Disclaimer: All characters and settings belong to Holly Black.
A/N: I haven't yet read Valiant or Ironside, so I don't know how Holly Black has Roiben handle being Unseelie King, but this is the impression I got after reading Tithe. This scene is set after Roiben declares himself King and banishes the Seelie Court. I would really like some feedback as I'm experimenting with writing in this style.
And then they were gone, all of them, Seelie and Unseelie, they were all gone and there was just them left: Kaye in her scuffed jeans, her bedraggled pixie wings halfheartedly stirring the cold underground air, eyes locked on her feet, and Roiben, glamour gone, slumped in his hard-won throne, his steel gray eyes half-lidded like a snake, his silver hair glinting in the half-light. Kaye gazed at her feet, but they were bare, her boots destroyed to kill Nephamael. She turned her gaze to the ceiling instead, but the roots twisted malevolently like Medusa's hair. She had no choice but to speak, but her throat was dry and the words tasted like poison.
"I'm sorry."
The words dropped like round pebbles into a deep, still well. He did not even turn, but he sighed, and slid further into the throne, long faery fingers gripping the golden arms. He spoke in a voice as harsh as a crow's caw. "It's not your fault."
"Of course it is," she said, but the words sounded useless even to her pointed pixie ears. "If I hadn't come, none of this would ever had happened."
"No," he said, a grim smile twisting his angular face. "We'd both be dead." And now he turned to look at her, and he was more beautifully fey than ever, more alien and untouchable, even exhausted as he was. "Kaye," he said softly, "how could you possibly have made my life any worse?"
But I have, she thought. You may have been a complete slave before, but slaves don't have to justify their actions to themselves, and in a way, you're even less free now. She wanted to apologize again, but it would never do any good, and mere words could not make him free. She wondered again why he'd done all this for her, for a spoiled selfish changeling who'd never even realized what he was offering. He'd lost so much, and gained only her, and although she wanted to ask him if it was worth it so badly the words lay heavy on her tongue she didn't because she knew what the answer would be and she couldn't bear to hear it.
He said, "I'm the one who should be apologizing." But he wasn't looking at her anymore, he was looking out across the brugh, and she could only guess at his thoughts. But she knew they would be dark. And it was all her fault. She thought of dead Janet, and Corny, and Ethine, separated from her brother forever, and poor Spike, and Roiben, Roiben, Roiben. All her fault. And she looked again at the King of the Unseelie Court, lost in his thoughts, silver hair falling across his eyes, and knew that although the Queen might think she had lost, it was really Roiben who lost, he lost forever, and it was all her fault.
"Don't you dare say sorry," she told him, her heart twisting because she didn't deserve to have him. "Everything is my fault."
And the words are like ashes in her mouth.