She had to die like a flower budded and bloomed and withered. Like the sun passed into the tree line and the sky changed to night. The crown had made her small and cruel and murderous.
She wasn’t worthy. Her time as the Sylvanwild queen was at its end.
“Come,” I said. “Come at me.”
Her chin lowered. “With pleasure.”
In one motion, almost faster than I could follow, she came. And as she did, she changed her sword hand—right to left.Her left wrist is stronger, Faun had said.She’ll switch eventually, and if you live that long, that’s when you’ll know she’s no longer holding back.
That time was now.
She came at me with a snarl, her sword whipping through the air toward my head. This time, I could see her magic. I watched it move over her body in the rain, sliding over her. Air magic.
She was attuned to air. And me? It was obvious now. It should have been obvious back in the cave. Fuck, it should have been obvious when Dorian and I were trying to escape the Eldermaze and the thornstalkers closed in on us. The rain I’d called. All that acid rain that answered…
Water. I was attuned to water.
And there was no dearth of water in this meadow.
Her sword swung fast, a quarter-inch slice of death approaching.
Need pulsed through me. The rain responded. It drove against the downward thrust of Rhiannon’s blade, just enough to slow the arc. I stepped back and jerked my head aside, the steel passing in front of me.
Her eyes flashed with fresh shock. The rain had obeyed me, just like the air obeyed her.
She slashed again. This time I brought my sword up to meet hers. The rain drove at her head-on, blowing her hair back from her face and slowing her swing.
Her eyes narrowed against the deluge. Her lip curled like she knew something I didn’t.
“You think you’ve harnessed water,” she said. “But you don’t even know its weakness.”
Weakness?
The magic around her seemed to move faster, sliding over her skin like a growing current. Its radius enlarged, swirling larger and larger until the rain was caught in a driving, tornadic wind. Around and around it went until the rain became pellets hitting me sidelong. My braid came loose, the twine caught in the wind and carried away. My hair flew around my head, obscuring my eyes.
Water had a weakness.
Air.
Water was susceptible to motherfucking air.
I tried to keep Rhiannon in my sight through the veil of hair and the darkness, but she seemed to disappear. One moment she was there, and the next she was gone.
I raised my sword and spun. Wind seemed to batter from every direction, the rain pelting me and forcing me to squint unless I wanted to be blinded.
With a yell, Rhiannon swung in on me from behind. I turned just in time before her blade sliced my skull open. The two swords sang against one another, sliding off until they came apart.
Remember death.
She swung again, again, every stroke bringing her closer to my head and heart and gut. My hair stuck to my face like a damp cloth, and it was only the many hours I’d spent training in the barracks’ yard that kept me blocking. But I was getting weaker, slower, and she wasn’t letting up. Nor was the wind.
She brought her sword up for a two-handed downward stroke. The wind whipped my hair out of my face to quicken her blade. Thunder clapped, and lightning seared the meadow white.
That was when I saw it.
Black streaks running up the veins of her neck. Just like Dorian after the Eldermaze.
Unseelie magic corrupted. If Rhiannon went too far, she’d become a wraith. And she had almost reached her limit.
