He lowers himself to the ground with a quick, murmured reassurance. “Galeia is with Cailey. They’re playing withBlackbird and Concord near the stream. They’re safe and happy.”
He hands me the bowl of water. It looks like a piece of tree trunk and, judging by the scrape marks on the inside, he used his claws to hollow it out so he could fill it more deeply.
I hold it out to Dusana. “Drink.”
She leans away from the bowl as if it could contain poison.
I give a soft sigh. “Karasi’s message was thorough. It included a way for the humans to respond that doesn’t involve you returning with their answer. Karasi doesn’t expect you to make it back alive.”
“She expects you to kill me.” Dusana’s brown eyes appear faded, but she doesn’t look away. “She told me she hopes you will. I’ve outlived my usefulness. I’m a liability. My people will have been ordered to kill me on sight.”
I believe her.
“Well, then,” I say, inclining my head at the bowl. “You’ve got nothing to lose.”
Her brow furrows.
Hesitantly, she reaches for the bowl.
Maybe she thinks I’ll throw it in her face before she can drink it.
She doesn’t take her eyes off me as she lifts it to her lips and gulps down the liquid.
I turn my attention to Catalina. “Dusana is now my prisoner. She is no longer a threat to your people.”
Catalina’s lips press together. I imagine she’s trying to decide if she can trust me.
“I understand you’re not accustomed to relying on others,” I say to her. “Rachel knows I’m true to my word.”
“Far more than any person I’ve met,” Rachel says, finally stepping forward. “Lady Asha.”
It’s what she used to call me. I’ll never forget the day she helped me up the stairs to my tower, gave me water when I couldn’t lift the cup myself, and sat in the wooden chair in the corner of my room, protecting me while I slept.
“I’m glad to see you, Rachel,” I reply. “And you, too, Mother Solas.”
The older woman steps closer to me than Catalina or Rachel do. In the moonlight, her silvery-gray hair looks whiter than it did when I last saw her, and the smile lines around her mouth and eyes are fainter, her expression more strained.
“If the Fae Queen plays two games,” Mother Solas says, “one we can see and one we can’t, then she will have a plan within a plan. No matter which option Rachel chooses, we must also have a plan of our own.”
Rachel nods, her intelligent gaze taking in Dusana as well as me and Erik. “Gallium’s life is in danger. Maybelle’s heart will break if anything happens to him. Whatever plan we devise, rescuing him has to be part of it.”
She focuses on me. “Queen Karasi has proposed a fight between champions. Catalina is my official champion, but I don’t have to choose her for this fight.”
I’m wary of where Rachel might be going with this. I also expect Catalina might have something to say about it, but her response surprises me.
“Karasi has placed Lady Asha’s brother in danger,” Catalina says. “She will expect Lady Asha to insist on going into the fight herself. After all, Lady Asha is a Blacksmith with power unlike any other. Who better to destroy the fae?”
Catalina studies me carefully, no doubt trying to gauge my reaction to her theory. I don’t blame her. The weight of countless lives rests on her shoulders, and my choices could endanger them.
“It can’t be me,” I say quietly. “Queen Karasi has fallen back to the eastern plain. That’s right at the edge of the darkness. She knows I can’t fight there, or I will only draw the darkness to me and doom everyone around me.”
Erik has been quiet, but now he reaches for me. “Queen Karasi takes delight in holding power over others. She forced you to hunt Milena Ironmeld simply because she could. Of course, it benefitted her to have Milena dead, but you told me how she waited until the last possible moment to offer help.”
I close my eyes against the memory of the moment when I held a nail to his heart and prepared to drive it into his chest to end his suffering.
“Yes,” I whisper. “She waited until I was preparing to end you.”
“She took pleasure in your pain and grief, and then she seized power over you. Despite the fact that you could have killed her without any effort.” Erik’s eyes grow hard, the same kind of fury that was etched into his face when he recounted to me how his brother had died and how powerless he’d been to stop it.
