one must kneel, and one must die.
When I’d first heard it—and even when I took Liora’s head—I thought I understood the rhyme. Now, in the days since, I’d begun to wonder if the one who knelt and the one who died were the same person.
When our lips parted, he kept his face close to mine, forehead toforehead. “You could break it, you know.” Quiet, almost conspiratorial.
I went stiff. “Break what?”
“The tooth.”
I leaned back, stared up at him. “You think that would end it?”
“I’m not certain.”
My chest tightened. The idea raced through me like fire, lighting up my veins. “I’m only the Courtbreaker so long as I hold it.” Could I even touch the power I’d wielded on the Killing Fields without it?
“But no one need know you don’t hold it. You’ve shown yourself before queens and gods, Eury.”
I let go of him, turned back toward the balcony rail and the canopy below. It lay in full sunshine now, as did we. Breaking the tooth felt as impossible as snapping my own finger. I needed it, like I needed him. “In exchange for the tooth, I promised him something.”
“And what’s that?”
I lifted my gaze. “To bring down the sky on the Kingdom of Storms. To destroy it.”
Silence. The silence of a terrible truth. Had I planned to keep my promise to Caustrix, even when I made it? I couldn’t say.
“So you see, I can’t break it.” My hands gripped the railing. “For many reasons. Some of them less noble than others.”
Now might be the moment for him to turn, to leave. To go forever away. I wouldn’t blame him.
He stepped up beside me, touched the railing, stared out with me. “Nothing could ever compel me to leave your side, Eurydice. I’m yours, always. Dagger or none, clothed or not. Consort, king, or no title at all. Whatever you need, I’ll give it.”
I knew he spoke true. He had proven himself again and again.
Our court would be a court of steadiness, and he would be its king.
To my right, Highmark lay bright and wide under relentless sun—without a ruler, no doubt mourning its queen. But another wouldsoon rise golden under sunlight, this one to a new world of heaving courts and uncertain rule.
Beyond my sight, far across Feyreign, the spring court tended to its shame. Iseris might have whimpered under the rain, but embarrassment made for potent anger.
To my left, the border with the winter court sat shrouded in white. There, it had begun again to snow. Most days it snowed, and sometimes a blizzard came.
I slid my hand across the railing, set my fingers over his. “She will come, won’t she?”
“Yes.” He didn’t hesitate; his fingers wrapped around mine. “But in Feyreign, a scheme might grow for a year or a hundred before it fruits. She has all the time she needs.”
EPILOGUE
The Kingdom of Storms — Three Months Earlier
The night waited.Humans flared like sparks in it, their lives quick and bright as lit matches. The pub clinked, their doors opened, cheers poured in and drunkenness stumbled out.
Their gazes passed over me as though I didn’t exist, and what drops of magic I possessed never needed calling on to evade their weak eyes. Here beneath the wall, the shadows stretched long and dark and faithful any time of day.
They had no idea of what came.
Behind the pub, the alley lay quiet except for the skulking rats. Quiet and dark, but for a single window on the second story where a faint candle’s glow made a picture in the window.
I climbed. Maeronyx had no real name for me—she didn’t know the one I’d been given—but she did sometimes call meskivh.The one who climbed, who ran, who slipped out of shadow and back into it.