Ambrosia (Frost and Nectar Book 2)

The queen held me aloft in thorny coils, my feet dangling inches above the castle’s stones.

With her powerful magic, she’d tightened them around me, binding my arms to my chest. Fear raked its claws through me. The queen’s power was stronger than mine, and I wasn’t sure we’d ever get free of this place. Panic pressed against my ribs.

I whipped my head around, looking for Torin, but I saw no signs of him.

Washed in silver, Queen Mab looked victorious. Her son, Morgant, stood behind her, his muscles and clothes shredded by my prickly vines, blood streaking down his body. His dark wings hung still behind him, and he held Torin’s sword. His amber eyes locked on me, his chin lowered.

The night wind toyed with the queen’s hair as I struggled against her cage of brambles. My breath heaved in my lungs as the queen prowled closer.

“I was trying to tell you something, Isavell, but you ripped the floor out from under us.”

“That’s my name, then, is it?”

As she drew near, I could see that she wasn’t feeling quite as victorious as I’d first thought. She held her chin high and her back straight, but her mouth was tight with tension. And close up, I could see the tightness of her hunched shoulders.

The queen was scared. But what was she afraid of? My gaze flicked to Morgant, and I read in him the same rigid posture, fists clenched and veins popping on his forearms.

“Before I throw you from the tower, you must know what happened.” Her voice faltered a little. Was she scared of me?

The corner of her mouth twitched. “We were supposed to bring our families and discuss a future alliance. Torin’s mother proposed an engagement between our heirs. I’d always wanted my Unseelie heirs on the throne of Faerie. Of course, I accepted,” she said sharply, like I was reprimanding her for her decision. “But then they asked me to remove the frostbitten curse from the kingdom.” She bared her teeth. “It wasn’t my curse to remove. That was Modron, the one who looks back. She’s the one who loathes the Seelie.”

“What are you talking about?”

“No one wanted her around,” Queen Mab said, ignoring my question. “Can you blame them? The woman was a poison, spilling everyone’s secrets. Long ago, the king banished her from court, and she unleashed the frozen mantle of winter on the kingdom. She sent the Erlkings and the dragons from her home in the woods to torment the Seelie. They must kill her to lift the curse. It has nothing to do with me.”

I clenched my teeth, scanning the shadow-drenched battlements for signs of Torin. “Why are you telling me all this?”

“At the banquet, the Seelie queen had taken my child, pretending to fuss over her,” she hissed. “The queen passed her to a nursemaid to hold. Someone brought out the severed head of a black bull. A barbaric threat, isn’t it? I tried to run for my daughter, but the Seelie king froze me in ice, and I watched as the nursemaid murdered my heir before me. Smashing her against the rocks. So when I cursed the Seelie royal family, believe me, they bloody deserved it.”

I stared at her, no longer understanding at all. “They killed your daughter?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Apparently, the nursemaid was a master of illusion. Maybe she couldn’t stomach the orders her king issued. Because here you are, Isavell. Alive.”

I’d suspected it already, but hearing it out loud had a dizzying, disorienting effect. Nausea rose in my stomach. No wonder I’d left a trail of blood in my wake, and why killing came so naturally to me. An actual monster had given birth to me.

The wind toyed with the queen’s white hair.

Did she know that the full force of my magic was so close to the surface now? That I could almost taste the cinders on my tongue? Before, she’d been stronger. Now? My magic was a raging river of fire beneath cold rock, and it was ready to erupt.

Love is a forge.

I inhaled deeply, seething. Was this what she thought love was? “So, this is the welcome you give to your own child whom you mourned as dead? Locked in a dungeon? Beaten? Starved? My real mother took care of me.”

Her eyes flashed. “Your human mother left you weak.”

Morgant pulled his gaze away from me, and I sensed that he wanted to disappear into the shadows.

As I stared at him, the pieces slid together in my mind. He hadn’t known who I was until Mab ordered him to heal Torin. He must have had questions after that. That’s when he began bringing me soap, telling me the clues I needed to learn to survive.

Queen Mab narrowed her eyes. “This isn’t what I wanted, Isavell. I wanted an Unseelie heir. A daughter with magic. With wings. Because without those things, you are not my heir. True, you’ve managed to summon a little magic. You have done a good job of destroying my home.”

I raised an eyebrow. “I only did what the tree wanted. It wants to be free of these stones. From your suffocating court.”

“You think you know my home better than I? This tree is me. The castle is a child I hold in my arms. I guess no one ever told you that motherhood can be a terrible burden.”

I sucked in a sharp breath, my heart twisting. Maybe Chloe left me “weak,” but she’d never treated me like a burden.

My anger was threatening to suffocate me. “What do you want from me?”

“I want an heir who isn’t broken, Isavell, my daughter. And all those deaths mean nothing if the Unseelie don’t get what we deserve—the kingdom of Faerie.”

