Impossible. Yet I felt it.
What had been hollow became vital, and feeling returned to my chest, arms, legs, my face. My heart struck once, then again. In the vision I’d seen of Carys in the Killing Fields, she had suffered to wield two magics. It had nearly destroyed her before herveyretook her life. But Eury seemedmorealive, luminous.
And with a strange delight and horror, I understood. Maeronyx would not kneel for anything less than?—
“Courtbreaker.” My voice came out a rasp.
Her eyes didn’t open. Her lips twitched in concentration. She kept her back to those queens like she had no fear of them.
Was this what Caustrix had planned for? Eury, Courtbreaker? Or had the dragon wagered on both outcomes?—
She died, and I alone could hold the dagger.
I died, and Eury alone could hold it.
Either way, the dragon’s blood ran through both of us. The dragon had won. Its spite rained over us, over all our heads.
When Eury’s eyes did finally open and her hand fell from my chest, I caught it in both of mine. Her small, warm hand. I never wanted to let it go.
“That’s three,” she whispered.
“Three what?”
She didn’t pull away. Her face was so close to mine I could smell her sweet breath. “Dorian.” Even her voice sounded different. Eurydice, but more than that. She wasn’t the girl I’d met. Notonlyher, anymore.
“Eury.”
“You nearly died for me.”
“Youdiddie.”
She studied my face. “And you brought me back.” Her other hand lifted, pulling aside the neck of her jerkin in the gentle golden rain. “Look at me.” The wound over her heart had closed. In its place, only a starburst scar.
“How…?” I asked.
She pressed the spot with her fingers. “Liora’s light-limned sword.”
Back in that cave, Caustrix had said a thing that now caught my breath. "My acid drinks every drop of magic her little body tries to hold. Feralis survives because it’s mine. The rest?She’d need a straight injection of it through the center of her to make any difference, and I suspect such a thing would kill her. She does have a heart, yes?”
A straight injection through the heart.
The Dawnmaker had given Eury exactly what she needed to become the Courtbreaker, and she hadn’t even known it. Now her head lay staring up at the sun.
Eury’s hand dropped from her chest. Her gaze darted left, toward Liora’s body. “Do you regret it?”
Regret? In a blink, I saw it clearly: the queens had fought her; Liora wouldn’t give in; Eury had done what she’d needed to do.“I can’t let her live,” she’d said before she’d even stepped onto the Fields. She had known Liora wouldn’t be the one who would yield.
Now the others knelt until Eury gave them permission to stand.
But I knew her fear. I was herveyre; she was the Courtbreaker. By rights, I ought to kill her. I had been marked to bring her down if shebecame too powerful, corrupted. She had beheaded a queen, for gods’ sake.
And yet the old rhyme came to mind:
Four courts keep the world in line?—
One for blood, and one for shine,
One for thorn, and one for sky…