Lyrena’s eyes darted to the sword a yard away on the ground. I followed her gaze. I stretched that smile wider across my face as I tossed aside my rapier, leaving us with only our bare hands.
A slight tick marred her otherwise perfect cheek. “Planning something, Veyka?”
I winked. “Trying to decide the best way to hand your ass to you.” Then I moved.
She thought I was going to leap, to use my height and my powerful thighs to tackle her to the ground. But she misjudged. I dove at her legs instead, the knees she’d made the mistake of locking. She went down hard and fast.
She drove her fist up into my gut, swinging her other hand for my windpipe. But I was on top of her and I weighed more. I used every pound to my advantage. Knees on either shoulder, one hand on either side of her head, I could have snapped her neck in a second.
I held the position for one long breath; long enough for both of us to recognize the truth. Then I rolled off of her and offered her a hand up.
She took it, her lovely face caught halfway between a grin and grimace.
We collected our weapons and dropped onto our respective seats at the campfire. I chugged the entire contents of my canteen, as well as the lukewarm tea in the special cup that Osheen had fashioned for me when we first arrived in the human realm. It now seemed a lifetime ago.
I pulled out the flask of aural I’d been keeping at the bottom of my pack for months.
No one spoke.
I took a deep draw, savoring the burn of the amber spirit down my throat. I let my eyes close, let my world center on the sensations in my body. The heat spreading into my stomach from the aural, the tingling in my muscles from the exertion… discrete, tangible things that I could focus on without repercussion or implication.
Even with my eyes closed, I felt the shift in the camp. There was the slight crunching of the frozen grass as Lyrena adjusted her seat. Isolde’s claws clicked together like they did when she was nervous. Which meant the heavy feeling of eyes upon me was coming from one copper-haired female.
“Lyrena is fully recovered,” Cyara said. It may have been staged as an observation, but there wasn’t an ounce of neutrality in it.
I didn’t open my eyes. “Seems like it.”
She cleared her throat. Such a delicate sound, for a female with more balls than most of the males in Annwyn. “We ought to discuss the implications.”
The weight of two eyes became six.
I opened my own. Surveyed the three females arrayed around me, each powerful in their own way, each motivated by their own perceptions.
One glance, and I knew I was late to the party. “It seems like you’ve already been discussing them.”
None of them bothered to deny it. Only Isolde averted her eyes, the white orbs dropping to her lap where she appeared to be knitting something on her long claws. The faerie never ceased to amaze me with her accomplishments.
But Lyrena held my gaze, her smile turned grim. Set. Ready for a battle.
I half expected to see the harpy when I turned to face Cyara. But she was as calm as ever. Her gray tunic and pants were freshly laundered, neatly pinned into place with the leather harness she’d fashioned to wear atop them, similar to the one I sported. Mine held weapons. Hers had several smaller pockets for needles and cooking knives and who knew what else.
A flick of her wrist, and a carefully wrapped leather roll appeared from the pocket of her cloak.
“I’ve plotted it out on the maps,” Cyara said as she tugged loose the twine that held the leather roll in place. Leather to protect the delicate paper of the maps that were revealed. I recognized the sprawling continent, even at a distance. But Cyara was not looking at the maps. She was looking directly at me as she said, “Eilean Gayl is not far.”
Not far? I laughed aloud—a cold, mirthless sound that matched the state of my heart. “Eilean Gayl is in Annwyn.”
But she was not cowed. She’d never been intimidated by me. I’d often thought that was why Arthur had chosen her as my chief handmaiden. What had once seemed an asset made the aural turn to poison in my stomach as she continued, “Indeed. But it lays north of the Spine, on the banks of a great lake. Almost exactly where we are now.”
“In another realm.” I could feel my temper rising. My voice was steady, but it would not stay there. The ice inside of me was cracking.
“And you are a queen who can move between realms as easily as the rest of us walk from one room to another,” Cyara countered. She never raised her voice, never needed to. But I was escalating for the both of us.
I slid to my feet. “And what will the rest of you do, Cyara? I doubt either of you,” I jerked my head toward Lyrena, what remained of my Goldstone guards, “Would be content to wait here.”
Cyara’s wings twitched, her throat bobbing. “Take us with you.”
She did not have to reach for her wrist for me to know what was going through her mind. The first time I’d used my void power to take someone with me, just from one side of the room to the other, I’d severed her hand from her body. Ripped her into pieces.
