Misrule, page 35
Dragon’s teeth, she’s lost her senses. Aurora lands hastily, clambers off Chaos’s saddle, and sprints toward us with Derek.
“Rose, stop,” I attempt. “He cannot—”
“He can. There’s still time to Mark me. I will be High Queen of the Fae!”
Even with an arrow sunk in his eye, the High King rattles out a laugh. “You think I would ever name you as my heir? You are half-human. Unworthy of such a boon.”
“In the name of Etheria, I command it!”
Oryn hisses. “It matters not what name you invoke. Even if I Marked you, you would not survive it.”
She kicks him again. “Do it now, or I will make sure your magic dies with you.”
“Try,” Oryn croaks.
Rose growls. She gives up on the High King and reaches for the twisted birch of his staff instead.
“Rose, wait—” I want to tell her about Aelfdene, and how the magic must choose to bind itself to hers. But she will not listen.
“Shut up, Malyce. I know what I’m doing.” She taps at the orb, then turns the staff one way and then the next, searching for something. “There must be another way to—”
Rose stops. Sniffs. I smell it, too—the stench of burning flesh.
Tendrils of golden smoke twist up from where Rose’s hands are clamped around the birch wood. She drops it. Glass clatters against stone, but the orb remains intact.
“What…what’s happening?” Rose slumps, gaping at her upturned palms. Dark veins web out over her fingers and steadily work their way up her forearms. “What is this?”
“Did you assume I would be so careless as to forgo protection? After the Vila robbed me of that staff?” Oryn wheezes. “Rash, vain creature. None but the High King can wield that weapon.”
That’s why the riders left it behind. None would dare to touch it.
A fresh spike of horror jolts through me as Rose’s fingers crumble to ash and fall off her hands. Flakes of grayed skin swirl away on the wind. The poison climbs in a grotesque lattice up her arms and across her chest. It weaves around her neck and along her jaw.
“Make it stop,” she whimpers, thrusting her mangled arm in my direction. “Please. You helped me before.”
When she’d cut herself while taking bloodrot and nearly bled to death in her own parlor. But this is vastly different. Her left arm is gone now, her shoulder disintegrating. I shake myself out of my stupor and go to her. “I want to, please believe me. But I cannot. I’m sorry.”
“I wanted—” She gasps. Tears streak through the grime on her face. “I only wanted…”
But I know. Power. She wanted power. And watching her, I realize that this is what Mortania was doing to me for the last hundred years. Eating me away bit by bit, so subtly that I did not even notice.
I did nothing you did not invite me to do, pet.
And I shiver because I cannot entirely deny that.
I hold on to Rose for as long as I can. The end is swift and eerily soundless. I sit with the Grace’s remains staining my clothes. A single pink strand of hair glimmers on my skirt. I pick it up, and it dances in the breeze. Even an hour ago, I would have been glad to see Rose dead. But all I feel now is emptiness.
A low exhale rattles behind me.
“Alyce.” Aurora stands over the High King. Blood still gushes from the wound in his eye, but his chest is still.
Wisps of gold begin to unspool from the orb of Oryn’s staff and snake toward the High King. I drag myself closer. I’ve witnessed hundreds of Fae meet their deaths in my throne room but never like this. The threads of gilded power knot themselves together and congeal in a tight ball over Oryn’s corpse. It pulses once, then darts upward like a fallen star returning to the skies. Hovers for a heartbeat.
And then plunges into the Briar crown.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
The last princess of Briar staggers with the impact.
I take her by the shoulders, steadying her. “Are you all right?”
“I—” She blinks, dazed. “I think so. What was that?”
The Briar crown blazes with light.
“I don’t know.” Nothing about these last moments makes any sense.
A low warble reaches my ears. Callow. I half-bound, half–fall down the side of the tower and sprint to where she lay in a heap after Oryn’s attack. My heart swells. She’s alive. Stunned and wounded but nipping at my fingers and able to weakly flap her wings. I press her to my chest and she nudges her head against the underside of my chin.
