“You can,” I said, touching my forehead to hers. I pressed forward, my eyes holding hers and willing her to see the truth. Her bottom lip quivered, her desperation to protect me at war with her need to be with her mate. All my life, people had been protecting me from danger—they’d been doing whatever it took to keep me tucked away and safe, guarding my light that was too good to be sacrificed to the darkness of this world. All I could do was try to be worthy of that sacrifice. It was too late to hide Estrella’s powers from Mab, but we could still hide mine, and I felt in my bones that was the path I was meant to take.
That was how I could be worthy.
Beyond Estrella’s need to protect me was a greater doubt, though, and I read it in every line of Estrella’s face. In the tension at her temples, the crinkling at the corner of her mouth as she forced a frown that was unnatural to her pretty face. Her fear—of what Mab would do with her magic. Her fear of what she herself was capable of. “It is you. The most terrifying part of you, but it’s also the most beautiful. All you have to do is let it out.”
“It’s not that simple,” Estrella said, resisting the urge to make eye contact with Mab. Even our words came too close to revealing the truth, Estrella’s painful efforts to keep her secrets safe useless in the face of a woman who would do anything to learn them.
I turned her away from Mab and guided her out of the throne room. Mab and Etan followed behind us, and I knew we were both aware of the fact that we were only able to exit the palace of Tar Mesa because she allowed it. That the guards standing at the entrance would have impaled us on sight if she so much as breathed a word of discontent. Instead, the Queen of Air and Darkness seemed satisfied to allow the situation to play out, watching with only a mild curiosity.
“She cannot use you for evil if you do not allow it. Knowledge is power, but do you really think anything she does is stronger than you?” I asked, my voice a low murmur to keep the moment private between us. “You have lived in fear of what you are. You have suffered the pain of suppressing yourself to protect the world. Whenwill you learn that you are not our destruction, Estrella? You are our savior.”
Estrella’s knees buckled as we stepped outside, the moons shining high in the sky above us. My bare arms warmed from them as I took a step back with a nod. I released Estrella, and she turned to watch Mab and Etan as they waited for her decision.
“I’m not strong enough for this,” she said.
“Then lean on the people who love you. Take what you need from us,” I said, raising a hand. She stared down at the threads she saw in everything, the ways she interpreted the world that the rest of us could not. Nodding, she allowed her eyes to drift closed as she sank into herself, into the well of power that I felt rise up to meet her. Goose bumps rose along my arms in response to the feel of it on my skin, forcing me to hold my ground. I couldn’t risk Estrella seeing me back away from her, couldn’t risk her thinking I was afraid of her.
Mab studied Estrella intently as she wrapped something between her fingers, curling it around her flesh as silent tears rolled down her cheeks. She stared up at the sky with wide eyes, as if she saw the world for the very first time.
Estrella closed her palm, pressing her fingers into it slowly. I followed her gaze to the sky, watching as one of the moons winked out of existence as if it had never been there at all. She reached up with her other hand as Mab gasped, the shock in her voice bringing a smile of pure joy to my face as I stared up at that one lone moon. Estrella gathered more threads into that hand, snuffing out the light and plunging the night sky into darkness. The other moon vanished, the stars disappearing along with it, until a dark like I’d never known surrounded me.
The complete absence of light was suffocating, making my breaths come harsher and more quickly. Only the light of fires hanging from the doorway of the palace illuminated the ground before it, and I pointed my stare at them and fixated on that single source of light.
“Impossible,” Mab whispered, taking a step toward Estrella.
Estrella turned to face her, unflinching when the Queen of Air and Darkness cupped her cheeks and stared down at her. There was a cross between horror and awe in that stare, and she ran her thumb through the tears on Estrella’s cheeks in a mockery of gentleness that felt all wrong coming from her.
“And yet here I am,” Estrella murmured, drawing back from Mab. She released the threads, tossing her hands into the sky so thatthe moons reclaimed their rightful place. “Did that give you the answers you were so desperate for?”
“You can see the threads of fate,” Mab said, her voice filled with awe as she stared down at Estrella’s hands. “That is how you summon.”
Shock coursed through me with the realization that Mab knew what she shouldn’t, that she’d recognized the way Estrella touched the world. “You see them, too?” Estrella asked, swallowing so loudly I heard it.
“I see… shadows of them. Whispers on the wind occasionally, but I can never grasp them. I’m not—” Mab paused, clearing her throat as the closest thing I’d ever seen to emotion clogged it.
“You’re not what?” Estrella asked. She was so close to answers that I took an unwilling step toward her, pausing only so I would not interrupt the moment. I wouldn’t be the one to keep her from the answers she needed desperately.
Mab clenched her jaw, and I could already imagine the strategy working through her head. The plans she was making for how she could use this knowledge, and Estrella, to her greatest advantage.
“A Primordial,” Mab answered finally, knocking the breath from my lungs.
Estrella was aPrimordial?
FIVEETAN
I stared at the woman in shock, the impossibility of her existence contradicted before my very eyes. The Primordials had locked themselves away, disappeared from the world centuries prior to her existence, from the kernels of information I’d been able to gather from my conversations with Mab and those who were the most loyal to her. Estrella Barlowe should not have possessed the power that Mab claimed to have witnessed, the assertion in the voice of the Queen of Air and Darkness stealing the breath from my lungs. There was the faintest of tremors to it, the sound so unlike anything I’d ever heard from the Goddess who feared nothing and no one that I felt my head tip to the side as I turned it to stare at her profile.
Estrella and Fallon seemed oblivious to the note of fear that made her voice shake, their knowledge of her short-lived. They didn’t have centuries at her side to understand the implication of that fear and what it would mean for Estrella.
She’d been in danger since the moment she’d stepped foot inAlfheimr, but Mab would never allow something she feared to continue living. It was only a matter of time before she figured out the best way to eliminate the threat Estrella posed, only a matter of time before she did what she could to rid herself of the competition for power, so no other could challenge her.
There were two sides to Mab. The one that everyone saw, the crazed madwoman who acted without fear of consequences and hurt anyone who stood in her way. That was the Queen who had nothing to fear; no one could right her wrongs or avenge their families. That was the woman who had been driven to a cruel, evil glee at the suffering of others. Most assumed her incapable of control, of containing that side of herself to play the long game when it was necessary to her survival.
But I’d seen her do just that with Caldris, keeping him contained for centuries when he might have otherwise been able to fight back and claim what was his by birthright. She’d taken her greatest opposition and turned him into her greatest weapon, but whereas Caldris had been a child when he consented to the snake wrapped around his heart, Estrella was a woman. She understood the implications of such a thing, and fully grasped the fact that there were some fates worse than death.
The glare she graced Mab with was confirmation of that, a promise that she would fight her until the very end. That glare was her death sentence, Mab’s answering smirk her affirmation of a fate signed, sealed, and all but delivered to the Fates themselves.
Movement at my side caught my eye, pulling my stare away from the standoff occurring before me. Had it been anyone else, nothing could have torn me away from the gravity of this moment. From the implication that the future of Fae kind would be decided when these two women decided to go to war.
