascot filtered into her ears.

She’d been there as her demi-fae children, not blessed with immortality, had grown old and succumbed to death while the virus called Farehold spread. She’d been in her throne room when their king announced the birth of a son called Eero, and in her dining room when word came of his marriage to Darya.

And she’d been there when the king of Farehold’s only remaining daughter stumbled unaccompanied into Tarkhany, asking her for help.