Once, I might have been outmatched. But I commanded the depths of the voids of darkness. Each time I stepped into the void and reappeared, another soldier died.
I thought I’d killed all the humans. But my memory of that battle in the clearing… I started to shudder, but shoved the impulse back. No weakness, not now. No fear. Only ice.
I’d been mistaken before when I characterized the rage as fire. The ice was there to sharpen the rage into something useful—something deadly.
With each swipe of my knife, each spurt of blood that dripped down my hands, I rebuilt the wall of ice inside my chest. I could not afford to fall apart. I could not afford to be rash. Everydecision had to be calculated. Every one of these deaths had meaning.
For Annwyn.
For myself.
For Arran.
7
VEYKA
I stopped at the lakeside long enough to wash the blood from my weapons and my hands. It would not fool the razor-sharp senses of my companions. But I was in no mood to answer questions about the blood. This at least gave them an excuse to pretend.
When I finally re-appeared at the camp, Lyrena and Cyara were already bedded down for the night. Isolde was on watch. She let me eat the roasted pigeon they’d left for me in silence. But instead of crawling into my empty tent, I tossed the bones into the fire and caught her eye. Tipped my head to the side, toward the line of willows the demarked the boundary of the cursed clearing before Avalon.
Isolde did not even glance at the other tent.
She waited only until we were beneath the swaying tendrils of the willows to whisper, “Where are we going?”
I shrugged. “You wanted to know about my power.”
Her bright white eyes lit with excitement. I was too mentally exhausted to question the wisdom of that. I nudged her forward through the trees, into the cursed clearing.
“Is it dangerous?”
“Probably,” I said honestly.
She paused only a moment as we cleared the cursed clearing and disappeared into another set of trees.
“Excellent.”
I snorted softly, speeding up my steps. Even with her much shorter stature and legs, she kept up. It still would have been faster to take her with me through the void. But I wanted to save my focus.
When I glanced back, her eyes were shining. I swallowed hard. “You spent too long in those faerie caves.”
“My entire life.”
Caged—she’d been caged just like me. A newfound surge of warmth built in my chest. We stepped out onto the beach, far from our companions, far from where the boat had crossed from Avalon. But still on the edge of the lake.
I extended my hand. “Are you ready?”
“Always, Your Majesty.”
The warmth in my chest twisted painfully. For all that I might feel connected by our similarities, Isolde saw me unequivocally as her queen. Which made her mine to protect.
Mine to use.
The warmth inside me turned back to ice. But I reached into my ember of power anyway.
I’d imagined that the mist merely encircled Avalon. That once I set foot upon the sacred isle, the thick fog would melt away. But I was wrong.
I felt the magic—the power—before I’d even fully materialized back into my body. If that cursed clearing where I’d faced Gorlois was the absence of magic, its suppression, Avalon was power unleashed.
