My legs give out.
Collapsing down on the ground, I curl my fingers into thesoft grass and just gasp air into my lungs. My head rings as I just kneel there on the ground, my mind still trying to process that we all survived this. We all survived.
A shadow falls over me. Then Draven’s fingers appear underneath my chin, tilting my head back. His eyes glitter and there is a slight smirk on his lips.
“I know you love being on your knees before me, but is this really the time, little rebel?” he says in a teasing voice.
And the relief of hearing his usual banter like that makes an exhausted and utterly overjoyed burst of laughter rip from my lungs.
“I’m so sorry!” Hana calls as she and the others run up to us.
Lyra, Galen, and Alistair somehow look entirely unaffected. As if hitting the ground at full speed like that is an everyday occurrence for them. I swear there isn’t even a single blade of grass in Lyra’s wavy brown hair. It just brushes the top of her shoulders merrily as she jogs towards us with Galen on one side and Alistair on the other.
Severin, on the other hand, looks like someone just ran him over with a horse cart. His flowing beige and gold robes are rumpled and twisted around him, and there are green grass stains on the white garment closest to his body. His long red hair that is still done up in a braid around his head with that little bun at the top is thoroughly messy. Strands stick out in every direction, and the long golden tassel that hangs from his bun is completely askew, now hanging down the side of his face instead.
Somewhere in between their very different states is Hana. Her clothes are slightly rumpled and blades of grass cling to her hair, but she looks surprisingly unbothered.
The Unseelie King strides across the ground towards us, looking as put together as always. Not a strand of his long dark blue hair is out of place when he comes to a halt next to Hana. Because, as he has informed me, royalty doesn’t sweat.
“I’m so sorry,” Hana repeats, looking at her king and thenflicking a quick glance at the rest of us as well. “I had to order him to make those shield things. Otherwise, they would never have believed that I was truly broken and would never have taken my word for it when I told them that the wards were down.”
Because this was the plan. This was the plan that I came up with in the Icehearts’ dungeons after they mentioned that they were planning to break Hana and use her to control the leader of the Gold Clan through the dragon steel. The entire scheme is based on an offhand comment that Jocasta made when she was training me before the Great Games all those months ago now.
I’ve mainly used it while being tortured.
And when I, half-joking, questioned if she had been tortured a lot, she just casually replied that everyone in the Unseelie Court has been trained in how to withstand torture. That statement had shocked me, because I had no idea that everyone went through that kind of training in this court. And I bet all of our lives on the assumption that the Icehearts didn’t know that either.
They just looked at Hana, this short and skinny girl with big eyes who speaks with a soft voice and gets distracted easily, and thought that she would be an easy target. Oh, how wrong they were. Hana might be small and soft-spoken. But she is still an Unseelie fae to her core.
So we planned for Hana to pretend to barely hold out against the torture and then pretend to break completely. The riskiest part was of course convincing Severin to trust us enough to actually put the dragon steel on. But apparently, his need to restore his clan’s honor and do right by Azaroth was greater than his worry.
Once the Icehearts had the Gold Clan, we knew that they were going to come here to destroy the wards around the Unseelie Court. So our plan was always to have Hana pretend to lower the wards and then lure Jessina in through them so that we could isolate her and kill her that way.
It was a ridiculously overcomplicated plan. But we have beenoutsmarted by the Icehearts so many times now. They wouldn’t fall for just any scheme. They’re too smart, too cunning, for that. So I knew that we had to play the long game this time. That we had to use a complex plan with several layers so that they wouldn’t see it coming.
And it worked.
My gaze darts to Bane’s corpse, and then back to Jessina again, who is still attacking the wards like a maniac.
Well, itmostlyworked, anyway.
It was supposed to be Jessina who died first. Not Bane.
As if Draven could hear my thoughts, he turns to look at Jessina as well. And so does everyone else.
Severin flicks his wrist. The wards around the Unseelie Court go back to their usual appearance. He never lowered them. He only made them look invisible. Now, they once again appear as if they’re shimmering slightly, like water moving across glass.
All across the ground inside the wards, our allies are dusting themselves off and getting to their feet. Most of them just stare up at Jessina as she continues trying to break the wards down.
Then at last, she appears to accept that they won’t break. Opening her jaws, she bellows out a deafening roar that makes my heart clench in fear and my blood turn to ice. But from out there, she can do nothing more. So she abruptly jerks around and starts flying away across the grass. The other silver dragons follow her.
Tense silence falls over all of us as we watch her speed away.
“All bets are off now,” Draven says, his voice grim. “The only thing holding her sanity together was her mate.”
“So what happens now?” Alistair asks.
“Now, there will be hell to pay.”
