Crown of Beauty and Vengeance

Chapter 13

Chapter 13

Lyv's dreams were something...different than they were before ever since she had lunch with Destan. Just getting to talk and get to know him was the first time in a while that she felt the way she had before, even if it wasn't as intense as it had been before.

But her dream...well, she was in a place she'd never been, walking barefoot and ankle deep in a stream that ran in between two rock walls covered in green. She stared down at the water, seeing her reflection distort in the ripples her movement created, and then they merged with another set coming from the opposite direction.

She knew those boots. They were still at the cottage back in Escarral. But here...

Here, in her dreams, the person they belonged to was wearing them.

Gods above, she knew it was a dream, but seeing Amory standing there before her, his human glamour dropped and in his true Fae form...

"Hello, my beautiful princess," he smiled softly. "My love, my Alyvia."

"Amory," she breathed, stepping closer a she tried to swallow the lump that formed in her throat. She feared if she reached out, he would disappear into nothingness. But when her hand touched his cheek, he didn't. "I've missed you so much."

Amory reached up, grasping her hand in his as his other arm wrapped around her waist to pull her up against him. He leaned down and pressed a gentle kiss to her lips. His scent enveloped her, so familiar and yet so different. "I know you have."

"I love you."

"And I love you."

To say and hear those words. She hadn't been able to when they spent those few weeks together or before he was taken from her. And he'd only said them in the note he'd left in her rooms at the palace that was now tucked away in her – their – room in Ayveri. A note about their future and how he wanted everything with her, to tell her he loved her as often as he could.

She continued to trace his face with her fingertips, his jaw, his cheek, his lips. That wound in her chest was opening again just seeing him and it feeling so real. She couldn't help but lean up and kiss him again, slower, sweeter, savoring every moment she could of this fake reality no matter what it did to her.

But just as he pulled back and whispered that he loved her again, he disappeared into smoke.

The wound ripped open.

Just as the absolute pain began to eat her alive and she desperately called out his name, walking forward in the water to search for him, tears streaming...another set of ripples met hers.

And this time, it was Destan standing in front of her.

He had been smiling, but it dropped as soon as he saw her tears. Stepping forward, he reached up and wiped them away before he playfully tugged on the end of her braid just as Amory used to do, trying to make her smile. It worked.

Neither one of them said anything, but he made sure to dry her tears, his presence a soothing salve that covered the ripped open wound.

Then he, too, dissolved into smoke.

And standing there, just a foot behind where he had been, was Crown Prince Jai.

She thought in seeing him, even in her dreams, her rage would consume her and she would want to kill him just as she'd thought about doing for the past year.

He was the reason Amory was dead, she told herself. He could have saved him. He could have stopped the executioner before he cut his head off. He could have killed the queen before she even gave the order.