“Valroy.”The name tore from his throat, echoing through his shattered sanctuary.
The King had been waiting for her. How had the King known where to find her? Find the shard?How?Serrik must have missed something—his focus must have been elsewhere, on Ava.
But the details no longer mattered. Because however it was that Valroy had come, he had not needed to trick Ava. Had not needed to drag her from there, kicking and screaming.
Ava had gone willingly.
That knowledge burned in him. She had chosen Valroy. Had rejected Serrik’s guidance, his plans, everything he’d offered her. Had turned away from what they were becoming together.
“Butterfly,” he whispered, the rage momentarily giving way to something more devastating. Something he had not permitted himself to feel in centuries. “Why?”
Loss.
“Sentiment,” he spat, the word like poison on his tongue. “Weakness.”
And yet the pain remained, a hollow ache that all his power could not fill.
He moved to the shattered window that overlooked the impossible landscape of his prison. Beyond the Web, beyond the boundaries of his awareness, she was now in Valroy’s court. The Unseelie King would be charming, of course. Would showher wonders and terrors beyond imagination. Would offer her a thousand temptations, all designed to bind her to his will.
And Valroy would lie. Not in the straightforward way of humans, with their clumsy falsehoods, but in the insidious fae manner—truths twisted and folded until they became more dangerous than any fabrication.
Would she see through Valroy’s charms as she had seen through his own? Or would she be dazzled by the dark splendor of Tir n’Aill, seduced by its ancient magics and unearthly beauty?
The thought of her standing beside Valroy’s throne, her skin adorned with the Web’s patterns as she became its vessel under his guidance…as she inevitably took lover after lover.
Perhaps even found a soulmate amongst the courts.
Someone else to guide her form.
The window exploded outward, glass raining down into the void below.
This was more than strategic failure. More than the derailment of a plan millennia in the making.
He pressed a hand to his chest, feeling the unfamiliar constriction there. For centuries, he had sustained himself on hatred alone—cold, clarifying hatred that had given purpose to his endless existence. Hatred was a simple emotion. Reliable. Constant.
This new feeling was none of those things. It was chaotic, unpredictable, almost human in its messiness. It made him want to tear the Web apart with his bare hands. It made him want to burn Tir n’Aill to ash, not for vengeance or freedom, but simply to bring her back.
But such a thing was not possible.
Unless.
The Web around him trembled, responding to his emotional state. In the distance, lightning forked across the perpetualtwilight sky. Trees bent and groaned as if in a hurricane. The very fabric of his prison strained as his control—maintained with such discipline for centuries—began to fray.
She is not only becoming this place. This place is becoming her, more and more…and through it, just perhaps…
But to wield such a thing against her is beyond cruel.
He had never intended this. Had never factored emotions into his careful equations.
Ava was supposed to be a weapon. A vessel. A means of channeling the Web’s power to shatter the boundaries between worlds, allowing him to finally exact his vengeance on those who had imprisoned him.
But what other choices did he have?
None.
In seeking to free her mind, she had forced his hand.
“This changes nothing,” he told himself, even as he began to plot the way ahead. “The plan remains. Valroy will fall. The courts will burn. She shall become the Web and my weapon of destruction.”
