I dismount and briefly press my forehead to hers, Tòrr’s broken horn clutched tightly in my hands.
His sacrifice made it all possible, my pretty girl,I whisper in my head.He won’t be forgotten.
She bows her head.
We’re two souls who have lost someone.
A girl and her horse.
Best friends.
I draw in a long, fortifying breath, tuck his horn into my belt, then step through the shattered archway into Raven Hall.
They’re waiting for me.
Six of them—my so-called brothers and sisters. Myfather. The gods of the known world, seated on thrones they’ve used their powers to forge from the wreckage: bones and twisted metal.
Vale nods, his smile heavy and mirthless. “Daughter.”
“Father.” My voice is deep, almost as if the earth itself is speaking.
I focus on Woudix instead, slouched in the farthest throne on the right. Hawk is curled obediently against his shin, as always.
My gaze catches on the hound, and something cracks inside me. If it had been me tasked with her care, I would’ve given her a peaceful end beneath the roots of an old tree, her soul returned gently to the earth. Not this. Not an eternity prowling half-rotted and enslaved to a god’s will.
Woudix sits too still as he gazes steadily back at me—but I catch the twitch of his right eye.
He’s afraid.
I walk toward him slowly, deliberately, the light beneath my skin pulsing with new brilliance.
“Monoceros blood,” I say, raising my arms so they can all see the fey glow through my veins. “I’m the first fae ever to drink it, isn’t that right? I don’t recall any monoceroses dying for any ofyou.”
Artain’s mouth curls into a sneer, an insult poised on his lips, but Woudix answers instead.
With violence.
Black fey explodes from his palms, a cloud of ash and soot surging toward me.
I raise my hand, my own fey bursting outward in a wave of silver so bright it cuts through the dark like a sunburst.
I leap aside just in time as a blade whistles past me—Thracia’s glass-edged dagger, thrown with inhuman precision.
It shatters against the pillar behind me into a spray of mirrored shards.
Then, an arrow zooms at me from Artain’s bow, but I twist out of the way in time, ducking and it only grazes my arm. I look down at the already-healing wound.
With Basten’s strength in my bones, Rian’s devotion burning in my blood, and Tòrr’s final heartbeat alive in my chest, I rise to face them again.
“You thought you could tame me,” I tell Woudix, my voice barbed. “With lies. With mimicry of friendship.”
He leans forward, hands tented, and then slowly tilts his head toward Iyre beside him. “It was Iyre’s idea. She saw Basten’s memories before she consumed them—she realized how much true companionship meant to you. That friendship would hold more power than threats.”
Iyre smiles cruelly, drumming her long nails on her throne. “You weresoeasy to manipulate.”
“But Basten saw through you,” I say steadily, looking between them. “Through both of you.” I hesitate, regret lacing my voice. “Even when I couldn’t.”
Vale’s thundering voice commands all our attention. “I take it your memories are back, daughter.”
