My people’s screams spur me on, forcing me to move. So I roll onto my side and push myself up, nearly teetering over again as I heave in a strangled breath.
The other fae are closing in. They’re gathering around my people, with swords in hand while lightning strikes, keeping them hemmed in. The fae controlling the wood makes the planks embed into the street like a shoddy fence for livestock.
The fae are toying with us. Laughing at us.
Neira is screaming through hiccupped tears, clutching her mother, and it tatters my heart.
“Stop!” I scream, though my voice comes out in fraying pieces. My eyes land on Pruinn a few paces away.
His menace holds my gaze in place. “We’re going to slaughter them. Just like we slaughtered your entire city. And since you didn’t take me up on my offer, you get to watch,Majesty.”
Lightning suddenly strikes down Kasin—the old street sweeper. The blinding light chars through his corpse. Screams rend the air.
Another fae throws a dagger and stabs Kasin’s son straight through, uncaring that the man holds no weapon, has no defense. The fae controlling the wood starts spinning boards around and then slamming them down, like a paddle beating out the dirt of a rug.
Horrifying bursts of violence from every direction.
“No!” Ice magic shoots out of me as I run desperately toward them. It hits the dagger-throwing fae, knocking him down. But then I’m once again struck with a plank, this time square in the back.
I go sprawling, forehead cracking painfully against the frozen cobbles and making me see bursts of black that crawl through my vision.
I try to scramble up, but I’m held down by the board at my back. It’s keeping me pinned, just like their king had done to me with the stone table. Fear scrapes down my stomach.
“Watch, Queen Malina,” Pruinn taunts as he comes to a stop above me. His polished shoes are so shiny I can see my panicked reflection in them.
Lightning hits someone else then, making their entire body light up. I can see their bones glowing through their skin.
I can’t tell who it is before they’re nothing but a corpse left in a smoking pit.
My people scream, huddled together, pressing in, for there’s nowhere to go, nowhere to escape. Another one of the fae soldiers has jumped into their pen and is taunting them with his sword. Laughing while he makes blood fly and another body drop with a slice of his blade.
My people are dying because ofme. Because I made yet another wrong choice and led them into ruin. Because I allowed fae to tempt me into Seventh Kingdom, let them cut my hands and spill my blood, all while my people languished in an impoverished city within a greed-ridden kingdom.
Negligence. Willful blindness. Entitlement. Greed.
My mother would have been ashamed of me.
Fierce protectiveness cuts through me as I strain to get my hand out from under the board. I yank it past and then shove it toward my people, an arc of ice streaming out.
My magic gets cut off when Pruinn suddenly slams his boot on top of my hand. I cry out in pain, my eyes squeezing shut.
He grips the snarls of my hair and wrenches my head up. “I said,watch!”
My eyes snap back open, blurred with tears, and I’m forced to watch the fae start cutting down my people one at a time. Another man—Jon—by sword. Tara, who gets burnt through with lightning. Wilson’s skull smashed with a board. All while the fae continue to laugh.
All while Neira screams.
This is what helpless horror is, and I’m frozen in the shock of it.
Until, suddenly, the world seems totremble.
The very ground I’m pinned to darkens. At first, my heart leaps in both relief and fear that Dommik has come with his shadows.
But it’s not Dommik.
“What…” Pruinn jerks away, boot leaving my hand, just as the fae controlling the wood drops dead.
My eyes widen when I see his body is now crawling with lines that snake through his skin, turning him a sickly color. Then the lightning fae drops too, one last crackling spark sputtering out as he falls.
