Page 13 of Kill the Queens
“Grandma!” Shelby barked from behind her.
The old woman didn’t back down. She wrapped her hand in Ace’s hair and yanked her to eye level. Air scraped down her dry throat, as Ace met her dark gaze.
“You know not what you’ve done! You know not what you’ve done!”
There seemed to be a lot of that going around, Ace thought, remembering the way the Fae had asked Shelby if he knew what Ace was or what she could do.
“I know what I did.” Ace had wanted the words to come out strong and confident but her body betrayed her and the sentence was a weak whisper.
“You thought you saved him? You damned him!” she yelled, startling birds from a nearby tree. The grip in Ace’s hair tightened. “He is tied to you. He will die with you.”
Ace didn’t even know if she could die, and she hadn’t a clue what his grandma was even saying. The gods, as usual, were vague.
“I’m sorry.” Ace hadn’t even said that to Shelby yet, but she muttered it now to his grandma. Whether she actually meant it or not, she wasn’t sure.
“Ugh!” His grandma let go of Ace’s hair with a dramatic fling. Her gaze drifted up and down Ace’s body before she turned back toward the cabin. “Both of you, get inside and sit down! We need to talk.”
“That’s why we are here,” Shelby started as he gave his grandma plenty of space to enter the cabin before him. His eyesflicked up to Ace’s face, where she could still feel the imprint of the old woman’s hand. His expression didn’t change. “The Fae have made it back into Pasia. They destroyed the queens—”
“You don’t think I know there are Fae sniffing around these parts?” Her voice carried to Ace as she entered the door. “Is that how you died?” She pulled out a chair from the table and pointed a demanding finger at the seat.
Shelby carefully lowered himself into the chair. His grandma glared at Ace all the way from the door to where Ace settled herself at the table. She averted her gaze, not able to hold the woman’s intensity anymore.
The cabin itself looked the same. A small kitchen tucked into the corner, a fireplace with nothing but ash in the hearth, a single couch where Ace had once slept, and Shelby’s grandma’s bed in the opposite corner. It even smelled the same, like wet earth and herbs. But it didn’tfeelthe same.
“How could you be so foolish?” The old woman’s arm rose to pop Shelby in the back of the head, the excess skin of her arms jiggling with the movement. He flinched and then sighed as he leaned his cheek into the hand of the arm he’d propped up. “Getting mixed up with the Fae! If you’d been raised properly, you’d be able to recognize their nearness just like I do.”
“But I can’t. And I didn’t. We didn’t know there was going to be an attack on the castle the same day we’d planned to be there. We had no control. No warning,” he tried to explain.
Not even a warning from the gods. Ace scrunched her eyebrows as she realized it. Normally there was something, from someone…
They’d say something or she’d get a chill…or…or…
They’d done nothing this time. Had they wanted Ace and Shelby to be surprised? Did it have to do with the man Ace had seen?
“And you...” Shelby’s grandma was focused on Ace again.“What sort of bargain did you make with the gods?”
“I didn’t make a bargain.” She shook her head and Shelby lowered his face into his palms.
“You had to have.”
There would be no trying to get around the truth of it. Ace knew she should tell them what she knew. Even if what she knew didn’t really make much sense to her.
“I just didn’t want to be alone,” Ace whispered. “He was dying. I didn’t know what to do. He—he is the first person to really see me in a year. I couldn’t give him up and this whole thing, his death, was all on me. I’m the reason he was even there.” Words were just spilling out of her now, without any grace or fluidity, she stuttered over her sentences consumed with raw emotion. “The Fae asked if we knew what I am. Apart from a monster—“
His grandma narrowed her eyes and nodded her agreement.
“Apart from a monster, I have no idea what I am, just that I am connected to the gods and that I shouldn’t be here with the living. Then there was the man with eyes like mine and he said that it was done. I was so scared that he meant Shelby’s life.” She kept her eyes trained on the table now. She hadn’t told Shelby any of this yet, not that it changed anything. “I told the gods they had to give him back. All they said was that someone else would die in his place.”
Ace’s shoulders rose and fell as she continued. “The gods can have anyone else. I don’t know anyone else that I care enough if they live or die.”
“Pffft.” The old woman pinched her nose. “And what am I? Chopped liver?!”
Ace glanced up from under her lashes but neither Shelby nor his grandmother was looking directly at her. “They can have anyone else but Shelby’s mine.”
Cups, sitting on the table, rattled as Shelby’s hand slipped from his face and slammed against the wood. His brows bunched and his lips curled. “I am notyoursand I am sick and tired of beingowned.” He leaned back in his seat, gripping the edge of the table. His mouth quivered as he turned to look away.When he spoke again his voice was hushed and low. “I was already coming back. I died, yes. I left my body, yes. Somehow, I still had consciousness.” He swallowed. “I had a choice. And I—I was coming back to you until…”
“Until she gave you part of her soul,” his grandma ticked.