Kassandra straightens. “Is this your true desire, Avery?”
“Yes,” I say.
“I wish you well.”
Footsteps. The clopping of my own boots, an echo of the sound. The false creaking of the servants’ door, the slamming of its hinges.
An Illusion.
An Illusion in which I have left her.
Briar begins to cry, and despite the cracking in her voice, I am grateful. It seals the deal. Dominik throws his head back, laughing. He sees what he wants.
“Youfool!” he shrieks. “Did you really think your favorite toy would stay? After everything you and I have done to break it so that the other could not have it?”
“I don’t know,” she says.
As I creep across the room, her magic glimmers around me, mimicking the view from all around, an apartment that Kassandra knows in meticulous detail—she has been jailed in it for years. She must also quiet my footsteps, for as I approach the guards with drawn bows, they do not budge.
I slip behind their line, pausing. I could nick the neck in front of me, but it would draw immediate attention. So it can only be one neck. The halfling twitches; I hold my breath. Dominik is too preoccupied to notice. Instead, he just crosses his arms.
“You have options, Kass,” he says. “Carry the king’s child, married or not. If you refuse to be his wife, then you can at least be his whore. With Maxian’s family madness and Reign growing more restless by the day, they may even welcome a bastard to secure the line.”
I am halfway down the line of guards.
“Speaking of bastards—guard?”
A high-pitched keening. Clara falls to her knees, an animalistic wail ripping from her. She clutches her abdomen as it gushes blood.
Even the other guards flinch.
Bile rises in my throat, the air in the room thin. I take tiny, shallow breaths, my heart bursting against my chest, demanding more, but if I concede, I will gasp, I will cry, and we will be found out.
The wailing blooms in the space, the fae mercilessly alive. All color drains from Kassandra’s face, and Briar bites her captor’s arm once more. He rips her back by her hair.
“End this,” Kassandra pleads, grabbing the table for support.
“I ended your competition,” Dominik says. “It’s important you remember the sound of disobedience. And she may live yet, even if her Reign bastard doesn’t.”
The Illusion around me flickers, falls for just a moment. A guard turns his head, and the shimmering air snaps up again. I inch behind the guard holding Briar, the mother howling on the ground before us.
“And my other option?” Kassandra asks. “You said I had some.”
“If you cannot convince Maxian to put a baby in your belly, then I will put one there myself.”
The Illusion around me drops.
Clara spots me first from her fetal position on the ground. She shrieks in shock.
“You!” she screams.
Guards whip around, mouths dropping open. Someone releases an arrow.
“What the—”
I yank Briar’s guard down by his collar, slicing the shard across his neck. He goes limp in my hands, dropping before me. There is no time to dwell on my first kill.
Someone tackles me into the blood.
