My head snaps up, my eyes searching, heart leaping...
And then I see him.
I’m not sure I’ve ever felt true elation until right in this moment. It’s visceral, draping around me like the warmth of his body, my heart surging at the sight of him and making a sob wrest from my deepest depths.
He came.
He came for me.
A timberwing lands right in the middle of the square with a fierce roar, and the crowd screams as they flee, though they don’t go fast enough.
The moment Slade jumps off the beast, the verysecondhis booted feet hit the stones, rot slams out in every direction. It consumes the crowd of onlookers, tainted roots growing and spreading, infesting everything in its path. The people fall, one after the other, bodies left to languish and decay, the guards surrounding the crowd succumbing to the same fate.
I cling to the pole in front of me, trying to keep upright, as cries crack the back of my throat and leak past my lips. Our gazes lock together, my heart locked with it.
I can feel the fury pouring out of him in endless waves, and the amount of power pulses in the air, but it doesn’t make my stomach roil, doesn’t make nausea churn.
He walks toward me with a savage stride, making the ground crumble, making the square squelch into silence as he rots everyone in his path and lets his boots crush their decayed bodies into dust. Until there are no more screams. No more running. Only quiet death lies in his wake.
I’ll be the villain for you.
He is the epitome of death and revenge. The personification of rage.
He destroys everything and everyone in his vicinity without glance or thought, and through the chaos, through the massacre, Irevelin it.
Maybe it’s the rot inside me. Maybe it’s being fae.
But maybe, it’s simply the fact that the person I love is willing to destroy the world to protect me. Andthatis its own kind of power that not even this enclosure can drain away.
So long as we’re together, everything is okay. Because I will fight for him, and he will kill for me, and if we need to be the villains, then so be it.
Slade strides straight ahead with murder in his eyes, while the roots of his power writhe and coil along his forearms and neck, mirroring the rot that worms through the ground. When he’s just ten feet away from the stage, his gaze splits to the monarchs and some of the nobles and guards.
They’re huddled together on the stage, and I wonder for a moment if Queen Isolte is trying to squelch Slade’s power with hers. If so, she’s failing miserably.
She’s no match for him.
No one is.
Which is why I’m surprised none of them have used these last several seconds to try and flee. Instead, they’re shouting at King Merewen, telling him to hurry. I don’t understand, but then I see the little boy—the one who must be the prince of Second Kingdom—his father holding his shoulders and positioning him in front of them.
Outrage slams into me like a fist. Are they hoping, by blocking themselves with an innocent kid, that Slade won’t destroy them?
The thought is despicable, but they should know that when it comes to Slade’s magic, he is precise. He could rot them all and not let a single bit of it touch the boy, just like he destroyed the guards that surrounded me.
But then King Merewen snaps something to his son. The boy nods and reaches into the pocket of his robe, and he pulls out a spool of thread. In a blink, he’s yanked the thread between his fingers, and then he closes his eyes in concentration, pulling the unspooled thread into a taut line. Magic sparks to life in the air like someone just poured oil over a flame.
Slade is just three feet from the stage, already sprinting up the steps, when the boy’s magic slams into place.
If I weren’t holding onto the poles, I would’ve fallen down. The collected gold sloshes wildly at my legs. Yet my eyes are riveted ahead to where the entire stage is now covered in what looks like a veil of fabric the same color as the boy’s thread. I’m also contained in a second layer that separates me from them, the veil slightly thicker where it surrounds my enclosure.
The whole thing swells and undulates like laundry hanging from a clothesline and blowing in a breeze. Stretching over us like a dome, it’s not quite solid, the fabric turning translucent as it moves, glistening in the sunlight.
Slade slams into it, and the fabric bends around him before pulling tight and shoving him back.
“You cannot get through,” King Merewen calls out with arrogant victory, still gripping the shoulders of his son. The boy continues to squeeze his eyes shut, his small fingers holding onto his thread.
Slade raises both hands and shoves them against the barrier. Feet braced, muscles bunching, rot pours out of his touch with livid fortitude, and I watch as veins stretch up around the domed fabric to spread its infection.
