Finally she had to brag: “You really thought you could waltz in here and defeat me, Arianna?” Her voice was low, laced with all the fury one would expect of a winter storm. I could see small flurries stirring up behind her.
I searched deep for something to defend myself with, but I was still half dead, spent of energy, and fighting the ercho venom. The purple mecca was working slowly, no doubt struggling against the poison.
Arianna, friend of trees…
If I hadn’t been so out of it, I would have jumped as the tree spoke in my head.
Exhaustion made it easy for me to control my reaction, keeping my eyes half lidded and calm. The powder had completely dissolved on my tongue now, and a cool tingle was working its way into my leg.
“Kill or be killed. You left me no choice,” I told her, trying to keep her talking.
Can you help me?I asked the poor skeleton of a tree. I hadn’t thought to use the trees here, assuming they were tainted by the darkness of this land. They all looked dead. Almost like that inverted tree on the cover of the dark book with its sliver of stone. Maybe that’s what it had represented. Death. To everything living.
I was distracted by the winter queen’s broad grin. It was a smile that didn’t reach her eyes, her face awash in shadows.
“Oh, Arianna, can I just say that you took longer than we thought to come to us. I figured once we sent those stupid wolves to you with fae blades, you’d assume we were planning on assassinating you, and then you’d storm right over here to stop us. You were slow. I should have anticipated that, but eventually you did as we wanted. You played right into our hands.”
I stared up at her in disbelief. She had been waiting for us to come across?
She kept smirking at me, and I was starting to feel like an idiot, then she tilted her head in a certain way and her familiar profile reminded me of something. The tilt of her chin. Almond shape of her eyes. They were like mine. And Luc…
“Where’s your son?” The words croaked out of me as fear locked me in its grip.
This entire time we had been focused on the fae lord and the winter queen, all the while forgetting about my menace of a father. “You never planned on letting the Dark Fae Lord rule Earth, did you?”
This time her smile did reach her eyes and she stepped closer. “Of course not. I only needed him because he said he could find me the second darkstaff. I almost killed him when he lost it to youshifters.” Her lips curled in disgust. “But he assured me you would fall for the other part of our plan. You’d come and find us here, and he would be able to retrieve the staff, which is rightfully mine.”
“Where is Luca?” I repeated with more force.
“In New York, marching on your people.”
Everything inside of me clenched, and on instinct I reached for my bond to the thousands of wolf and bear shifters I ruled. The essence of my people so strong that I could almost scent shifter on the breeze. As their energy filled me, a power like no other strengthened my body. It was as I had always said, as I had always believed: a queen was only as strong as her people. And I would use my love for them to destroy the winter queen—a monarch who did not value the ones she should.
I lashed out with so much magic it blew both of us back a few feet.
The queen recovered quickly, throwing magic at me in one blue stream of ice. I blocked, and we traded blow for blow in a flurry of ice and wind. I had to hop to stay on my one good foot, but the power of my shifters and their bond to their queen was giving me a fighting chance. Any time I came close to a tree, I leaned against it for support. It was a comfort, like I had an ally rightat my side. Isalinda narrowed her eyes on me more than once and I knew she was trying to figure out where my sudden strength was coming from.
If she hadn’t been so selfish and evil, she would have known. It was there all along for her to utilize, but as a true narcissist, she thought of no one but herself.
Neither of us gave an inch, and I was afraid we would be locked in this battle forever. Our powers were just too evenly matched, especially while I was injured.
The tree next to Isalinda moved.What in the…?It actually moved.
Roots ripped out of the ground, throwing dirt and bark everywhere as the queen lurched to a halt, her jaw unhinging as she stared unblinkingly at the mobile tree.
I wanted to stare too. It was probably one of the most incredible, unbelievable things I had ever seen. Animation had overtaken the tree; it had arm-like branches, leg-like roots, and it was walking.
Focus.I forced myself to look away. This was my one chance.
Building up a large ball of magic, I hopped forward, and keeping nothing inside, thrust it at the queen, directing it to encase her. This was the spell she had first used on me in her castlegrounds. It felt right, poetic even, to use her own spell against her. Even though she was the winter queen, I could use the ice against her.
She froze in place, literally, too spent to break through my frost. From her toes to her neck, encased in my spell, only her head remained exposed. Kneeling down, I fashioned a sword from the ice, a long, lethal, shimmery blue number. Sometimes my winter magic was beyond incredible. I couldn’t believe I’d ever been afraid of it.
Holding my weapon, I hobbled toward the queen, relieved that some strength seemed to be returning in my leg. The pain was a dull throb now. She tracked my movements, her eyes filled with a tumultuous fury. Even when vulnerable, she couldn’t turn off her bitch face.
“Your reign is over,” I declared. She opened her mouth, but before she got the chance to cast a spell, or speak at all, I swung my ice sword, and in one clean blow took her head off.
It was a more humane death than she deserved, considering the way she tortured people, had cut up a little girl, but I was done playing games. I wanted to prove I was not like her in any way. She would have drawn out my death, hurt me as much as she could.
