This was the end.
Death spread from beneath her feathered skirts and spells flew from her lips as she lifted her hands, directing more of her army toward us. The muscles in my arms screamed each time I lifted my blade to swipe across another throat.
There were too many. They were too fast. I was too feckin’ tired.
My hand started to cramp, and my dagger slipped from my grasp, the blade piercing the ground by my boots. I needed to pick it up. I needed to shift another. I needed to dosomething.
Instead, I did nothing.
Hands closed around my arms. A pair of guards dragged me toward the Queen’s hill, and I didn’t have the energy to fend them off. Tadhg’s vicious curse pierced the air. Two guards had him as well, his boots leaving streaks in the cursed ground as they hauled him behind me.
This was it.
At least Aveen had had the good sense to leave. I only hoped she’d made it wherever she was going. That she’d find sanctuary and, eventually, happiness. Eternity was a long time to live without joy.
Blackness swam at the edge of my vision. I blinked slowly. By the time my lids lifted, the Queen appeared a few feet away, peering down at us with a sneer twisting her lips.
Without warning, the guard gripping my right arm stilled, but the one holding my left continued, stretching me like I was on a feckin’ rack.
Then the man’s grip loosened, and he fell straight back, landing with a loud thud.
What the hell?
I pressed my heels into the ground. The guard who still held me pulled harder. I balled my hand into a fist and somehow managed to send my weary arm flying, slamming my fist into the bastard’s face.
He let go, and I went down like a sack of stones, my chin cracking off the feckin’ ground.
The guard’s body went stiff as a board, and he fell onto his back as well.
Tadhg crawled over to me, his eye black and bruised. “What’s happening?” he rasped, spitting blood onto the grass.
Good feckin’ question.
One by one, the guards surrounding us fell. Bodies as far as the eye could see, blending in with the blackened grass.
Tadhg glanced at me, the green in his eyes dull as his life flickered. “Kill me.”
Not this again. “Now isn’t the time for your suicidal tendencies.”
“Use my life force, you eejit,” he hissed, pressing his own blade into my palm. “You’re the only chance we have.”
That was…actually a pretty good plan. I cut his throat and inhaled his magic before his head hit the ground. More power than I’d ever felt before flooded my depleted stores. It felt like someone had lit my innards on fire. Feckin’ hell. I felt…invincible.
But would it be enough?
I shifted Tadhg’s body to the castle so that at least one of us would awaken after this day.
The Queen’s wide, black eyes met mine, and she smiled. “The kingdom is ours, my son.” She stretched her blackened fingers toward me. “Take my hand.”
Ours?She couldn’t be serious.
She clicked her fingers. “Take it!”
I slid my hand into hers…and pulled. She fell forward, landing on her knees next to me. With a surge of magic, I kept her from evanescing, holding her unholy power beneath mine. The muscles in my arms quivered; sweat and blood dripped down my brow.
She cursed and writhed in a pathetic attempt to get away.
The tide in this war had finally turned. This ended now.