These Hollow Vows (These Hollow Vows 1)

Where they belong.

I take a step toward the dais and then another. “The Grimoricon has been returned to its rightful place in the Unseelie Court,” I say.

Mordeus’s greedy eyes dilate with excitement. “Yes.”

I offer him the mirror. “And this? Where does it belong?”

He snaps his fingers, and it floats from my hand through the air to a glass case behind the throne.

“Now all that needs to be returned to the court is Oberon’s crown,” I say, my heart racing. “But I am not going to die today.”

He opens his palm, offering me that pile of runes again. “You will make a beautiful faerie, but we must complete the bonding ceremony first. Otherwise, the potion won’t work.”

I lift my skirts and climb the three steps of the dais.

Mordeus beams at me. “Good girl.”

Drawing in a breath, I offer a prayer to the gods above and below that I am right about this. Then I make a quarter turn away from the false king and take a seat on the Throne of Shadows.

Chapter Thirty-Three

THE POWER OF THE THRONE and the crown and the court pumps through me.

The crown has been returned to its rightful place in the Court of the Moon.

Mordeus’s eyes go wide. He steps back and stumbles down the stairs. “What have you done?”

“Your turn,” I say, mustering all my bravado. I still don’t know if this will work. “Return my sister safe and alive to the mortal realm—send her to Mage Trifen’s so he can tend to her.”

His mouth twists with rage, but he snaps his fingers as he glares at me. “It is done.” He steps toward me, but I’m still too numb to object to his nearness. “You think you’re so clever,” he says. “But you never said I had to return you to the mortal realm, and now you have signed your own death sentence. I would rather see my peasant-loving nephew on this throne than let a human woman take charge of my court.”

“I’m not afraid of you.”

Mordeus straightens and opens one big hand. Suddenly the scar-faced servant girl who took me to the restroom is between us. He holds a blade to her throat. “You’re not. But she is,” he whispers. “And I hear you’re like my nephew in your fondness for protecting the weak.”

A thin line of blood appears on the blade where it bites into her skin, and her soft whimper is more piteous than the loudest cry for help.

He goes on. “You think you can trick me, but your unskilled magic is no match for my power. Your mortality and empathy make you weak. Bond with me, and she will be spared. Refuse me and watch countless others just like her lose their lives because of you.”

More blood trickles across the blade.

“Release her,” I say, my voice broken. I’m floundering. The throne room is lined with Mordeus’s sentries, all looking ready to tear me apart at the first order. If this worked, maybe Jas is safe now, but I might be the reason that this innocent girl dies. “Please.”

“You’ll take the bond?”

I can’t die without knowing Jas is okay, and I can’t allow the bond and give someone so cruel control of this power. I can’t abandon the innocent Unseelie who’ve already suffered so much from his rule.

“Bond with me,” he growls. “And this ends.”

“No.” My voice shakes three times on the single syllable, but my chin is high.

Mordeus slices the blade across her throat, and blood burbles from her mouth and neck, covering his hand before she falls to the floor.

When he opens his hand again, his magic flares, and another girl appears in the first girl’s place. This one can’t be more than twelve. She fights his grip, and the knife at her neck bites into her skin as she looks desperately around the throne room.

“I have dozens upon dozens of humans at my disposal, all bought and paid for thanks to the greed of your kind,” he says. “How many are you willing to sacrifice for your own selfish reasons? How many lives is your stubborn pride worth?”

The girl’s blue eyes are wild before landing on me. I watch the moment she takes me in. Then I see it there in a flash: hope.

Hope.

Even with another girl dead on the floor before her and a blade digging into her throat, she has hope.

I tap into that feeling and blanket the room in darkness. It’s Mordeus’s element but mine too, and I’m stronger than before. Invisible tendrils of power tether me to the throne and the court. I draw on all of it as I mentally wrap the night around each of his guards, locking them into little boxes of shadow just as I disappear into my own. The king loses his grip on the girl as he lunges forward to stop me, but I reappear behind him, the adamant knife Sebastian gave me in my hand. The moment he spins to face me, I plunge it into his heart.