“I told you to stay at the palace.”
She mutters something that is unmistakably a retort.
“Here you are, filthy beast.” A Fae rider soars up from below the cliffs. She angles her staff toward me. I curl protectively over Callow.
“NO!”
Wind pummels into me. The Fae warrior is shoved backward, her steed bucking and whinnying in panic as it’s sent somersaulting over the sea. A wall of shimmering, translucent gold launches up from the ground and arches in a dome over our heads. Callow bridles in alarm. Aurora stands on the rubble behind us, palms held out and chest heaving.
“Is that…a shield?” I ask. “Did you summon it?”
“No—I couldn’t have. I’m mortal. I don’t have powers or…”
Several other Fae riders converge, but their magic pings harmlessly off the barrier. Even the sounds of the battle raging in the districts are muffled.
“It’s definitely a shield,” Derek says.
But Aurora is mortal. How could she…
Oryn’s power. It’s an impossible answer, but the only one that fits. We’d all witnessed the High King’s magic dive into the wreath of bramble and thorn. But the only reason Oryn’s magic would have found the crown is because it was Marked, and it couldn’t have been. The Fae don’t Mark objects, do they? Even if it somehow was, it doesn’t explain why Aurora— Dragon’s teeth.
“The Briar crown,” I say to Aurora. “When Oryn blessed it, it was more than just the crown. It was Leythana herself, wasn’t it?”
Aurora blinks at me, still a bit dazed. “Yes. Leythana’s entire line was blessed. That’s why all the queens bore daughters—the Fae magic in Oryn’s blood.”
Fae magic passed from princess to princess. And just like that, the final piece of this puzzle clicks into place. I suddenly understand why Aurora never felt the effects of her curse lifting after a century of sleep. Why Oryn sent an envoy to fetch her when she woke, and why he wanted the Briar crown before he cast his enchantment. Why he’d traipsed realm to realm since my siege, seeking a champion to wake Aurora and remove her from our influence.
I stare at the gilded circlet, comprehension stitching itself together. And then a laugh punches up my throat and rings around us. Before long, I’m doubled over.
“What’s wrong with you?” Aurora gives me a slight shake.
“I wish Oryn were alive. He’d be furious.”
“Alyce,” she repeats. “What are you—”
“The High King used his own blood to bless that crown. Which means he Marked it—and Leythana’s descendants along with it.” I pause to let that sink in. “Oryn named them all as among his possible successors.”
Aurora plucks the thing from her head. “He couldn’t have. He wouldn’t have.”
“Oh, I’m sure he never thought his power would choose to bind itself to a mortal over some other Fae he Marked. But it did.” I laugh again, recalling what Aelfdene said about how Oryn hated to be proven wrong. “It came to you. Aurora, you’re the High Queen of the Fae.”
Deep in her den, Mortania emits a low, rumbling growl. Chaos nickers at another pair of Etherian riders who try unsuccessfully to blast the shield apart.
Aurora’s knuckles are white around the crown. She gapes at it like it might transform into a beast and devour her whole. “I don’t want it. I’ve seen what people do for this kind of power. Rose went practically mad to achieve it.”
“Power cannot make someone wicked,” I tell her, having learned that lesson the hard way. “I used to believe it could, like with the Shifters. But I was wrong.”
Shame cuts between my teeth. I’d assumed the worst of Neve and her Starlings, all because of Kal. And look at the pain my own prejudice had wrought. Another formation of riders attempts to descend upon us, and they are batted away like ragdolls. Chaos swishes his tail in a decidedly satisfied tempo.
“The Fae magic chooses where it resides?” Derek asks, still surveying the fighting through the glimmering border of the enchantment.
“Yes,” I say. “We learned that from the High Lord of the Court of Dreams. Oryn could have Marked a hundred heirs, but the magic itself would select its next home.”
He looks back at Aurora. “There must be a very good reason it came to you.”
