The warrior stilled. His eyes widened when he caught sight of Thane’s distinctive tattoo. Uncertainty rippled across his face. “Our High King is dead.”
“I’m standing right before you.” Thane spread his arms wide, loosening the grip on his steel. “The Grand Alderman has weaved falsehoods. He is a pretender who has stolen the throne. We never wanted to attack this city, but he forced our hand. Lower your weapon…what’s your name?”
The warrior dropped his weapon and knelt. He bowed his head before Thane. “I’m so sorry, Your Highness. I had no idea. I—”
A sword sliced through the warrior’s neck. The air fae fell, his eyes vacant and wide. Blood painted the ground by Thane’s feet. Iona stepped up behind him, her eyes flashing. “Don’t make me kill you, nephew. Some might care about the curse, but I don’t.”
“I can’t believe you,” he murmured, biting back the urge to throttle her in front of the entirety of the Sea Court army. “That fae was kneeling before me. He surrendered.”
“I don’t care,” she hissed, stalking toward him. “Don’t you get it, Thane? I don’t care about the bloody air fae! Your court took my sister and made her life a living hell. That creature she was bound to treated her like dirt. And now she’s dead, all because my father forced her to marry into this hellhole of a court. Air fae surrender is not an option. We will raze this city to the ground and take the throne as ours. You can either join us, or I’ll cut you down myself.”
Thane ground his teeth together, tightening the grip on his sword. He cut his eyes toward the city. The sea and ice fae warriors were already streaming through the gates. Plumes of spoke drifted into the sky while flickers of orange leapt across the grass rooftops. If Thane did not find a way to stop this, the city would burn to the ground. Innocent blood would spill.
He turned back toward Iona, his resolve tightening in his gut. “I will not fight against my own people.”
Iona’s lips curled as she laughed. “Oh, nephew. You’ve made the wrong choice. This is what you don’t understand.Iam your people. You’re a sea fae. You were never meant for these lands. If you were truly meant to rule, you never would have run.”
“I thought I was doing the right thing,” he argued. “For all of them.”
For Eislyn.
He’d realized his mistake, but far too late. If he had stood his ground and returned to Tairngire instead of setting sail for Gorias, none of this would have ever happened.
Or maybe it would have.
Iona had mentioned it time and time again. The Sea Court had clung to silence, biding their time as they built their ships and trained their army. If Thane’s mother had failed to secure the court as her own, the Sea Court had always planned to invade just like this.
Thane was inconsequential to them. And now he was nothing more than a pesky fly they needed to swat away.
Iona sneered as she stalked toward him. “Well, you’ve made your bed, nephew. You must lie in it.”
Narrowing his eyes, he planted his feet, readying himself for her attack. “This is what power does to people. They make them spill their own blood, their own kin.”
Thane thought of his father, who had killed his own brother, who had been willing to sacrifice his own son. All for more of Unseelie’s power.
“That’s where you’re wrong, Thane,” she said, heaving up her sword. “I would have let you live. We were going to have you sit on that damn throne and rule over these grasslands.”
Thane watched her as she stepped to the side, clearly eyeing up her best approach. “Only because you thought you could control me, like a puppet on a string.”
She shrugged. “You’re no use to us if you won’t do what we need.”
“And destroying Tairngire is what you need, is it?” Thane barked out a laugh. “You’re more delusional than I thought you were.”
“It’s what we need to avenge my sister’s death.” Iona’s eyes flashed as she swung her sword to the right. Thane dodged the blow easily.
“Killing innocent low fae does not avenge my mother’s death,” Thane said through gritted teeth. “Nothing can. Not even the death of Aengus. She’s gone, Aunt Iona. And she isn’t coming back. Raining down destruction does nothing but make this world even worse than it already is.”
Iona leapt to the side, slicing her sword toward Thane’s gut. He spun, heart stuck in his throat, throwing out his own blade to block her blow. The steel clanged hard together, reverberating through his body. Shaking his head, he took a step back, his joints aching from the sudden contact. Iona was stronger than she looked.
“You don’t get it, do you, Thane?” Iona asked, stalking around him in a slow circle. “This world is already doomed. The only way we can win is by gaining as much power as we can.”
“I don’t believe the truth in that.”
“Don’t you?” She arched a brow. “If you don’t want to gain power, why are you here? Why not just give up your throne to Aengus? Don’t pretend like you didn’t want to come here and rip him out of that castle. I remember the words you spoke in Gorias. You wanted revenge, same as the rest of us.”
She was right. Thanehadwanted revenge, but the wound had been fresh in his heart. When he’d first heard the news about his mother, he’d wanted nothing else but to claw Aengus’s eyes out and slice the head clean off his body. But once the truth had settled into his bones, his vicious anger had numbed to a dull pain.
All of this, every single part of it, had been a terrible, brutal mistake.
