“Aye, and this one belongs to legend, too. Buried so long, so deep.” His teeth gleamed in the night, clicked with his words. “But it lives. If there is acid, it lives.”
“Acid?” Eury said. “You mean acid rain?”
Haskel rose from the bench, struck toward the bushes fringing the garden spot. “Yes, I was Drystan’s squire. There was no greater honor than to serve the queen’sveyre.” He spun, pointed at me with a thick finger. “Yes, I saw her die. He loved her, did youknow that?”
I didn’t move. Didn’t speak.
He cursed, kicked at a bush. The blooms thrashed, trembled. “That tooth destroyed her. Destroyed him, too. He took it back to where it came from and never returned. Ser Drystan was the best of us.”
Eury hadn’t moved, either. “You call it a tooth.” Her tone was careful, but his anger didn’t stop her from pressing him with the important questions.
“Because it is.” Haskel let out a loud growl. “But it’s also a dagger. And it’s meant to stay where it is.”
“If that were so”—I took a step toward him—“then why would the spiritstag brand it on my chest?”
Haskel’s face rose, lifting toward the sky as though he were saddled with two appalling pupils. “Because the gods, like us, desire power. If I’ve taught you nothing, Dorian, it’s that eternal life—proper eternity—leads to only one thing.”
It led to the desire for power. He had taught me that.
A creature who did not fear aging, who did not fear a natural death—who would live forever—could in the end nurture only one true desire.
Power.
And for the gods, who’d lived eons, what else was there?
"So we’re the spiritstag’s pawns. We knew that." Eury sat down on the bench. "But the dagger destroyed Carys. The stag watched that happen—watched its own queen die on the Killing Fields. So why send me after the same weapon?"
So sharp—and she was the most practical person I’d met. Even now, confronted with this anger, she seemed to know exactly how to handle it. Her whole demeanor had become smaller, quieter; who could be angry with her?
Haskel crossed his great arms. “You’re thinking like a mortal, girl. The story doesn’t end with death. To a god, one fae’s death is simply punctuation in a larger story.” His chin lowered; his face loomed inthe moonlight. “On the stag’s first attempt at power, Carys nearlywon. Think of what you saw, Dorian.”
“I saw Carys disintegrating.” Her skin flaking like ash, like she burned without flame. “She couldn’t hold the two magics. No fae can.”
Haskel wagged a finger at me like he had as my teacher. “And yet.”
And yet the stag had branded me with the dagger. It believed in a way forward. “When the terrain contradicts the map, you burn the map.”
He nodded once. “Just so. The Covenant binds the gods to their own lands—autumn to the forest, winter to the dark. They’re stuck in a stalemate. But a Courtbreaker… a queen who can hold the magic of two courts at once?”
The bind of dark truth cinched my stomach. “Of course the stag would attempt it again.”And again, and again.
“Haskel”—Eury’s voice was soft—“if I don’t find this tooth before I step into the Killing Fields, what will happen to me?”
He turned like he’d forgotten the queen who sat behind him. Like we were back under the old tree and all of this was theory.
“Tell me,” she said. “Just the bare truth.”
No one could resist that request. Not a queen, surely not a man. And if I knew Haskel at all…
“You’ve declared yourself your own champion.” Haskel sighed. “You’ve broken the precedent of the trials, forced their hands. They’ll claim the victor is she who makes the others kneel, but you’ve pierced delicateego, child. You’ll face three queens, and you’ll die. As sure as the sun and moon move through the sky, you’ll die.”
Her gaze met mine. My chest tightened, and all I wanted was to cross the grass toward her, to end that magical pull between us and wrap her in my arms.Never. I’ll never allow it.
But I didn’t move. She wouldn’t allow the touch, the words. She wouldn’t even be here if Haskel weren’t present.
And he was right. Now that he’d said it, the future was obvious:Eury would face all of them as Carys had. Except Carys had a hundred years to be a queen, and Eury just over a fortnight.
“The stag knows this,” she said. “It knows I have no choice. It made me promise to break the wheel. It knew the other queens would stand in the Killing Fields against me. So you see…”