Gwyneth’s gaze tracks every inch of it, already dissecting its purpose, its weaknesses, its secrets. “It’s waiting,” she says.
“For what?” Hart asks.
Her eyes flick to me. “For us.”
I swallow hard. We dismount, and the fear masks the pain of too many turns of riding.
We don’t linger, because if I stare at it any longer, I might decide to turn around, go back to the unicorns, and live out my days discussing vocabulary and advocating for floof rights.
A quiet tension settles over us all, thick and unrelenting.
Sir Sweeps-A-Lot stays close, his usual chaos dimmed into something watchful.
The doors creep open with each step, my heart thudding in my chest. We pause just outside, and I clasp Gwyneth’s hand in mine and catch her gaze. “Sisters forever,” I whisper, reminding her of the most important thing we’ve ever said and known in this world.
She winds her fingers in mine and squeezes. “Sisters forever. Now let’s go fuck up the future and deliver fate.”
Chapter Thirty Nine
Daphne
The doors close behind us with a finality that settles into my bones. At our backs are the men who have been a part of this journey, for better or worse, given Charming insisted on coming along for whatever use he actually is.
My broom and Stan linger at the very back.
The space within the temple opens wide, vast and carved from marble threaded with gold. The walls curve in a perfect circle, rising high above us to reach a painted ceiling depicting some of the narratives we know so well.
Edging the wall are gilded thrones twice the height of the average person, which means the people who will sit on them are going to be huge. How comforting.
The sword at Malachi’s side hums in a nudge of support and a reminder that I am not the fated maiden many thought. I am the one who tames dragons, murders kings, and defies death.
The air shifts, and the thrones fill with the promised Idols. They are everything I expected and nothing I could have prepared for. A quiet hum of power fills the room, but I know they’re tempering it, waiting to unleash it in a heartbeat.
Each one holds a shape, but none of them are confined by it. Their forms waver at the edges, as though the stories that made them cannot quite settle. A man sits with a crown that splits and reforms with every breath, gold dripping like molten sunlight before snapping back into place. Beside him, a woman draped in silk that moves like water watches us with eyes that hold too many versions of the same ending, each one flickering behind the next. Another leans forward, his skin fractured like glass, reflecting a dozen different faces that do not all belong to him. There is one with flames curling around his shoulders and coiling down his arms like obedient creatures, and another whose beauty is so precise, so deliberate, it feels constructed rather than born.
Their presence presses into the space, bending and shaping it. Their gazes fall on us, one by one, each look weighing, measuring, deciding not if we matter, but what to do with us now.
But I know something as certain as the four men at my back who hold my heart. We have not entered their domain. This space belongs to none of us. It is where it all began, and where it can be reinforced or remade.
The knights and Charming shift at our backs, each poised to defend the duo of maidens who turned their destiny upside down.
I step forward, tugging Gwyneth with me. Cowering isn’t the right way to deal with this. If there even is a right way.
One of them leans forward, his voice cutting through the space with quiet authority. “You will cease this rebellion.”
I meet his gaze, lifting my chin. “It’s not a rebellion,” I correct. A small smile touches my mouth, sharp and certain. “It’s a revolution.”
A ripple of anger pulses through the air. If they have registered the looming threat in Gwyneth’s pocket, they don’t show it. That’s good. I’d rather not depend on blood magic to resolve this, but I won’t hesitate if that’s what it takes, because one thing for sure is that we cannot go back.
The stunning woman with dark hair that falls in waves over her otherwise bare breasts leans forward and points at something over my shoulder. I turn to find Nash with a jaw so tight it must hurt. “You are fighting against our command. Do as I will and do it now.”
Do what?
Nash drags in a long breath and glares at the Idol. “Never,” he snarls.
“Then you shall perish.”
“That’s acceptable.”
