I cut my eyes to him. “I’ll what?”
His face is solemn as he meets my eyes. “You’ll be unstoppable.”
“Why did Jalek leave the Seelie Court?” I ask. “If he let them burn his sister so he could—”
“He didn’t let them do anything. He didn’t know what they’d done to Poppy until it was too late.” When I stare at him, waiting for an answer to my question, he sighs. “He left because he didn’t want to serve the queen. He left as protest but also because he wanted to help me get her off the throne.”
“How long ago was that?”
He lowers himself into the seat next to mine and leans back, tilting his face to the sky. “Twenty years ago.”
“And still she rules,” I whisper. It’s not a judgment, and when Finn nods, I think he knows that. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to act happy in that palace when I’ve seen how cruel she can be.”
Finn grunts. “You’ve barely seen anything.”
“When Sebastian was talking to Jalek, Jalek said that the queen would never give him the crown if Sebastian killed him. But then it sounded like the queen planned to kill Jalek herself, so I don’t understand.”
Finn finally pulls his attention off the sky and studies me instead. “Are you so sure he was talking about Arya?”
“Yes, he . . .”
Finn arches a brow, waiting for me to remember.
But no. He said she, not the queen.
“Then who?”
“You impressed my entire team with what you did tonight,” he says, “the risk you took.”
I should make him answer my question, but I already know it’s futile and I’m too tired for the fight. “You all would have done the same if it had been me in that cell.”
He draws in a breath, and his brows knit together. “I don’t know if that would have been true before tonight, Princess. You may be better than all of us.”
I frown, remembering my night in King Mordeus’s oubliette and my dream of Finn. Did he come to me? Is that his power? The question sits on my tongue, but I swallow it back. The last thing I need to do is reveal what an impact he’s had on me since the first night we met. I think I’ll die with that secret, if for no other reason than to save myself the embarrassment if it turns out it was just a dream.
“Are you ready to go back to the palace?”
I shake my head. “Not yet, if you don’t mind. I just . . .” I pull in a deep breath and blow it out. “I need a few more minutes.”
“By all means.”
I half expect him to get up and go back inside, but he stays, and when I look over to him, he’s toying with the curls at the back of his head and staring at the night sky.
“I used to sit outside with my mother at night,” I say. I don’t know why I’m telling him this, but I want to remember her right now. “She loved the darkness, the moon, the constellations. She’d tell me to pick a star and make a wish.”
Finn doesn’t look at me. He closes his eyes, as if picturing it. “She sounds amazing.”
“Sometimes I wish she hadn’t been. If she hadn’t been so wonderful, maybe it wouldn’t have hurt so much when she left.” I blow out a breath. “What about your mother? Is she still living?”
“My mother died birthing my younger brother many, many years ago. I imagine she was like yours in many ways.” His voice goes rough. “She too loved the night, and put her children above all else.”
My mother didn’t, though. She left us. But I don’t correct him.
He takes my hand and squeezes my fingers. Power ripples through me from whatever his connection does to my magic, and the stars seems to glow brighter. “Pick a star,” he says. “Make a wish.”
I shake my head. Even with that surge of power from his touch, I am so damned tired and the tears are too close. I don’t want to cry. “I’m not sure I believe in that anymore.”
“Oh, but you do. I’m fae. We have an instinct for these things.”
“When I was a little girl, I had so many reasons to believe, so many reasons to hope. Then each day, week, year that passed after Mom left . . .” I swallow and pull my hand out of his. This—whatever I feel when he touches me—it’s too confusing. I don’t want to deal with sorting that out along with everything else tonight. “After she left, I could still see the stars, but it seemed that fewer and fewer of them were for me. Wishes were for girls who had parents, for people who weren’t stuck in impossible contracts. If I lose Jas, I don’t think there will be a single star in the sky that feels like mine.” But in this moment, sitting here and looking up at the stars next to this male who helps me tap into a power I don’t even understand, a power that may very well allow me to save my sister, I can understand hope. I can understand wishing on stars. I can almost believe I’ll be doing it for a very long time.