“I’ll do it.”
Stark finds me the most comfortable chair in the tent, and Noemi posts herself by the entrance as guard. Siegrid seats herself across from me, gathering ink and parchment so that she’ll be ready to make note of anything that I relay.
I pull the crown out from the pack at my waist and settle it onto my head. The rush of power it gives me is heady, dangerous. It’s unnatural, thinly papering over my exhaustion. I could get myself in trouble by relying on this strength too often.
Closing my eyes, I sink into myself. Even in the best of moments, it’s hard to trigger foresight. But I focus on the feeling I get when I glimpse what’s ahead—like the hazy image on the back of your eyelids when you accidentally look at the sun.
The magic pulls me under.
Battlefield. Siphons everywhere, bodies, blood. Smoke rising off in the distance—from farms burning, I realize. Anassa and I are still standing, maintaining a Phylax shield with the last of our energy—but it’s not enough. The reach of the shield is failing, and I can see many of our best warriors already dead on the ground. The faces stare up at me, blank.
Noemi. Beautiful red hair flaming around her, eyes unseeing.
Venna. So like her sister in death. Face beautiful, frozen like ice.
Siegrid, dismembered. Her fearsome direwolf, Genicos, curved around her, as if protecting her even now.
Stark.Stark.
My eyes flutter, and I pull away from that thread, heart pounding. I reach out again, follow a different path forward.
Death.
Fire.
Destruction.
Each path ends the same.
Until…
Shadows. Anassa and me, and shadows everywhere. The Siphons in retreat.
I gasp and wrench myself away from the visions.
“I need to ride out and meet the Siphons head-on. Unleash my shadebending on them,” I say, voice shaky. “It’s the only future where we beat them back.”
Siegrid’s response is instant. “No.”
I bristle.Don’t punch her throat. Don’t punch her throat. Don’t—
“If you’ll recall,” she says dismissively, “military matters fall undermyauthority as Sovereign Alpha. I cannot allow the queen to risk herself in direct combat, especially when you lack battlefield experience beyond the controlled environment of the Trials. You have no control over the shadebending, even still. You could get killed—and you could killourpeople, too.”
I straighten my spine, lift my head, and lock eyes with Siegrid. “You and I both know that foresight is imprecise, but over and over again, all I saw was death and destruction. This is the only possible solution that was offered to me.”
I pull the crown from my head and study the opal, gleaming in the firelight. The nightmare of my visions presses in again, and I squeeze my eyes shut as a wave of tiredness washes over my body.
Silence, as the group takes that in.
“I’ll go alone,” I offer up quietly. “That way, no one else will get hurt if my powers are out of control.”
“Meryn,” Noemi says on a soft gasp.“No.”
“Absolutely fucking not,” Stark snaps. “You cannot be serious. You’re the queen. Alone on the battlefield, facing down our enemy?”
I look at him imploringly. “Stark—if we lose this whole area, our nation will starve. What is one woman compared with the hunger of thousands?”
“You’ll go with her, Stark,” Siegrid says tersely.
