Page 60 of Court of Winter
I hastily backpedaled, a shriek caught in my throat.
The crown prince stood silently, hands clasped behind his back as he gazed at the garden. It was dark out since only one of the moons was alight.
I gasped as my heart turned into a galloping beast in my chest.
He’s been here the entire time?
“I remember your brother,” he said, without turning to face me. “His features were similar to yours.”
A soft mewl worked up my throat, but I quickly swallowed it down. Tormesh, Cailis, and I all had similar features. Our father’s nose, our mother’s mouth, a combination of their eye shapes.
“He seemed intent on alerting the entire continent to our plight, but I couldn’t allow it. To do so would cause panic and chaos. We’d been trying to find a solution to save our land quietly and discreetly even though some fae had begun to notice the decline in our continent’sorem, so I did what was expected of me when your brother came to the court. As the Death Master, I did my duty.”
He turned to face me. In the dim light, his eyes burned like sapphires. “I understand you hate me for killing him. Even more so because your parents presented themselves several weeks later and suffered the same plight.”
“But why?” A sob shook my chest. “Why did they have to die? They would have remained quiet if ordered to do so.”
His jaw tightened, so slightly that it could have been a shadow—a trick of the light. “I had to.”
“You didn’t.” I shook my head back and forth rapidly. “You didn’t have to. Youchoseto.”
He turned back to the window, the aura around him pulsing so high that it threatened to swallow me, yet his face remained impassive. Completely blank. “It doesn’t detract from what is expected of you. We need you to save our land, Ilara. Your parents’ and brother’s deaths don’t change that.”
He said it all so matter of fact, so businesslike, as though sucking souls from my family was part of his daily duties, and that was that.
“How can you be so cold?” Nausea rolled through me, and I collapsed onto the nearest chair. “Do you feel nothing?” I asked quietly as all of the fight went out of me. How did one fight a fairy who was as hard and immobile as stone? “Do you feelanythingat all when you take a life?”
I blinked, and he was sitting on the couch across from me. He’d moved silently, like a phantom.
“What I feel is irrelevant.” He sat as still as a statue, not one muscle moving or twitching.
Such control. Suchperfectcontrol of any outward expression.
My shoulders slumped. He would never care what he’d done to me or my family. And even worse, as the crown prince of the Solis continent, he controlled anyone his heart desired, so unless I played the game and danced the dance, I would never be free of him. I would never be free to return home. To Cailis. To my friends. To my small, meager life but a life that wasmine.
Rivers of ice slid through my veins as I balled up that aching chasm of pain that had existed within my chest since the death of my parents and brother. I wrapped it into a ball. Wound it so tightly that it couldn’t loosen again and make me do something stupid. I couldn’t snap again.
I had to stay alive, return home, and be smart so I could see my sister once more.
Which meant that I had to play the Death Master’s game, even if I wanted to end the gamemaster himself.
Leveling the crown prince of the Court of Winter with a weighted stare, I said, “What is it that you want me to do, my prince?”
CHAPTER16
“It’s really quite simple,” the prince replied. “You need to learn how to control your affinity and replenish our continent again withorem.”
I stared at him and blinked, then blinked again. “Our continent ismillionsof square millees.”
“It is.”
“And you want me to createoremto replenish all of it?”
“Correct.”
I wrapped my arms around myself. “You’re insane.”
“I’ve been called worse.” His lips kicked up in a humorless smile.