The Lost Queen

Ch. 19: Ugly Truths

"You knew!" Rayne exploded the moment her family, Ronan, Amira, and Jarrah pushed themselves into a sound-proofed room Jarrah's parents had ushered them into.

Half the Fae guard and Rayne's best wolves stood guarding the door on the other side just in case Lilith was coming back. But, considering she had no intentions of returning so early, she doubted she'd be back anytime soon. And even if she did return . . . she could show up anywhere whenever she pleased. In fact, she could show up in that very room if she wanted to!

Rayne glared at Jarrah after that thought, and he had the gall to look away from her. She stomped her way into his line of vision and forced those guilty eyes to look down at her and see that she was serious. His grimace only made her stomach clench more. Especially when her own truth nagged at the back of her mind, too.

"You knew she was alive, and you didn't say anything?" she snapped. "What in the world were you thinking, Jarrah? Keeping something like this—like this—away from me!"

Jarrah rubbed the side of his face in agitation. "I couldn't tell you anything until I was sure," he breathed. "And I wasn't completely sure until . . . until tonight."

Nevaeh stepped forward. "How is this even possible?" she demanded. "You told us she was dead in the vision you had."

"Don't pester my son," Nuni snapped, crossing her arms. Nevaeh's nostrils flared as she threw the woman a dirty look and Ronan growled low under his breath at the Queen Mother. But Jarrah ignored his mother and looked at Rayne's mom instead.

"She was dead," he insisted. He looked back at Rayne. "Before I came back to fight Ambrosius, I took a sample of the elixir to test it. And it was only after some testing that we found a magical component linking two life lines. I didn't know how it was possible, but somehow it is."

"Two life lines?" Rayne hissed through her teeth, incredulously.

"Wait," Nashoba spoke up, raising a hand to his daughter's shoulder, halting her anger. "How does that work?"

Jarrah sighed as he looked out the window of the room. Everyone watched him, anxious about what he was about to say next. Rayne didn't want to put him in an uncomfortable position, but she couldn't deny the hurt and anger rising in her chest. He hid vital information from her when he shouldn't have kept her out of the loop.

"The stake used on Lilith was enchanted with a spell to keep her alive, but tied her to Ambrosius' lifeline. This made it so that if he were alive, she'd be in a deep sleep, and they'd be bound forever apart," he explained.

Rayne moved her shoulder out from underneath her father's hand and moved towards Jarrah. "If their lives are tied together with a spell, and she's awake, that means he's dead, right? He can't come back because we killed him. We-we staked him and gave him the elixir. Right?"

Jarrah didn't look at her. Her heart sank deeper.

She came up to him in a trance of denial at the window. She pressed her hands to his chest and curled his shirt into her fingers, forcing him to look down at her. He frowned and brushed her hair off her cheek with his thumb lingering on her skin. She hoped beyond hope that he'd give her an answer she wanted to hear.

But Rayne knew she wasn't going to get what she wanted before he even opened his mouth to speak.

"I'm sorry," Jarrah whispered, his brown eyes lowering.

"What do you mean, you're sorry?" she bit out, her heart pounding in her chest. She shoved herself away from him. "What did you do?"

He swallowed thickly, his Adam's apple bobbing. "I couldn't kill him," he whispered. "After all the things—evil things—he's done . . . even after killing Zeph, I couldn't become him. I couldn't be the monster my kingdom needed me to be and by . . . By studying a part of the elixir, the remainder of the vial made him fall asleep instead of killing him like it was supposed to do."