A door in the tower opened, and three soldiers dragged out Torin by his wrists, coiled tightly in manacles of thick foliage. His gaze met mine, his pale eyes mournful.

“Let him go,” I snarled.

A dark smile curled her lips. “I don’t want to make my child scream, but a queen does what she must. Ava, what I do next will hurt me more than it will hurt you.”

My stomach plummeted, and I looked at Morgant. His eyes seemed to search mine. Pleading. His words rang in my head…

We all have wings in the royal family. Some are just too stupid to use them.

“You have blood on your hands already.” For just a moment, she lowered the vines until I was within her reach, and she lifted her hand to touch my cheek. Her eyes glistened. “You are my daughter, and this will hurt more than the others. But I ask myself sometimes—what is one more death when I’m already haunted by a sea of blood in my past? When it is all for the glory of our realm?”

I gritted my teeth. Flaming tongues of my trapped magic licked at the ice in my chest, melting it away.

“Torin’s death,” she cooed, “will not weigh on my soul at all. He did, after all, murder my son. I am going to suffocate him.”

I slid my gaze to Torin once more, feeling my soul scorched. The queen’s vines crawled over his neck, wrapping around his throat. Terror ripped through me as I watched them tighten, cutting off his air. His eyes went wide, and panic pierced my chest.

The monster queen had given birth to me.

“Then throw me off the tower, Your Majesty,” I yelled. “You’ve promised to do so since I first met you.”

My heart slammed against my ribs.

“Very well, then.” Mab’s expression was grim as she flicked her wrist, and the vine shot out into the windy night, high above the rocky earth. I gasped, and the vine unfurled.

The wind whipped at me, the ground surging closer.

As I plummeted, time slowed. In the hollows of my mind, I saw Torin, a child at his own coronation after his parents died. His expression was far too serious for a boy of his age, his little brow furrowed.

The wind yanked at my hair as I fell, and my memories flickered past me: Chloe making me hot oatmeal for breakfast, the sharp loneliness of her funeral. Shalini laughing so hard that she snorted. The day I’d met Torin in the Golden Shamrock…

The way he’d looked that night in the cabin when he’d told me about his mom.

The cold rock in my chest cracked open, and molten magic exploded at last. Hot tingles raced down my shoulder blades.

Searing power burst from my body, and my wings sprang free, tearing through the thin dress. I caught my breath, exhilarated.

The beating of my wings was instinctive, an innate part of me. I hovered just a few feet from the ground, close enough to see the dark blue pebbles on the path and the clouds of dust formed by my beating wings.

My thin, dark wings pounded the air behind me, and the muscles shifted and flexed against my shoulder blades. Like a heartbeat, they pulsed rhythmically, automatically. The feeling of the wind rushing over the delicate bones in my wings sent euphoria racing through my blood.

My heart slammed hard against my ribs, and my body blazed with power. Never in my life had I felt this strong.

I looked up and saw Morgant, hovering in the air above me, arm outstretched. Inches from me. I stared at the prince, the wind tearing at his white hair. He’d been there, ready to catch me.

A crooked smile curled his lips, and he handed me Torin’s sword. “You need to get out of here, Isavell. Take your Seelie king to his home before anything happens to him.”

I breathed in a shaky breath. Was he really letting me do this?

Pounding my wings against the air, I raced up to the castle’s battlements. My magic sizzled through my limbs as I soared above the tower, taking in the view of the queen. With a growl, I seized control of the vines and commanded them to slither around her, a coffin of vegetation to trap her in place. As the plants slipped toward her, she bared her teeth.

With a flick of my wrist, I pulled the vines off Torin, freeing him. He gasped for breath, his hands going to his throat.

I flew up and wrapped my arms around his waist. He did the same, his forearms locked tightly to me.

I breathed in the scent of him, the earth and woods mingled with his blood, and carried him into the air. The effort of lifting him nearly kept me rooted to the battlements, and pain shot through the top of my wings as I took off. The wind whipped over us as I carried him over the wall, and Torin’s weight dragged us down to earth.

I could fly now, but my wings weren’t made to carry a large, muscular man. I angled them to slow our fall, hoping for a smooth landing.

I didn’t achieve that. We landed hard in a tangle of limbs and wings, the ground battering us.

I winced and looked for Torin. Streaked with dirt and blood, he arched an eyebrow and shot me a lopsided smile. “Graceful.”

“Let’s get to the horses, Torin.”

I bit my lip, turning back to the castle. I could rip it apart. I could use the tree to pull it stone from stone and bury every Unseelie in there so I wouldn’t have to worry about a single person following us.

But I had no idea how many people I’d be killing, and the queen’s haunted eyes blazed in my mind. I swallowed hard.

I only needed my brother to keep her bound long enough for us to escape.