How to Protect the Ones You Love

The Bargain

It dragged her in by a slimy limb curled in her long brown hair and shoved her to the floor in front of Amarantha. The girl had the gall to look her in her eyes.

I glanced at Tamlin, his face a thin mask of cold indifference stretching over a hurricane of fear and wrath.

¨What's this?¨ Amarantha purred. The girl struggled to her knees, eyes glancing at Jurian's finger hanging around Amarantha's long, pale neck. The terror that flooded through me was unimaginable. She was just a girl. A human girl. I didn't even know her name. Why was I so terrified?

Pull yourself together Rhys. Don't let the bitch smell your fear. Breath in. Breath out. Relax.

I pasted an amused smile on my face. Her eyes--Oh her eyes-- focused on Tamlin's boots.

"Just a human thing I found downstairs," The Attor hissed, his serpentine tongue flicking between his teeth.

"Obviously. But why should I bother with her?" Amarantha looked bored as she twisted her red hair around her finger, pulling on the long strands.

The Attor let out a guttural sound that I've learned to be its version of laughing and prodded the girl with a taloned toe. "Tell Her Majesty why you were sneaking around the catacombs---why you came out of the old cave that leads to the spring court."

The girl hesitated a moment too long. I watched her wince as the creature struck her again with his foot. "Tell Her Majesty you human, filth."

The girl rose to her feet, her eyes trained just below Amarantha's eyes. "I came to claim the one I love," she said quietly, in almost a whisper.

The sentence awoke something inside of me. It wounded a place in my heart I had thought long dead. The pain was sharp and breathtaking. It was amazing to feel again from what was just a chasm of dead nerves.

"Oh?" Amarantha leaned forward in her throne, her eyes shone with amusement. The bitch thought she had already won.

And she had. How could a human girl overcome the fae queen who had brought all of Prythian to its knees?

"I've come to claim Tamlin, High Lord of the Spring Court." The girl said, her voice wavered slightly as she spoke.

A gasp rippled through the crowd as Amarantha let out a cackle very similar to that of a crow. She grinned at Tamlin "You certainly were busy all those years. Developed a taste for human beasts, did you?"

Tamlin did not react. He stared straight ahead. Fingers barely twitching. If I didn't know him so well, I wouldn't have noticed the tick. At least the bastard knew when to keep his mouth shut. I glanced back at the girl long enough to catch her hopeless expression as she examined Tamlin. Her lover. The thought made my stomach churn.

"But," Amarantha drawled. "It makes me wonder---if only one human girl could be taken once she killed your sentinel ... " Shit. I knew where this was going. "Oh, you are delicious. You let me torture that innocent girl to keep this one safe? You lovely thing! You actually made a human worm love you. Marvelous." Tamlin turned his head from her in shame.

The look on the girl's face almost destroyed my self-control. What the fuck? She shouldn't affect me like this. Could she be ... No not possible. If she was and Amarantha found out... I vanquished that thought as soon as it appeared. It was no use thinking like that down here. But I still couldn't help the rage at the sight of her appal. I wanted to protect her from Amarantha, from the world that Tamlin had selfishly involved her in. But it wasn't my place.

"Let him go." Her voice sliced through my thoughts, bringing me back to reality.

Amarantha laughed, a cruel sneer appearing on her face. "Give me one reason why I shouldn't destroy you where you stand, human."