She was in me still. Now, and maybe always. I had seen through her eyes, felt the world through her hands, swirled with anger and fear and grief in her lungs and heart. We were joined, changelings, a thread through four hundred years binding us.
She might be dead, but in me she was alive.
The anger and fear and grief surged through me. And with it, I saw magic. Magic everywhere. So very much of it, just waiting to be commanded.
My eyes flicked up to Rhiannon, to her throat, to the pale column of it.
The night had been clear. But clouds massed now. Somewhere distant, thunder clapped.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
When the thunder sounded,Rhiannon paused mid-strike. She stared down at me, her eyebrows lowering.
Two seconds later, a streak of lightning lit up the sky and her face in silver. In that flash, she wore an expression I had never seen on her. Uncertainty.
The wind picked up, and so did my blood. I felt its current through me and over me, as though it circulated inside and outside my body.
This wasn’t Rhiannon’s wind.
It was mine.
Sylvanwild magic danced over my upraised arm, needles of it pinging off my skin and leathers.Me, mine, no one else’s.
Dorian was right. Faun was right.
I had magic. A fuckton of it.
The wind flowed in from high above, sweeping down through the trees. It carried over the meadow, blowing the grass horizontal and whipping Rhiannon’s curly hair into her face, slapping my braid against my cheek.
We stared at one another.The eyes are where the fight is.Her uncertainty deepened. It became confusion—shock. My expressionhad changed, and she seemed to have clocked the feral curl of my lips.
“This can’t be you,” she whispered.
I thrust one foot in front of me and rose to a knee. She didn’t move as, with two quick breaths, I got one foot under me, then stood.
I was breathless. I wasn’t going to stop.
Her sword had lowered to her side in the rising wind. Her eyes lifted toward the sky; mine followed. Above us, clouds rolled in, thick and low. Soon they would obscure the moon.
My blood kept circulating, inside and out. Anger and longing pulsed through me, and Ifeltnature answer me. It responded to my feeling, even if I couldn’t explain the chemistry.
Death made me a blade.
The clouds converged, and the moonlight shrank smaller and smaller until we were cast in darkness. The thunder clapped again, and under a second later, lightning lit up the meadow and Rhiannon.
“Tell me one thing,” I said, raising my voice to be heard above the wind.
Rhiannon’s eyes lowered to me.
“You sent Dorian and the wraiths,” I said. “You sent them to kill me.”
“Kill you?You?No.” Her upper lip curled. “I sent him to kill every changeling. Every changeling from every other court.”
So I was, after all, from another court. And Rhiannon was without a heart.
Another clap above us. This time, the rain followed. It came fast and hard and driving. We were soaked within seconds, our hair and clothing plastered to us.
And I knew Rhiannon must die.