The prince has a point. Aelfdene was selected as High Lord, though his brother was the stronger Fae. Had the magic seen something in Aelfdene? Had Oryn’s seen something in Aurora?
“What if Oryn’s magic somehow understood that another ruler like him would be ruinous?” I ask slowly. “If it chose you because you’re different?”
Aurora shakes her head. “I’m not, I—”
“I think,” I say, “that the very reason you’re afraid is because you are the right choice. You’re supposed to do this.”
“How can I?” She gestures at the battle, exasperated. “I cannot stop this. There’s no possible way to negotiate or sue for peace. It’s just this endless cycle of tearing one another apart. Nothing will change it.”
I squeeze her hand, wishing I had something useful to offer her.
“You don’t know that,” Derek attempts. “If you try…”
But the rest of what he says is lost to me. I’m focused on Aurora’s hand in mine. There’s a gold flush to her skin, thanks to Oryn’s power tingeing her blood, the shade made all the brighter by my green-veined paleness. And the sight of the colors together ignites something in my mind.
Green and gold…
The mysterious poem from the Vila book. And that first verse crashes into the next.
Green and gold
Gold and green
A power which we’ve yet to see
Ah, but ne’er will come the day
When called a force unknown to Fae.
It means nothing, Mortania insists. But I know better than to listen.
“A force unknown,” I say out loud.
“What?” Aurora asks.
I’d interrupted Derek, and he frowns at me, offended.
“Do you remember the poem?” I ask. “About the green and gold…and the power?”
Her brow scrunches. “I think so. But what—”
“When you said Leythana lied about the weapon she promised the Vila,” I hurry on before the idea flits away. “What if that force, from the poem, was the weapon?”
Aurora bites her bottom lip as she does when she’s thinking. “I don’t understand. The weapon didn’t exist.”
“Which is why Leythana vowed to forge it.” It’s like a veil being lifted. “And I don’t think it was a weapon at all, but an entirely new kind of magic. A power which we’ve yet to see,” I recite. “It could mean a fusion of green and gold—Etherian and Vila magic. Which could be why the Vila stole Oryn’s staff in the first place. They wanted to create the magic themselves. But they couldn’t use Etherian power—”
“And so Leythana promised to convince him to cooperate,” Aurora says softly. The clang of battle resonates through the shield. “But she knew he would never agree. And she didn’t care. She wanted the throne. After she was crowned, the Vila couldn’t do anything about it.”
Another detail falls into place. “Maybe they could. All those stories from before the first war—about the Vila sneaking into mortal lands and stealing children and raising havoc. It was all retaliation because Leythana failed to honor her word.”
“Dragon’s teeth,” Aurora mutters. “You could be right.”
“If she is,” Derek says, scrubbing the back of his neck, “might that power be something that could help us now?”
I hadn’t thought that far. And though I have no doubt that a blend of light and dark magic would be formidable, it doesn’t exist.
And it never could. Mortania thrashes. My mind swarms with her commentary about humans and Fae. The hundred lines drawn and crossed. The thousand knives sunk into one another’s backs.
Once, I would have listened. Deemed such a power impossible. But an idea blooms, opening like a long-ago Briar rose. The very thing that has hindered such a power might be the key to creating it.
“There’s something we can try,” I say to Aurora before I lose my nerve. “The ritual to turn a Fae into a Vila hinges on desire, specifically the Etherian’s rejection of their power. But if we both concentrated on melding the powers instead of turning them, it could work.”
Like Torin’s version of how the first Vila was created. Not by force, but by choice.
It would kill you, Mortania seethes.
Maybe. Or maybe that’s just what she wants me to think. Because to forge this power would be the end of her, I can sense it in my bones. She could not survive in a world where light and dark magic existed in harmony. Where the cycle of hatred finally ceased.
“Could?” Derek asks, and I don’t appreciate his tone.
“It is a risk,” I allow.
A foolish and deadly one, Mortania supplies.
