Rian gives Thracia a sweeping bow. “Rian Valvere—big fan, o Immortal One. If I’m not mistaken, your affinity is healing, no? There are a hell of a lot of people in this city who could use your favor.”
To punctuate his point, a scream rings out from a few blocks away.
Thracia blinks her big, painfully innocent eyes. Her hair cascades to her waist in thin braids, held back by a midnight blue ribbon. She toys with the ends of her hair, looking between Samaur and me, biting down on her pillowy bottom lip.
And then she and Samaur burst into cruel laughter at the same time.
She clutches her narrow waist, doubling over, as more laughter bubbles on her lips. When she looks up, it’s with that same wolfish smile as Samaur.
“Healing?” she sneers. “Yes, that is my affinity. Or better stated, that’s one side of it. The other side is poison. It was my godkiss when I was confined to a human body.”
“Your godkiss was poisonwork?” I ask, my voice leveling flat. I slide a look to Rian. “And you lived along the Northwestern coast, near the border wall?”
She looks me up and down with disdain. “Yes, poisonwork.Bitmore powerful than your wife’s ability to talk to mice.”
I feel the blood rush between my ears. Because now, everything clicks into place. Why Rian so forcefully denied having anything to do with poisoning the Lunden Valley, in the Northwest. Why Vale made up that lie in the first place.
Thraciapoisoned the river valley when she was still mortal.
“Mortals have done nothing to you!” I burst out, unable to bite back my temper. “Not the people in Lunden Valley, and not the people here. Old Coros has embraced you with welcome arms, showered you with gifts!”
“Yes, it was a lovely welcome,” she says, admiring her midnight-blue, angled fingernails. “I bear no rancor against the people here. They simply need to be taught a lesson. Shock and awe. So they do not mistake our rule for weakness. This Return, there will be no question as to where power lies.” She sighs, listening to the distant sounds of screams. “As far as what happened in the Lunden Valley, that was an accident—I was testing the strength of my godkiss and things got a little out of control.” She smirks. “Maybe that should have been a sign I was fae.”
Her casual dismissal of thousands of dead bodies chills me to the bone.
“The more people you kill,” Rian says, shifting his stance, subtly falling back into the fighting position we used in the sparring ring, “the fewer there will be to worship you.”
“Humans are like ants,” she says, waving her fingers dismissively. “There are always more. You’re constantly reproducing. Waiting a few generations for a larger population means nothing to immortals.” She grins. “Besides, the ones we spare will pray to us twice as hard, after they’ve seen what we’re capable of.”
An explosion of light suddenly ricochets throughout the central district, near Valor Circle. The earth trembles from theaftershocks, clay tiles sliding off the tavern roof and crashing to the street.
Samaur and Thracia immediately shift into their fae appearances, fey crackling at their fingertips.
“It’s the monoceros,” Samaur says, narrowing his golden eyes to slits of light. “Come on.”
He starts toward the explosion at a jog. Thracia hangs back, still focused on Rian and me, purple fey snaking up her arms, which already bear the scent of pestilence and rot.
“They’re nothing,” Samaur urges her. “The gate’s sealed. No one is escaping Woudix’s risen army. We did our work, and now Vale is going to need us if Tòrr is loose. Come on!”
His tone is sharp enough to jolt her, and she wrinkles her nose at us one final time before running after Samaur.
The instant they’re gone, Rian doubles over, bracing himself on his knees, and lets out a long exhale. “Fuck me in the ass—they’re annoying as hell, aren’t they? They can all rot—Sabine excluded.”
I immediately begin inspecting the iron seal Samaur welded into the gate’s barricade. “We don’t know about the others. Popelin. Meric. Alyssantha. There could be another good one in the court. Hell, at this point I’d settle for one who just doesn’t want the world to burn.”
Rian grabs a broken flagpole and uses the end to test out the gate, looking for any weak or rotten boards we could possibly break through.
When his attempts come up empty, he tosses aside the pole, impatient. “That Sun God really fucked us.”
Another blast of light from the central district rocks the ground, and I duck beneath the gate’s archway as loose stones tumble down.
“Sabine and that monoceros can do a lot of damage,” I mutter. “But she’s never gone up against the entire fae court before.”
We spare what little time we can to continue testing the barricade, but nothing works.
Then, suddenly, Rian claps me on the shoulder. “Remember that pub in Blackwater? The Lazy Otter?”
My brow furrows. There have been a lot of pubs. A lot of long, whisky-soaked nights with Rian in Blackwater. Most of them blur together in an amber haze.
