Page 27 of A Lady’s Guide to Fae Kings

“You only wanted to dance. To be the best.”

Beth nodded, a jerk of her head. Her fists were clenched, blood dripping from the prick on her thumb.

“But your wish was an oath, you see, even before the blood. You went to the Well.”

“I didn’t know.”

He clucked his tongue disapprovingly. She had known. They all knew. “You wanted to dance well enough to make a Fae king weep, did you not?”

“N-no.”

“Are you calling me a liar?”

Every red-eared hound of the Wild Hunt turned toward her.

Beth shook her head, gulping back a sob. One of the hounds growled. Someone played a fiddle.

“Well then, Beth. Dance.”

Another fiddle joined the first, and a flute. Someone began to clap.

Beth was graceful and supple. Pippa could not see why she had even needed the wish. She was fluid was water, sharp as a needle. She was the music and the pauses in between the notes.

But her eyes were wild. Sweat dripped from her hair.

And still she danced.

Some of the gathered lords and ladies joined her, clearly enthralled and entertained, unbothered by her gasps turning to sobs, by the blood now staining her soft slippers. For an hour she danced, and another. Time moved differently.

When Pippa tried to step forward, Lachlan held her tight. “You can’t help her,” he said between his teeth. “You’ll only get yourself killed. Bastard is making a point.”

“Is that Fae magic?” Pippa asked quietly. She knew it to be capricious from the stories, but there was a nonchalant cruelty here that she had not considered. Human frailty was simply not something they understood. A promise was a promise. A wish was a wish. And they could dance for a hundred years without a drop of blood in their shoes. They were as wild and as unpredictable as a hailstorm.

“Yes,” Lachlan replied. “And no. Mostly it’s wish magic.”

That did not bode well for any of the Thirteen. “They’ll dance her to death before she even has a chance to walk the Labyrinth.”

“They might. But maybe this is just a warning.”

“Maybe?”

He shrugged. “Too soon to lose a Tithe. The games have not even begun.”

“This is wrong.”

“It’s complicated.”

It did not seem that complicated to her. Awful and cruel and unnecessary. They were already bound, after all.

But not complicated.

Even if she could all too easily picture herself burning up like paper, her wish made into a thing with teeth.

She might not be able to break free from Lachlan’s grip, but that would not have helped Beth even if she could have. Pippa had no idea how to defeat a Fae king or a queen, never mind thirteen of them gathered together, feral in their appetites for tradition and entertainment, and shimmering with magic.

Never mind the Wild Hunt watching it all.

But she did know fire.