The whinny of a Fae steed leaches through our shield. Another, much larger, formation of Fae riders approaches. Chaos rears and flares his massive silver-dusted wings.
“All right, Alyce,” Aurora says at last. “I trust you.”
There’s only one obstacle: I’ll need to access my Vila power, where Mortania is stubbornly squatting inside her cave. She laughs, the sound warping against my skull.
If the High King of the Fae could not destroy me, you certainly will not.
Aurora reads my expression. “What is it?”
“Mortania. She’s still preventing me from—”
“She cannot prevent you from anything.” Aurora places her palm on my sternum, and I can feel the heat of her through my gown. “It has always been your power. Never hers. And I’m sorry I didn’t see that.”
She lies, Mortania snarls, surging like a maelstrom. It is my power. And you have only ever been a vessel to house it.
My head throbs violently enough that I fear it will split in half. Pushing past the ancient Vila’s wrath seems impossible. But so did breaking the protections around Kal’s shadow chains a century ago. So did building the Dark Court. And so did earning the love of a princess.
That does not mean—
But I ignore her and concentrate, finding my way to the place where my power lives. Mortania bucks and roils, hurling every vile name she can at me. And part of me wants to laugh at how quickly she has pivoted from flattery to insults. How easy it was to distract me with praise. I may have become Mistress of the Dark Court, but inside, part of me was always the Dark Grace, hungry for acceptance. I examine the cracked jewel of my signet ring and its band of bramble and thorn. I thought embracing my power meant destroying everything that stood in my way. It might have once. But now it’s time for a different course.
Like a glass shattering, the barrier blocking my power yields. I’m amazed at how immediately it disintegrates. How thoroughly I convinced myself that Mortania was in control. Magic floods through me. I gasp, staggering a little as the smell of woodsmoke and loam fills my nostrils and coats my tongue. Mortania is furious. Her presence smolders in my belly, and I know she’ll waste no time in attempting to block me again.
Without letting myself think about how disastrously this could fail, I snag Derek’s dagger from the sheath at his belt. He protests, and Callow chases him back.
“Now,” I say to Aurora.
She offers her hand. I draw three quick, neat slits on her palm. Her red human blood wells, and I think I see speckles of gold—Oryn’s magic. No. Her magic.
And then I slash my own palm and clasp our hands together, human and Vila and light Fae magic all mingling. Intentionally. Willingly. Defying all obstacles and history.
Gold-and-green light erupts from our joined grip, and an invisible energy throws me back. Aurora stumbles. But we hold on to each other. Mortania is deafening. An overwhelming rage explodes from the place where my magic lives. I grind my teeth against it.
“Is it working?” Aurora shouts.
I’m not sure. Something is happening, with the way that Mortania is howling inside my skull. But I don’t know if it’s enough. Aurora pulls me closer.
“What are you doing?”
Her other hand cups the back of my neck. “Our kiss broke a centuries-long curse. It is the strongest magic I know and capable of anything.”
And before I fully comprehend what is happening, her lips brush mine, soft at first, and then harder. Hungrier. I cling to her, our joined hands pressed tightly between us as we drink each other in, cocooned in this swirling tempest of green-and-gold light. Choosing each other.
Behind my breastbone, my magic strains as though it is fracturing. Perhaps it is. Perhaps there’s no way to untangle myself from Mortania, and this ritual will indeed kill me. The thought doesn’t frighten me as much as it probably should. I focus on Aurora. The wine-sweet taste of her mouth and the silken fire of her skin beneath my touch.
“I love you, Alyce,” she says against my lips.
No matter what happens next, it is enough. It will always be enough.
With a final, desperate shrilling, Mortania’s voice splinters and fades into nothing. The light shatters and dissolves, and Aurora’s golden shield with it. In their absence, the wind knifes between us and the sea cracks waves against the cliff face. Aurora releases me, and I let out a gasp at the sight of her. The Briar crown is now threaded through with bits of green—emerald thorns and jade roses and hemlock vines. Dark and light magic melded together.
