Not when he tortured that rebel woman before my very eyes, not when he called Kori my greatest weakness even while orchestrating armed rebellion, and certainly not now, on the verge of betraying the very conspirator who helped him betray me.
Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for the Shadowlands.
“Then that was your greatest mistake, Thaane,” Chloe says, inflectionless. “You really ought to have thought of yourself.”
“You want my restraint undone, my full force untethered?” Thaane snarls.
Chloe’s voice wavers not a hair’s breadth. “Azarii’s mission is, ostensibly, one of peace. Your rebellion means to disarm your own people, to bury your greatest powers in the past. I fail to see why I should be afraid.”
“Myrebellion?” He lets loose a dark laugh. “You really believe I’m one of Azarii’s pathetic lackeys? Ashamed of the Diakópsei’s strength? Ashamed of all it has empowered us to become? Then you’re a fool, Chloe. An even greater fool than Adria ever was.”
The air around me feels thick like bonfire smoke. I’m choking on my own breaths, struggling to suppress the sound.
“I’ve been called many things. Rebel. Soldier. Brother. But above all else, Chloe, I am astrategist.You think you’re the only one who can play all sides, birthing an heir you later move to slaughter? Azarii’s rebellion is a tool. Adria’s monarchy is atool.Fresh clips in a freezeshot rifle, one whose sights have never wavered for me,” Thaane says, voice clipped in such a way that I know it’s through gritted teeth. “Your people havenothingthat can withstand a nightfolk army.”
Chloe clicks her tongue. “Don’t play at threatening me, child.”
“Not a threat. A promise.” I can feel the fire in Thaane’s eyes even without seeing them. “Our former king and queen, may they rest in peace, were not the last of us to know the value of strength. The virtue of power,” he says. “Mark my words, Monarch, a nightfolk army will march on the Daylands before your next sleep cycle, too quickly for Adria’s or Azarii’s peace-loving weaklings to stop us. And what will you employ then? A few heatshot pistols, perhaps? Some thick metal doors?”
I feel icy all over. I stained my hands with my own parents’ blood to prevent this war, but it’s coming for the Daylands anyway—and since I let Kori out of my sight, it’s coming for her, too. She’ll be wiped out in the impending chaos, maybe before she ever finds answers about her newfound powers. Maybe before I ever see her again.
And then what will I have left?
Azarii’s rebellion is the least of my worries now. For all the damage they’ve done to my newfound rule, they have no interest in the Daylands. But if I don’t take down Thaane’s rogue faction and secure the Shadowlands, we’ll be the only nation left on this planet, the dayfolk slaughtered while we nightfolk squabbled. And I’ll be alone on my obsidian throne, the empty space between every one of my fingers positively aching for the touch of a hand gone cold. A hand that dared to touch me even when she believed it could spell her end.
I press my forehead so hard to the sliding door, my horns make a dent. But Thaane is too lost in his own vicious reverie to notice.
“The very planet itself is poison to you,” he goes on, as I hear his three-toed feet thudding and stamping about the chamber, “but as you are unworthy of its power, we will rely on our own claws and teeth and gifts. So let your believers pray, let your scientists calculate, let your soldiers polish their heatshot guns.” There is a wildness to his movements now, an unhinged rhythm to his steps. “It will not be enough. You will all become corpses. And I will buildmythrone—not Azarii’s, not Adria’s, but a better throne, unashamed of a single ounce of our mutant strength—on mangled limbs.”
Thaane’s labored breathing echoes in his otherwise-empty chamber. “Perhaps we will even overcharge a few more men, Elysium be damned, before Adria even knows we’ve gone. And by the time she’s realized, your end will already be in motion.” I hear him spit on the ground so sharply that I wonder if it’s blood from having bitten his own tongue. “It’s been lovely working with you, Monarch. I imagine it will be even lovelier to speak face-to-face while you still can.”
An electricbeep, a hiss of static, and his comms tablet flicks off.
I peel my face away from the door. Unfortunately, one horn makes a high, keening screech at the friction. Wind hisses as Thaane moves, already making a break for the door. Simmering with adrenaline, throbbing at the betrayal, my heart beating a relentless warning through every blood vessel, I do the only thing my brain can fathom.
I run.
Thaane doesn’t even wait for the door to open. It’s metal, not stone, so he can’t simply use his gift to transmute it into glass, but it warps and caves around the impact, his body barreling through with murderous intent. He’s far shorter than me, less bulky, and most importantly not overcharged. I should be able to take him.
But once he’s through, the entire hall is stone. Which means it’s all fair game for someone with a matter-altering energy gift.
All at once, the floor is slippery glass. I slip and slide like a child on one of the Shadowlands’ perpetually frozen lakes, scrambling for purchase that no longer exists before careening toward a wall.
A wall whose outer layer Thaane also promptly turns to glass.
My own horrified grimace glimmers back at me from the transparent barrier. I raise my arms to brace for impact. Glass shards embed themselves from shoulder to wrist, little needles of pain. My blood splatters in every direction, further reflected by the rapidly spreading wreckage, as I cry out.
My wing is only partially healed, and likely to scar, but thanks to Kori’s attentive care, the slice has at least sealed. With a curse, I force myself aloft and fly down the hallway instead.
Behind me, Thaane swears and stamps his feet, launching more shards of glass at my back. Desperate dodges and weaves keep me from further injury, adrenaline dulling any lingering pain in my wing. Summoning as much of my gift as my weary body can muster, I coat myself in radiation and barrel like a cannon through the fortress’s exterior wall and into the forever night.
Thaane, nowhere near my physical speed and strength, quickly loses me in the darkness.
Chills rack my frame, my teeth chattering so hard that they break the skin of my lips. Every bone in my body wants to go directly after Kori, warn her of the impending attack, fight alongside her and the dayfolk if need be. But for the Daylands to have a chance in hell ofsurviving a nightfolk attack, I need to ensure that no one else touches the Diakópsei and lives to tell the tale.
So, for one final time, I take flight and descend into the Depths of Elysium.
Guards greet me at the entrance with blades and pistols drawn—but when they see the resolve engraved on my face, their weapons waver, their stances trembling. I don’t even raise a hand to the cultists. I don’t summon a flame or extend a claw. Azure power shimmers and shudders through me.
