A scoff rose, burst out of me before I could stop it. I twisted toward her. “Break my vow. Let the trials continue. Condone the killing of human babies in the name of changelings. Let young fae be slaughtered every hundred years in the name of a bureaucratic handover.”
Her eyes were wide. Soft, vulnerable, not like I’d ever seen them. “Yes.”
“When I can stop it. When I finally have the power to stop it.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
She seemed to vibrate in place. “Because the alternative is worse.”
Anger rose in me, fast and hot. Snapping, willful. Briefly, I imagined the Faun who’d attacked me at Virellan Falls. The Faun who’d tried to kill me with her rapier. The Faun who’d stabbed me in the shoulder. My enemy. Ruthless, unyielding.
But I couldn’t reconcile her with the Faun who stood before me. Fingers curled, eyes round as a doll’s, eyebrows high. She was truly, truly afraid.
She believed it. She believed the alternative was worse.
I stepped to her, grasped one of her hands, then the other. Her fingers were cold. “Do you know the difference between me and all the queens who have come before?”
“No,” she whispered. “And I don’t think you do, either.”
“None of them had you. None had Dorian. With you at my side, I’m safe. I’m tethered.”
As I stood before her, her hands in mine, I felt that. I couldn’t hear Caustrix’s words in my head; I only felt the swelling of softness in my chest for Faun, for Dorian, for Haskel, Mirek, Eleyrie, even Finch.
“Will you always speak true to me, Faun?”
A minuscule nod. “It’s the only thing I can do.”
I squeezed her hands. “Then trust me to use the dagger this once. To end the trials, to break the wheel. Afterward, I’ll never wield it again.”
A small light entered her eyes. “Do you swear?”
“I swear it. It’ll stay locked away—Dorian will see to that.”
She studied me, maybe seeking truth in my eyes. She must have found it, because she nodded and let go of my hands. She unsheathed a short sword from where it hung at her hip. She gripped the sword with one hand and laid the flat of it over her other palm, then extended it toward me.
“I’ll hold you to that vow.”
I stepped out of the tent with the dagger sheathed at my back and the short sword at my hip. Faun followed me out. Haskel and Mirek rose from their stools, and the handmaidens all turned toward me.
Dorian stood at the edge of the Killing Fields, illuminated by sunlight. He’d armored and now wore a bastard sword at his side. He straightened when he saw me, hands clasping behind him.
As I approached, he said, “They’re ready.”
He turned toward the Fields. Far beyond, at the three points of the circle, they stood waiting.
Liora to my right. Maeronyx to my left. Iseris straight on, beyond the pillar—though I could not see her to know for certain. But I did see the brightcolt, its white wings flapping as it presided over the trial.
Each god watched, waited. Behind me, I knew the spiritstag stood at the edge of the forest. Liora’s dawn hawk circled in the sky far above her head. And Maeronyx’s black maw sat atop a boulder on its haunches.
I stepped up to the Fields. A great span of dewy, nauseating red covered the grass just inches from my boot’s toe. One step farther and the trial would begin.
Dorian’s hand fell on my shoulder and I flinched, almost threw him off before I recognized his touch. “You’ll feel the power when you step into the Fields.” His fingers were warm through the leather. Comforting, solid. “Be careful with your use of it.”
I turned to him; here we were, again, as I stood on the blade’s edge of life and death. “Dorian.”
His dark eyes seemed to hold me. I wanted him to wrap me in his arms. “Eury.”