“Rose, stop,” I attempt. “He cannot—”
“He can. There’s still time to Mark me. I will be High Queen of the Fae!”
Even with an arrow sunk in his eye, the High King rattles out a laugh. “You think I would ever name you as my heir? You are half-human. Unworthy of such a boon.”
“In the name of Etheria, I command it!”
Oryn hisses. “It matters not what name you invoke. Even if I Marked you, you would not survive it.”
She kicks him again. “Do it now, or I will make sure your magic dies with you.”
“Try,” Oryn croaks.
Rose growls. She gives up on the High King and reaches for the twisted birch of his staff instead.
“Rose, wait—” I want to tell her about Aelfdene, and how the magic must choose to bind itself to hers. But she will not listen.
“Shut up, Malyce. I know what I’m doing.” She taps at the orb, then turns the staff one way and then the next, searching for something. “There must be another way to—”
Rose stops. Sniffs. I smell it, too—the stench of burning flesh.
Tendrils of golden smoke twist up from where Rose’s hands are clamped around the birch wood. She drops it. Glass clatters against stone, but the orb remains intact.
“What…what’s happening?” Rose slumps, gaping at her upturned palms. Dark veins web out over her fingers and steadily work their way up her forearms. “What is this?”
“Did you assume I would be so careless as to forgo protection? After the Vila robbed me of that staff?” Oryn wheezes. “Rash, vain creature. None but the High King can wield that weapon.”
That’s why the riders left it behind. None would dare to touch it.
A fresh spike of horror jolts through me as Rose’s fingers crumble to ash and fall off her hands. Flakes of grayed skin swirl away on the wind. The poison climbs in a grotesque lattice up her arms and across her chest. It weaves around her neck and along her jaw.
“Make it stop,” she whimpers, thrusting her mangled arm in my direction. “Please. You helped me before.”
When she’d cut herself while taking bloodrot and nearly bled to death in her own parlor. But this is vastly different. Her left arm is gone now, her shoulder disintegrating. I shake myself out of my stupor and go to her. “I want to, please believe me. But I cannot. I’m sorry.”
“I wanted—” She gasps. Tears streak through the grime on her face. “I only wanted…”
But I know. Power. She wanted power. And watching her, I realize that this is what Mortania was doing to me for the last hundred years. Eating me away bit by bit, so subtly that I did not even notice.
I did nothing you did not invite me to do, pet.
And I shiver because I cannot entirely deny that.
I hold on to Rose for as long as I can. The end is swift and eerily soundless. I sit with the Grace’s remains staining my clothes. A single pink strand of hair glimmers on my skirt. I pick it up, and it dances in the breeze. Even an hour ago, I would have been glad to see Rose dead. But all I feel now is emptiness.
A low exhale rattles behind me.
“Alyce.” Aurora stands over the High King. Blood still gushes from the wound in his eye, but his chest is still.
Wisps of gold begin to unspool from the orb of Oryn’s staff and snake toward the High King. I drag myself closer. I’ve witnessed hundreds of Fae meet their deaths in my throne room but never like this. The threads of gilded power knot themselves together and congeal in a tight ball over Oryn’s corpse. It pulses once, then darts upward like a fallen star returning to the skies. Hovers for a heartbeat.
And then plunges into the Briar crown.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
The last princess of Briar staggers with the impact.
I take her by the shoulders, steadying her. “Are you all right?”
“I—” She blinks, dazed. “I think so. What was that?”
The Briar crown blazes with light.
“I don’t know.” Nothing about these last moments makes any sense.
A low warble reaches my ears. Callow. I half-bound, half–fall down the side of the tower and sprint to where she lay in a heap after Oryn’s attack. My heart swells. She’s alive. Stunned and wounded but nipping at my fingers and able to weakly flap her wings. I press her to my chest and she nudges her head against the underside of my chin.
