For every single human who had died trying to reach our land. For those forced into servitude against their will. For Leesha and her sister.
For Keelynn.
For Aveen.
I plunged Tadhg’s dagger into the Queen’s chest.
This blade wouldn’t kill her forever, but she’d be dead long enough. All I had to do was shift her body to the dungeon in the Black Castle and chain her in iron. As powerful as she was, no one could escape those dungeons.
Her nostrils flared and eyes bulged as she tugged and tugged to no avail. “You foolish boy! I wanted to give you everything. Everything! And you fought me every step of the way.”
With her free hand, she caught the neck of her gown and tugged it aside, revealing the edge of a thick silver scar across her upper chest. A scar that could only mean one thing.
The Queen had no heart.
“You cannot kill that which is already dead,” she cooed.
Her glowing hand slammed against my chest, throwing me to the ground. Her hot breath flamed over my cheek as she leaned forward, the first words of her favorite spell falling from her bloodred lips.
“Let him go!”
The Queen’s head snapped up, and her eyes narrowed at something behind me.
“You,” my mother snarled, the veins beneath her skin pulsing with black.
“I said, let go of my husband.”
I could’ve sworn I heard Aveen. But she wasn’t here anymore. She was gone. She was safe.
From the corner of my eye, something shifted. I peered through my swollen eye, seeing an angel, her blue skirts drenched in blood.
The Queen twisted my collar, forcing me to my knees and taking my jaw, angling my head toward the woman I loved. “Look where your cursed love has gotten you now,” she spat. “My worthless son will never again see the light of day. Never again know a moment without pain.” She jerked my head until I stared at her. “Your eternity is mine.”
Aveen’s laughter chimed like a bell. “Your reign of terror is over,” she said. My sweet, beautiful viper. Always so feckin’ optimistic.
That’s when I saw the dagger with a glowing emerald in her hand.
“No,” I rasped, choking on my own blood dripping down the back of my throat.She couldn’t stab the Queen because the Queen couldn’t die.
The Queen’s cackle sent chills racing down my spine. She stood slowly, my dagger still protruding from her chest. “You wish to kill me, girl? You wish to slay the Phantom Queen?”
A hint of a smile played on the corners of my wife’s lips. Instead of lunging for the Queen as I’d expected, she held something aloft. I blinked past my pain, desperate to know what rested in her palm.
A heart.
The Queen let me go and lunged for my wife.
My body hit the ground with a sickening crunch.
A blood-curdling scream echoed through the sky as Aveen pierced the heart with the cursed blade.
The ground beneath me trembled. Thunder boomed. A black mist twisted from the Queen’s body as she fell to her knees, her arms outstretched toward my wife, her once youthful face wrinkled and contorted in fury. The shadows collided with the emerald.
The Queen fell down beside me, her eyes finding mine. “I win,” she whispered as her body melted into the blackened earth beneath her.
Arrogant fool. How could she win when she was no more?
My wife flicked her wrist, and Keelynn’s body appeared at her feet. Blood-drenched skirts billowed when she knelt next to her sister and cut Keelynn’s pale hand with that cursed dagger.