A jag of fear went through me.
For as much as she deserved to die, she didn’t deserve to becomeone of those things. No one did. Mindless, soulless, scythe-wielding killers. An ephemeral army of night.
I gasped and ducked, throwing up my blade to deflect hers as I stumbled by. I pivoted toward her.
She had to die. But not like this.
“Rhiannon, stop.” My voice was hoarse. Too quiet, lost in the wind and rain.
She screamed and threw herself at me, striking downward again and again. Every time I deflected, but more weakly. She wouldn’t stop. Of course she wouldn’t. Rhiannon had to win.
The thought struck me like a slap to the face:
She knew she was going to die, and she planned to take me down with her.
The storm drove around us,and Rhiannon struck. The wind was her friend, powering her sword’s thrusts. Her burgundy hair was a living shock around her head, curls caught by the wind and pulled upward into the swirl, then thrown forward as she called on the wind’s power.
The black streaks beneath her skin had grown like roots. Veins of shadow climbing her face, right up to her eyes. They spread across the backs of her hands like lace gloves.
I had to stop her.
“Please, Rhiannon.” I parried a strike, this one slicing through the thin cloth covering my bad arm. The cold iron of the blade reached my skin, and the line of pain screamed through my body. Every stroke brought her blade’s edge closer to home.
Finally, with her strong left hand and her Unseelie power, Rhiannon got inside my guard. She’d swung three times in succession,and I’d blocked every one of them with increasing desperation—until she cut me along the side of my thigh.
I cried out and hobbled backward. The rain had picked up; it drove sidelong against the two of us, stinging me even through my leathers.
Rhiannon didn’t hesitate. She came at me through the pouring rain, the sclera of her eyes turning black. Meanwhile, my world shrank to the size of my body.
This would be the killing blow.
After everything, it couldn’t end like this. Not after she’d killed my family, taken me from my home, forced me into these gods-cursed trials.
And beneath that, a deeper, more ruthless voice inside me whispered a truth:
She wasn’t the true queen.
She was just a placeholder.
You know, the voice said.You know what you’re capable of. It’s already happening.
Already happening.
My gaze flicked to my sword arm. There was magic there, but it didn’t just dance over my skin like before. It poured away from me, rolled over the grass, drew up toward the clouds. It rushed from every part of me, expanding into the air. Calling down the sky.
Remember death.
Rhiannon raised her sword—and cried out. A deep cut had appeared on her cheek. One of her eyes clamped shut, and blood dripped from it. Her blood had been drawn, and not by my sword.
The rain blew almost horizontal now. And it stung, but not just from sheer force.
From something else.
Something more.
Another cut appeared on her face, and another. All of them horizontal. More, more.
I knew this rain. Knew it like I knew my mother’s face. It stung, but I’d long ago grown used to it.
