Faun’s lips moved. I couldn’t understand. I didn’t need herwords; I needed pressure. I wrapped the belt around her shoulder, pulled it tight around her stump. She screamed.
Clanking sounded from the Killing Fields. Out there, the three queens had seen Eurydice’s last act. They were moving—two of them in plate armor, fast and purposeful, the kind of movement that had nothing of surprise in it. They’d known what the dagger was. They’d always known.
I could reach it first. I had to.
I leaned over Faun, my face casting a shadow. She stared up at me like I’d appeared from the underworld. “You’re not dying.Don’t fucking die.”
Faun would live if no one else did. She was too stubborn to do anything else.
I rose and limped toward the dagger. The bloody grass cost them—the footing uncertain, their magic depleted or close to it on Sylvanwild land. They were quicker than me, but the terrain had leveled it, and I only needed to stay ahead by one step.
Still, it was close. Closer than I wanted. I limp-ran, pain surging up my leg, and skidded to my knees in the grass in front of the cursed blade.
There it sat, belonging to no one, the bloody grip offering itself to the sky.
As a boy in the winter court, I’d overheard a story of a servant who’d once brushed the dagger’s edge where it lay on the breakfast table while Carys dined. She always had it with her, always. Never sheathed. And at the mere touch, all the servant’s meager magic had been sapped away in seconds. He became a wraith right there at Carys’s elbow.
The story had terrified me. Even now, my hands trembled.
But I had no choice. Grab it or die. No, not just that, more than that?—
Iwantedit. I wanted to hold it the way I’d craved Gawain’s death all my life. I knew my own power, my own potential. Gawain hadn’t hunted me for his trophy for no reason. And with the faces of thosethree witches coming into focus, my lip curled into a sneer. As if I’d let them touch it.
My hand shot out, my fingers wrapped around the grip. Cold seeped into my skin, my arm, right up to my racing heart.
Power. Beautiful, agonizing power.
Now it made sense—why Eury couldn’t let the dagger out of her hand, much less her sight. Clarity settled over me with brutal precision, why she and I were alike.
Not just changelings, the two of us. Not just raised human.
We’d both spent our lives feelingpowerless.
The dagger didn’t overwhelm me, didn’t turn me into a wraith. Caustrix had known. Those glacial blue eyes had measured and seen the potential. I was Eury’s mirror, the man who wanted and wanted and wanted.
I could hold it. Now, tomorrow, forever. With this dragon’s tooth, I held greater power than any ruler since Carys. I could become thekingof the autumn court, of all the courts.
But first, three queens to lay to waste. Even now, they ran toward me as if their power still exceeded mine.
Burn them, his voice curled through my head.Avenge her.
The vision appeared before me. One draw of the dagger across my palm. Let the blood come. Kneel. Slam my palm into the earth, and wipe the Killing Fields clean in one blast of feralis.
Magic like no one had seen since Carys, greater even than Eurydice’s storm. A disintegrating blast that would scour the Fields clean. Would send every one of us straight to the underworld.
Eury had wanted to break the wheel. This would do it. This was why she had thrown the dagger.
I lifted the tooth, turned my palm upward… and stopped.
A cloud had drifted in front of the sun. The sky darkened. For the first time, she became visible. There in the distance, beyond the churned grass, slumped against the spire with her head on her shoulder.
Eurydice, dead.
Gone.
The word rose in me, thick and impossible. Since my human family’s death, I’d never spoken it to anyone. I’d thought it impossible to even think it.
Love. I love her.