Fear swam in their eyes. Fear and defeat.
We could retreat. Could call off this insanity…
No,a voice said inside me.You’ll win. You’ll win because you can’t fail.
Was that my voice? It hardly sounded like it. But it had been so assertive, so convincing.
I spoke before I knew what words would come out of my mouth. “Come forward, all of you. Stand before me.”
“Stand before your queen.” Cirevan’s voice was sharp and carrying. “Be quick.”
The archers crowded before me. My gaze passed over them. These were dusky Unseelie, all of them from the Sylvanwild Court. These were my people, Carys’s people. I had yet to see a fae who wasn’t Sylvanwild, but I sensed I would know if I ever did.
This was Sylvanwild’s battle. The other courts watched on.
My hand touched the pommel of the dagger. I felt it again, that power. My fingers closed around the grip and I unsheathed it in a whisper. When I touched this dagger, I wasn’t just Eurydice. I felt Carys in me, too.
“This power is the greatest I have ever known.” My gaze passed over the archers before me. “And it does not belong to me alone.Today, I share it with you. Today, we breach these walls and end human dominance.”
Human dominance? Those weren’t my words. But I knew they were right. Humans had spent hundreds of years dominating fae with their sunlit iron. It was how they had captured my lover.
I stepped forward. “Lift your palms.”
The voice was mine, and not mine. The tone was Carys’s, but the will was mine. I saw the shock ripple through the line—and then the obedient palms rising. Gods help me, they obeyed me.
Was this what it felt like? To be feared, to be followed?
The dagger was cold in my palm, but my blood ran hot with certainty. I felt it then—the clarity, the righteousness. For one dazzling moment, I understood how Carys had done it. And I knew what I would do, too.
The archers before me had raised their palms before them as though preparing to receive a blessing. And they would.
I stepped up to the first archer. “May the power of ice and spite carry your arrows far and true.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
The first archer,a dark-haired woman, stood before me with a supplicant’s calloused palms. I lifted the dagger and set the tip to the thin crease of her fate line. The line of trajectory, of future course. I pressed the tip in, and the blade slid into her skin with terrible ease.
Blood welled. She didn’t wince.
I followed the fate line straight up from the base of her palm. The blood followed, pearling red under the sun, but that soon frosted over. The cut disappeared at the rate at which I’d created it. A cool mist rose between us, and she stared at me through it like she’d seen a god.
I repeated the cut on her other hand, then moved on to the next archer. And the next.
When the last palm was marked, I stepped back with the dagger gripped tight in my hand. At some point my heart had begun to pound. Words came to me I hadn’t expected.
“The magic of Feyreign has always flowed through us,” I said, low. “We are not weak—but we have long forgotten its power. Now I have cut a reminder into your skin. Ice and spite flow through you, now and forever.”
I raised the dagger to my own palm, drew the blade down myfate line. Sharp and sure, painful and glorious. Swirling numbness spiraled up into my wrist, my arm, my neck.
When it hit my head, I sucked in a breath. The numbness sharpened everything with skin-tightening ferocity. Around me, the world bloomed, magic in a thousand colors. The magic of nature—always there, waiting to be drawn.
When I spoke, my voice was guttural, feral.
“Do not fear them. We have always been stronger, always. When you draw the gutstrings of your bows, let fly with the anger of the fucking dead.”
I raised my cut palm and let out a cry that burned my throat raw. It felt like a natural sound, like the earth calling to the sky.
The archers answered, raising their bows, their same cry blending with mine until my vision of them was distorted by tears.
