Eryx stepped away from the desk, a sharp crack splitting the air as the quill in his hand snapped clean in half.
“And what will you do when they refuse?” he demanded. “Execute them? Kill every last one of the people we’ve spent our lives protecting until you rule over a kingdom of corpses?”
The world narrowed.
Cold roared through me—a visceral, ancient fury rising like a tide. Shadows warped at the edge of my vision. The air grew heavy and charged, like a glacier that was ready to shatter.
“He isn’t wrong.”
Everly’s whisper struck harder than any blade. Through our bond, I felt her exhaustion, her dread, the hollow ache of inevitability creeping beneath her resolve.
“You are my queen, and I will not deny your existence,” I shot back before directing my next statement to Eryx. “And thequestion is not what I will do, but what you will do as my Lord General. Or do I need to find your replacement?”
Lord Generals did not retire, and they did not simply lose rank. Their position changed hands for one reason only. And we both knew what it was.
Still, I pretended to feel nothing when I said the words, though each one echoed like the slow twist of a jagged blade in my gut.
I did not want to kill him. Especially not for a reaction I could have anticipated, given everything I’d asked of him… and everything I’d kept from him.
Eryx wasn’t just my most loyal soldier. Outside of Nevara, he had been the person I trusted most in this world, even with Everly’s protection.
Could I trust him now, furious as he was?
Part of me wondered if I was a fool for even asking the question. But another part couldn’t deny the hard, bitter truth in his words.
The court would rebel. Winter fae despised the Unseelie more fiercely than any other Seelie court, and that kind of hatred didn’t vanish just because a king commanded it.
Had I really expected Eryx to make an exception just because I had? Whether it was justice or not, Everly’s life depended on it.
So I let the threat hang between us, fragile as a chandelier suspended by a porcelain thread. And every bit as deadly.
“No, my king. If my loyalty is not something I have proved to you in blood several thousand times over, allow me to reiterate it now.” Bitterness and betrayal shone through his furious gaze. “I will stand by your side, even as you deny me the knowledge I need to do my shards-forsaken duty.”
Relief followed his words. If I knew nothing else, I at least knew that Eryx was too noble to lie. Perhaps I had lost whateverrespect he’d held for me before, but that was something I would have to live with if it meant keeping Everly safe.
He shot a glare at her as he continued. “Though, I question your concern over my position when your wife is poised to be the death of you.”
Everly squeezed her eyes shut, her voice filtering into my mind.
Which of us will tell him that you called that long before he did?
An unexpected bit of amusement surged in my chest, in spite of everything.Indeed I did, Morta Mea.
Eryx turned from us toward the side door, unaware of the exchange between us.
“On that note, your precious queen’s people have sent us a message.”
My instincts flared as he opened the door and called out to the soldiers down the hall.
“Bring them in.”
Two soldiers appeared, their faces twisted somewhere between nausea and fury, as they wheeled in a cart stacked with barrels draped in bloodstained cloths.
The smell was the first thing to hit me. It was a scent I’d known too many times in war or in the remains of ruined villages even before Eryx ripped back the cloth with a violent jerk.
Inside the first barrel lay a pile of severed heads, each one in a different stage of decay.
Everly squeezed my arm tighter, and I could feel her anguish rippling through our bond as we took in their graying skin, and sunken eyes, and the hair matted with dried blood.