“I told you to stay at the palace.”
She mutters something that is unmistakably a retort.
“Here you are, filthy beast.” A Fae rider soars up from below the cliffs. She angles her staff toward me. I curl protectively over Callow.
“NO!”
Wind pummels into me. The Fae warrior is shoved backward, her steed bucking and whinnying in panic as it’s sent somersaulting over the sea. A wall of shimmering, translucent gold launches up from the ground and arches in a dome over our heads. Callow bridles in alarm. Aurora stands on the rubble behind us, palms held out and chest heaving.
“Is that…a shield?” I ask. “Did you summon it?”
“No—I couldn’t have. I’m mortal. I don’t have powers or…”
Several other Fae riders converge, but their magic pings harmlessly off the barrier. Even the sounds of the battle raging in the districts are muffled.
“It’s definitely a shield,” Derek says.
But Aurora is mortal. How could she…
Oryn’s power. It’s an impossible answer, but the only one that fits. We’d all witnessed the High King’s magic dive into the wreath of bramble and thorn. But the only reason Oryn’s magic would have found the crown is because it was Marked, and it couldn’t have been. The Fae don’t Mark objects, do they? Even if it somehow was, it doesn’t explain why Aurora— Dragon’s teeth.
“The Briar crown,” I say to Aurora. “When Oryn blessed it, it was more than just the crown. It was Leythana herself, wasn’t it?”
Aurora blinks at me, still a bit dazed. “Yes. Leythana’s entire line was blessed. That’s why all the queens bore daughters—the Fae magic in Oryn’s blood.”
Fae magic passed from princess to princess. And just like that, the final piece of this puzzle clicks into place. I suddenly understand why Aurora never felt the effects of her curse lifting after a century of sleep. Why Oryn sent an envoy to fetch her when she woke, and why he wanted the Briar crown before he cast his enchantment. Why he’d traipsed realm to realm since my siege, seeking a champion to wake Aurora and remove her from our influence.
I stare at the gilded circlet, comprehension stitching itself together. And then a laugh punches up my throat and rings around us. Before long, I’m doubled over.
“What’s wrong with you?” Aurora gives me a slight shake.
“I wish Oryn were alive. He’d be furious.”
“Alyce,” she repeats. “What are you—”
“The High King used his own blood to bless that crown. Which means he Marked it—and Leythana’s descendants along with it.” I pause to let that sink in. “Oryn named them all as among his possible successors.”
Aurora plucks the thing from her head. “He couldn’t have. He wouldn’t have.”
“Oh, I’m sure he never thought his power would choose to bind itself to a mortal over some other Fae he Marked. But it did.” I laugh again, recalling what Aelfdene said about how Oryn hated to be proven wrong. “It came to you. Aurora, you’re the High Queen of the Fae.”
Deep in her den, Mortania emits a low, rumbling growl. Chaos nickers at another pair of Etherian riders who try unsuccessfully to blast the shield apart.
Aurora’s knuckles are white around the crown. She gapes at it like it might transform into a beast and devour her whole. “I don’t want it. I’ve seen what people do for this kind of power. Rose went practically mad to achieve it.”
“Power cannot make someone wicked,” I tell her, having learned that lesson the hard way. “I used to believe it could, like with the Shifters. But I was wrong.”
Shame cuts between my teeth. I’d assumed the worst of Neve and her Starlings, all because of Kal. And look at the pain my own prejudice had wrought. Another formation of riders attempts to descend upon us, and they are batted away like ragdolls. Chaos swishes his tail in a decidedly satisfied tempo.
“The Fae magic chooses where it resides?” Derek asks, still surveying the fighting through the glimmering border of the enchantment.
“Yes,” I say. “We learned that from the High Lord of the Court of Dreams. Oryn could have Marked a hundred heirs, but the magic itself would select its next home.”
He looks back at Aurora. “There must be a very good reason it came to you.”
