She folded the edges of the fabric and wrapped it with sturdy twine. “No, she will not.”
“Go to the human realm. Take Percival and Diana if you must. Meet with the Faeries of the Fen if it is helpful. But allies are not your concern. Your quest is for the Grail.”
She cinched the final knot into place and lifted her turquoise eyes to mine. I saw everything I needed there, but she still said the words— “You have my promise.”
I was not good at emotion. Feelings only made making difficult decisions harder. Only with Veyka did I allow myself to be vulnerable. But I tried to let the emotions shine through my eyes in that moment—to let Cyara know just what that vow meant to me. And I saw them reflected back in hers.
I nodded sharply and turned for the door. There was nothing else to say.
“Arran.”
I froze with my hand on the door handle. Soft rustling told me that Cyara had risen. When I turned, she held out the package she’d been so carefully preparing. “Here.”
“What is this?”
“For Veyka.”
Understanding shifted into place. The shadowvein tea that Veyka took each morning. The strands of jewels—I’d never seen Cyara wear them, but Veyka almost always did. All of her carefulpreparations were not for her own sake, but for her queen’s. I accepted the package as an even deeper understanding took root.
Cyara would keep her promise. Or perish in the pursuit.
20
VEYKA
One last task remained.
Excalibur strapped to my back, heavy fur mantle over my shoulders, I climbed with my travel pack down the curtain wall of Eilean Gayl to the small strip of bare ground that encircled the castle before giving way to the lapping waves of the lake. Lyrena was already there, flanked by several terrestrial guards.
Hands and legs bound, her fine features contracted into an ugly snarl, stood my mother.
Lyrena did not hesitate to drag her forward for my inspection.
“Remove your hands or I will drown you where you stand,” the Dowager hissed, her voice as serpentine as any snake shifter in the terrestrial kingdom. Once, that voice had haunted my nightmares. But no longer. She could not lay claim to a single piece of me, not even in my dreams.
Lyrena’s laugh rent the air, harsh and sharp as I’d ever heard it. Instead of pulling her hands back, she gripped the Dowager’s upper arms harder, harder, harder—until wisps of smoke curled into the air between them. Another fierce laugh, and Lyrena released her charge, stepping away to reveal the charred fabricand angry red skin where her fire had burned right through the Dowager’s sleeves.
This moment was not just for me, I realized. Lyrena had loved Arthur. Gwen had befriended Parys. All of Annwyn had been subjected to the Dowager’s cruel whims in a thousand ways, large and small. For Annwyn, and for the friends that had become family, I would not flinch.
I stepped out of the shadows of Eilean Gayl’s round tower.
“You are no longer in a position to give orders,” I said.
The Dowager only deigned a glance in my direction. She’d detected Arran, coming around the foot of the tower, rope in hand. She judged him to be the bigger threat. But what she made of the small wooden dinghy he tugged through the water, I did not know. I’d never wanted ethereal powers, least of all in that moment. I’d suffered the malignant darkness of the Dowager’s mind. I would rather bring my own dagger to my throat than venture inside of it.
Arran reached her, taking her bound hands to force her into the small boat. Her pale brows arched in disdain even as her feet moved. “Water? A poor prison for an elemental. You’ve spent too long with the terrestrials, daughter.”
Even as she stepped onto the boat and Arran pushed them away from shore, she did not reach for her power. She did not believe she needed to.
Her lips curved. “Did the death of your foolish friend teach you nothing?”
Anger and grief danced through my veins. But all around them rolled a current of certainty. This time, I would write the ending.
A swirling wind carried voices down from the battlements, where elementals and terrestrials both gathered to watch. It was not every day that one could bear witness to regicide. I’d anticipated the audience. Encouraged it, even, through wellplaced conversations. I may be High Queen of all of Annwyn, but I’d been an elemental first. I knew how to manipulate perception. I wanted stories of Igraine’s death written into legend. Not to immortalize her, though that was inevitable. I wanted every living being in Annwyn to understand that I would not flinch from my duty to protect them—even if it meant slaughtering my own mother.
Arran’s oar cut through the water with brutally efficient strokes. A few breaths, and the boat reached the single pillar sunk into the water several yards from the castle. When I’d first spotted it from our bedroom window, Arran told me that it had once been part of the island itself, used as a whipping post. But the millennia had eroded away the land until all that remained was the narrow strip of grass and mud beneath my feet.
I’d decided to put that post to a new purpose.
