If changelings were useful tools, meant to be harvested at the right time, it didn’t serve Rhiannon to destroy me before I’d even been trained. Before I’d ever even seen Feyreign.
A question to turn over in my mind. Perhaps back in my chambers?—
Rhiannon sat back. “For you, that third trial begins now.”
My gaze sharpened on her. I realized I was alone here with the two of them. “Where are the others?” I said, my voice thin. “The other fae in the trials.”
“The other six are already inside,” Rhiannon said. “You and Dorian are the last to come before me.”
Six. That meant six had survived the Wild Hunt.
Next to Rhiannon, Dorian had pressed his eyes shut. His jaw washard.
My heart twisted in my chest. Last night he’d kissed my forehead, asked me for permission, wiped my body, held me?—
Gods, I needed to stop staring at him like he’d actually look at me with those unshuttered eyes and that softness. That wasdone.He was exactly the killer I’d always thought.
Fuck him.
One thing remained true: a solid determination lived inside me. We had to survive this—if not for us to be together, then at least to simply survive.
“If we pass,” I said, “then we’ll become your champions?”
“Oh.” Rhiannon tilted her head to the side. “I suppose your hearing isn’t your best sense. I never said champions,my dear. I saidchampion.”
Her hand rose before her. Four of her fingers folded until only the index finger remained upright.
“One champion for each court.”
I stared, uncomprehending, at that slender finger. Then my eyes moved to Rhiannon’s. Her lips had curled, as though she had dealt me a greater blow than she ever could have with scepter or arrow.
And she was right. She had done that.
She’d sent me to Dorian’s chambers, knowing how I felt about him, allowing me one night with him, just so she could devastate me the next day. So she could make me weak, vulnerable.
And then she delivered this news. One champion, only one. Not a pair. But it was always pairs who fought as champions, wasn’t it?
Rhiannon’s voice, still chirpy, sliced into my thoughts.
“Well then,” she said. “Off you go.”
She snapped her fingers—loud, sharp, jarring.
Before I could speak, a curtain of blackness fell in front of my vision. The floor seemed to evaporate, and I was no longer standing but falling.
I fell until I hit hard earth. Not the wooden floor of the throne room, but realearth. Dirt and grass.
I lay sprawled, my eyes shut, as yelling sounded around me.Hundreds of voices, thousands of them. Men, women. Footsteps pounded over the vibrating ground.
I opened my eyes to the sun beating down on me from a cloudless sky. Figures rushed by with swords in hand.
One of them stopped and hovered over me, his frame silhouetted by shadow. Man or fae, I didn’t know. Only that he extended his hand.
“My queen,” he said. “Are you hurt?”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
I staredat the silhouetted figure above me. “Who are you?”