The prince has a point. Aelfdene was selected as High Lord, though his brother was the stronger Fae. Had the magic seen something in Aelfdene? Had Oryn’s seen something in Aurora?
“What if Oryn’s magic somehow understood that another ruler like him would be ruinous?” I ask slowly. “If it chose you because you’re different?”
Aurora shakes her head. “I’m not, I—”
“I think,” I say, “that the very reason you’re afraid is because you are the right choice. You’re supposed to do this.”
“How can I?” She gestures at the battle, exasperated. “I cannot stop this. There’s no possible way to negotiate or sue for peace. It’s just this endless cycle of tearing one another apart. Nothing will change it.”
I squeeze her hand, wishing I had something useful to offer her.
“You don’t know that,” Derek attempts. “If you try…”
But the rest of what he says is lost to me. I’m focused on Aurora’s hand in mine. There’s a gold flush to her skin, thanks to Oryn’s power tingeing her blood, the shade made all the brighter by my green-veined paleness. And the sight of the colors together ignites something in my mind.
Green and gold…
The mysterious poem from the Vila book. And that first verse crashes into the next.
Green and gold
Gold and green
A power which we’ve yet to see
Ah, but ne’er will come the day
When called a force unknown to Fae.
It means nothing, Mortania insists. But I know better than to listen.
“A force unknown,” I say out loud.
“What?” Aurora asks.
I’d interrupted Derek, and he frowns at me, offended.
“Do you remember the poem?” I ask. “About the green and gold…and the power?”
Her brow scrunches. “I think so. But what—”
“When you said Leythana lied about the weapon she promised the Vila,” I hurry on before the idea flits away. “What if that force, from the poem, was the weapon?”
Aurora bites her bottom lip as she does when she’s thinking. “I don’t understand. The weapon didn’t exist.”
“Which is why Leythana vowed to forge it.” It’s like a veil being lifted. “And I don’t think it was a weapon at all, but an entirely new kind of magic. A power which we’ve yet to see,” I recite. “It could mean a fusion of green and gold—Etherian and Vila magic. Which could be why the Vila stole Oryn’s staff in the first place. They wanted to create the magic themselves. But they couldn’t use Etherian power—”
“And so Leythana promised to convince him to cooperate,” Aurora says softly. The clang of battle resonates through the shield. “But she knew he would never agree. And she didn’t care. She wanted the throne. After she was crowned, the Vila couldn’t do anything about it.”
Another detail falls into place. “Maybe they could. All those stories from before the first war—about the Vila sneaking into mortal lands and stealing children and raising havoc. It was all retaliation because Leythana failed to honor her word.”
“Dragon’s teeth,” Aurora mutters. “You could be right.”
“If she is,” Derek says, scrubbing the back of his neck, “might that power be something that could help us now?”
I hadn’t thought that far. And though I have no doubt that a blend of light and dark magic would be formidable, it doesn’t exist.
And it never could. Mortania thrashes. My mind swarms with her commentary about humans and Fae. The hundred lines drawn and crossed. The thousand knives sunk into one another’s backs.
Once, I would have listened. Deemed such a power impossible. But an idea blooms, opening like a long-ago Briar rose. The very thing that has hindered such a power might be the key to creating it.
“There’s something we can try,” I say to Aurora before I lose my nerve. “The ritual to turn a Fae into a Vila hinges on desire, specifically the Etherian’s rejection of their power. But if we both concentrated on melding the powers instead of turning them, it could work.”
Like Torin’s version of how the first Vila was created. Not by force, but by choice.
It would kill you, Mortania seethes.
Maybe. Or maybe that’s just what she wants me to think. Because to forge this power would be the end of her, I can sense it in my bones. She could not survive in a world where light and dark magic existed in harmony. Where the cycle of hatred finally ceased.
“Could?” Derek asks, and I don’t appreciate his tone.
“It is a risk,” I allow.
A foolish and deadly one, Mortania supplies.
