Carys, the Courtbreaker.
She fought like a banshee, short sword in one hand andthatdagger in the other. Ice, spite—a blue dagger of smoke and cruel history. Eury had carried it in the third Sylvanwild trial, had slit the throat of King Rhodric with its edge.
Its blade flashed before me, not forty paces away. Reachable, but not.
Ineeded it. Eury needed it.
Where the fuck did you hide it, Carys?
Two dueling magics rolled over the length of Carys’s body—feralis and noxveil—an unholy Unseelie union. They held together like biting wolves, water and shadow roiling and snapping in an infinity snake around her.
And yet she commanded the two magics, barely. Blackened flakes rose from her as though her skin were disintegrating. Maybe it was.The sight was enspelling, one I’d only imagined. Worsethan I’d imagined—living destruction.
How badly did it hurt? How intoxicating must it feel?
With those blades and that magic, Carys held off three queens. Noctere, Highmark, Aurelia.
A tentacle of Carys’s shadow magic swept across the grass, wrapped around the neck of the flaxen-haired Highmark queen, whose body burst with light. The shadow slipped over her breast, her arms, her face, encompassed her. Her light died as she slumped to the ground.
A jet of water lashed toward the white-haired Noctere queen. The blade-edge sliced up through the armpit of the Unseelie queen as she raised her flail. Up, up it went, through her collarbone and out the other side.
The flail dropped to the grass, still in her hands. As did the top of her body.
All this time, the history books had told me Carys had “held her own” against the three queens.That was far from true: Carys hadwon.
Only the red-haired Aurelian queen fought on. I had read about her, Queen Lysanthra and her whips of life. Whatever they touched grew with life, just as Unseelie feralis sucked it away.
She knew the dagger allowed Carys to hold the two magics. She knew it must go.
One of her whips shot out, viper-fast, and caught the dagger by the grip. Black smoke rose as Seelie magic met ancient power. Sheyanked the dagger away, and though it did not bloom with life, it did land near my feet.
Where it lay, the grass whistled and hissed as though burned.
Hateful thing, yet I would pick it up if I could.
The noxveil shadows around Carys’s body evaporated the instant the dagger left her grip. Without her weapon, she couldn’t hold the two magics together for even a moment.
No matter. She wrapped her fingers around Lysanthra’s whip and yanked her forward—straight into the tip of Carys’s waiting bastard sword. The blade entered Lysanthra’s throat and came out the other side.
Lysanthra’s violet eyes turned pale, and her body wilted into Carys’s grip.
Carys dropped her as though she’d been handed a sack of unwanted flour. She stood breathing hard, her back to me, covered in viscera. Her own skin still flaked off her, revealing muscle and sinew. Where the skin remained, black streaks ran up her veins. The corruption of holding two Unseelie magics at the same time. How did she still stand?
Around her, three queens lay dead in the span of a minute, their bodies still and dismembered on the grass.
The stag had not intervened. There it stood, still at the tree line, watching on like itwanted this.
A chill slid over me, even though I stood in the sun. This was the moment, the turning. For one brilliant second, Carys had ruled all of Feyreign. A single crown for a single queen.
The Courtbreaker. Unstoppable, brutal, terrifying.
With two magics, with that dagger, with her immortality… her reign would be endless.
Until—
A hand reached out, gripped the dagger at my feet. A dark-haired fae knelt before me; when he rose with the hilt in his cloak-wrapped hand, the smell of his burning skin pierced my nose. The cloak made little difference.
Yet he didn’t shake, didn’t scream, didn’t hesitate.