The blade reflected a sharded view of myself back at me—a broken reflection of a raven-haired fae with hunter’s eyes and a brooding brow.
“Only one may hold it,” Cirevan said, his voice almost reverently low. “Anyone lesser would lose their hand.”
A bit of Carys flowed into me, knowledge from the ether.
Now I remembered. I was not just the Sylvanwild queen—I was the queen of the four courts, Seelie and Unseelie. And in my hand I wielded a power like none I’d known, had not even imagined.
This was not just a blade. It was a triumph, the last note—the decider of history. I didn’t know how anyone could ever give it up. All I wanted was to have it here in my hand, to see myself reflected back at me.
Galenna’s needle pierced my scalp again, and I sucked in air. Outside, a man yelled and then went silent. The spell was broken.
I was not this queen. I did not hold this blade.
I was Eurydice Waters, and I was inside a trial.
It took all my willpower to sheathe the blade. It slid into the leather sheath with icy ease, a cooling weight at my side. “We aren’t winning this battle at present, are we, Cirevan?”
He remained still with his finger atop the wooden figurine. “No, my queen.”
“And what makes the difference?”
His Adam’s apple bobbed. “You, my queen.”
I would make the difference.Me, Eurydice. When had that ever been true in my life? Not once, not really, until I’d entered Feyreign. The thought of it—even if Cirevan wasn’t speaking of me, even if he thought I was Carys—clenched my fists, straightened my spine.
I was the tidal force in this battle.
Without moving my head, I shifted my gaze. “Are you finished, Galenna?”
She tugged once, jerking my scalp and forcing a wince out of me, before she bit off the thread with her teeth. She sat back and began gathering her supplies. “I am now.” Galenna exited the tent, leaving me alone with my second.
I stood, the spirit of Carys and my regiment commander both filling me. “What’s our objective, Cirevan?”
He pointed to the table, one finger drawing a line between two sets of figurines. “Breach the outermost wall.”
A thought floated to mind, the memory of clinging to Dorian as he took us down from the citadel:Sylvanwild fae are marvelous climbers.“We can’t scale it?”
“The walls are far too high, my queen. Not one fae has ever managed it.”
I stepped toward the table. “Surely we’ve infiltrated in the past.”
Cirevan hesitated. “That’s precisely it, my queen?—”
“Don’t waste time with ‘my queen.’”
“That’s precisely what you promised us would happen.”
I met eyes with him. “I promised?”
“That you’d breach the walls.”
Realization dawned. “Have weeverbreached the walls of the Kingdom of the Plains?”
He shook his head. “Not once.”
Frustration tinged my voice. “Well why not?” Of course, I already knew why—because I knew this land. I knew those walls. Knew them like I knew the face of my mother.
Cirevan seemed unwilling to speak. His eyes darted elsewhere, like he could find refuge in the corners.