The whinny of a Fae steed leaches through our shield. Another, much larger, formation of Fae riders approaches. Chaos rears and flares his massive silver-dusted wings.
“All right, Alyce,” Aurora says at last. “I trust you.”
There’s only one obstacle: I’ll need to access my Vila power, where Mortania is stubbornly squatting inside her cave. She laughs, the sound warping against my skull.
If the High King of the Fae could not destroy me, you certainly will not.
Aurora reads my expression. “What is it?”
“Mortania. She’s still preventing me from—”
“She cannot prevent you from anything.” Aurora places her palm on my sternum, and I can feel the heat of her through my gown. “It has always been your power. Never hers. And I’m sorry I didn’t see that.”
She lies, Mortania snarls, surging like a maelstrom. It is my power. And you have only ever been a vessel to house it.
My head throbs violently enough that I fear it will split in half. Pushing past the ancient Vila’s wrath seems impossible. But so did breaking the protections around Kal’s shadow chains a century ago. So did building the Dark Court. And so did earning the love of a princess.
That does not mean—
But I ignore her and concentrate, finding my way to the place where my power lives. Mortania bucks and roils, hurling every vile name she can at me. And part of me wants to laugh at how quickly she has pivoted from flattery to insults. How easy it was to distract me with praise. I may have become Mistress of the Dark Court, but inside, part of me was always the Dark Grace, hungry for acceptance. I examine the cracked jewel of my signet ring and its band of bramble and thorn. I thought embracing my power meant destroying everything that stood in my way. It might have once. But now it’s time for a different course.
Like a glass shattering, the barrier blocking my power yields. I’m amazed at how immediately it disintegrates. How thoroughly I convinced myself that Mortania was in control. Magic floods through me. I gasp, staggering a little as the smell of woodsmoke and loam fills my nostrils and coats my tongue. Mortania is furious. Her presence smolders in my belly, and I know she’ll waste no time in attempting to block me again.
Without letting myself think about how disastrously this could fail, I snag Derek’s dagger from the sheath at his belt. He protests, and Callow chases him back.
“Now,” I say to Aurora.
She offers her hand. I draw three quick, neat slits on her palm. Her red human blood wells, and I think I see speckles of gold—Oryn’s magic. No. Her magic.
And then I slash my own palm and clasp our hands together, human and Vila and light Fae magic all mingling. Intentionally. Willingly. Defying all obstacles and history.
Gold-and-green light erupts from our joined grip, and an invisible energy throws me back. Aurora stumbles. But we hold on to each other. Mortania is deafening. An overwhelming rage explodes from the place where my magic lives. I grind my teeth against it.
“Is it working?” Aurora shouts.
I’m not sure. Something is happening, with the way that Mortania is howling inside my skull. But I don’t know if it’s enough. Aurora pulls me closer.
“What are you doing?”
Her other hand cups the back of my neck. “Our kiss broke a centuries-long curse. It is the strongest magic I know and capable of anything.”
And before I fully comprehend what is happening, her lips brush mine, soft at first, and then harder. Hungrier. I cling to her, our joined hands pressed tightly between us as we drink each other in, cocooned in this swirling tempest of green-and-gold light. Choosing each other.
Behind my breastbone, my magic strains as though it is fracturing. Perhaps it is. Perhaps there’s no way to untangle myself from Mortania, and this ritual will indeed kill me. The thought doesn’t frighten me as much as it probably should. I focus on Aurora. The wine-sweet taste of her mouth and the silken fire of her skin beneath my touch.
“I love you, Alyce,” she says against my lips.
No matter what happens next, it is enough. It will always be enough.
With a final, desperate shrilling, Mortania’s voice splinters and fades into nothing. The light shatters and dissolves, and Aurora’s golden shield with it. In their absence, the wind knifes between us and the sea cracks waves against the cliff face. Aurora releases me, and I let out a gasp at the sight of her. The Briar crown is now threaded through with bits of green—emerald thorns and jade roses and hemlock vines. Dark and light magic melded together.
