Ambrosia (Frost and Nectar Book 2)

“In Faerie, I will freeze anyone that I love, Ava. I will kill anyone that I love. That’s what Queen Mab cursed me with. And that’s why you can’t come with me, my changeling.”

My eyes snapped open, and cold grief spread through my chest. I still lay on the roots in the dungeon, flat down on my front. Once again, my back was ripped open. I don’t think I’d slept for longer than twenty minutes in…however long I’d been in here.

Every time I fell asleep, I saw Torin again, as if he were alive before me.

I don’t want to be without you any more than I have to.

I turned my head, looking up. Faint silver light pierced the canopy high above me.

This was a different cell than the one I’d been put in before, the one where Torin had carved through a wall. There was less light, and it was more cramped. My gaze trailed over the five bowls of food someone had delivered to me. They were feeding me this time, but I hadn’t bothered to eat.

I had no appetite whatsoever, either because of the infection or because I’d killed the man I loved. Torin. The memory of it was like a thousand rocks pressing on my chest, crushing my ribs.

My normal life seemed a million years away. I could hardly remember what Faerie looked like, let alone the apartment I’d shared with Andrew.

The human world seemed a distant gray dream, vague and unreal. I faintly remembered a room with white walls, and a kitchen downstairs. A blue comforter. The bar I’d gone to with Shalini every week…

It felt like another planet altogether.

My memories of Faerie were a little more vibrant—the towering dark castle, the snowy valleys, and the mountains. But it hurt to think about it. Mostly, I thought of Torin.

The Seelie king and the four cramped walls around me were my universe right now.

Wincing, I reached behind my back. The skin felt hot and swollen. Infected again. I sat up, and my thoughts swam, my stomach tightening with nausea. Every inch of me felt sensitive to the touch, my body alternating between hot and cold.

I closed my eyes, delirious. My brain kept forcing me to relive those moments with the red leaves swirling around us and the vines that seemed alive snaking over the columns.

For a moment when we’d been fighting, I’d imagined the leaves and vines were responding to me, but I must have imagined it. I was disoriented by pain and fever, losing touch with what was real and what wasn’t.

The sound of the lock shifting pulled my attention up, and the door groaned open. Morgant’s enormous frame filled the doorway. If I’d had the energy and the strength, I would have attacked him, except I wasn‘t sure I could stand. Warm light beamed into the room from the torches in the hallway. Morgant frowned at the food on the floor.

“Why aren’t you eating?”

I wasn’t giving him the satisfaction of answering, so I simply stared back at him.

“Are you trying to die in here?” he asked sharply. “Because in Mab’s kingdom, the Empress of the Dark Cromm has the privilege of choosing when her prisoners live and when they die. And she chooses how they die.”

I cocked my head, keeping my mouth shut.

He sniffed the air. “Something smells rotten.”

I gave him a grim smile. “Well, Morgant, that would be me. I do realize that thinking isn’t your greatest strength and you probably don’t have more than two brain cells to rub together, but when you lock someone in a tiny cell for several days at a time, they will start to reek. And you know what, Morgant? I really don’t give a fuck.”

“Why?“ he said sharply.

“Why what?” I shot back.

“Why don’t you care?”

I stared up at him, my fury rising. “You and your queen have done everything in your power to make it clear to me that I have no control. You control when I have food or water. You control if I live or die. And you forced me to kill a man I was falling in love with.”

“You do have control. You have magic you refuse to use. Did you know you can heal yourself?” He crouched down, staring at me like he was investigating an alien specimen. “Do you want revenge?”

At the question, the tiniest spark of brightness lit in my chest. Of course I wanted revenge. I wanted to murder him and his queen, but I wasn’t in any position to exact it. I bit my lip. “Is the queen your mom? Or are you her consort? Or both?”

His lip curled. “She is my mother.”

“I see you inherited the black wings and the twisted soul.”

“We all have black wings in the royal family,” he said sharply. “Some are just too stupid to use them, and you know nothing of my soul.”

“Okay.”

He sniffed the air. “Your back is infected again. You refuse to heal yourself.”

When I didn’t respond, he gripped me by the shoulder and forced me around so he could look at my back. I was wearing the same grimy, blood-soaked black clothes I’d been in for days, and the lack of bathing opportunities in here probably explained why it had become infected so quickly. I grunted as he tore at my shirt, exposing my infected shoulder.

“Do you mind?” I snapped. “You don’t have the best bedside manner.”

“And yet, there’s no one else here helping you, is there?” he said quietly.

I closed my eyes. If Torin were alive, he would help me. I swallowed the bitter thought as Morgant brushed his fingers over my infected skin. The pain made me wince, but in moments, Morgant’s soothing magic rushed over my skin, cleansing it like warm water.

Why was he healing me? What else did these people want of me?

When he finished, I rolled my shoulder, breathing deeply. I turned back to face him, my dirty hair hanging before my eyes. “Why are you here?” I asked.

“Eat your food,” he barked.

He picked up one of the metallic bowls from the floor, one filled with rice and vegetables, and shoved it at me. I stared down at it, nearly hysterical with the thought that these people took pride in being vegetarians while they clearly delighted in sadism.

This felt like another power play. He was ordering me to eat because I didn’t want to, and he simply wanted me to know that he was the one in control. I met his gaze, falling silent again.

“The Unseelie are not weak,” he said in a low voice.

I cocked my head. “And I’m not one of you. You people disgust me.”

It all happened in a flash, his powerful arm shooting out and gripping me by the neck. One moment, we were on the floor, and in the next, he stood, lifting me by the throat, choking me. “You have more power than you think, Lost One, and the only way for you to survive is to learn how to use it. I want you to survive. But strength only comes through pain. Do you understand?”

He dropped me on the floor, and I fell hard, the pain jolting up my tailbone.

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

So, I’d been brutalized by a muscular fae Nietzsche.

“You stabbed the Seelie king,” he said. “You are one of us now. Every Unseelie has magic, but you are no good to us until you can summon yours.”

He turned. The door slammed behind him, and I heard the bolt slide shut. Did they really think I would be one of them? That I would lend my magic to their kingdom, even if I could summon it?

But a single thing Morgant had said burned in my mind. A little kernel of light in a landscape of shadows. A glimmer of meaning in my life.

Revenge.

People didn’t need comfort to thrive, or pleasure; they only needed to find meaning.

I closed my eyes, and the ghost of Torin’s voice whispered in my skull.

I don’t want to be without you any more than I have to.

His words were a light beaming from my chest.

When I opened my eyes again, the red leaves from the prison floor had risen into the air.