Snap.
“Do you know what they all had in common, Colonel?” I continue the song under my breath, working my way through his remaining fingers. “They all thought they were untouchable. They all thought they could cause harm and nothing would happen to them.”
Snap. Snap. Snap.
“They were all wrong.”
He’s sobbing now. The great Colonel Marcus Graves, architect of a dozen black ops programs, reduced to a blubbering mess on the forest floor.
“P-please.” The word comes out slurred. Broken. “Ash, please, I can help you. I have information. About the attacks. About Amarantha. About?—”
“Tell me.”
He gulps air. Tries to focus through the pain.
“We’re not the only team.” A laugh bubbles out of him, hysterical, fractured. “You think this is it? You think you’re saving anyone? We’ve been running these operations for decades. Every Wild Court encampment. Every settlement. Every family we could find.”
Right there. That, that is when he seals his fate. He just doesn’t know it yet. But I do.
“How many?” My voice is ice.
“Hundreds. Thousands. I lost count.” He’s grinning now, blood on his teeth. “You’re among the last, Ash. The Wild Court is gone. We’ve almost completed everything. And you can’t do anything about it.”
The Wild Court is gone.
My people.Gone. The language I never learned, the songs I never heard, the family I never knew. All of it erased while I was busy being his weapon.
I’m supposed to be their queen.
Queen of what? Of this? Of ashes and silence and a throne no one’s left to sit on?
“You think this hurts me?” I hear myself say. “You think telling me my people are dead is going to break me?”
His grin falters.
“You already broke me, Colonel. Twenty-eight years ago, when you pulled me from Morrigan and decided I was useful.” I stand. Look down at him. “But here’s the thing about broken things.”
My thorns respond to my fury. They don’t erupt from my palms this time. They grow from the ground beneath him. Slowly. Deliberately. Vines wrapping around his wrists, his ankles, his throat. Green-gold light pulsing as poison seeps into his skin.
“We learn to put ourselves back together.”
His eyes go wide as he feels it. The venom spreading through his bloodstream. Not fast. I don’t want fast.
“What—” He chokes on the word. “What is this?”
“Poison.” I crouch beside him, watching the veins in his neck turn black. “The same kind that runs through wild ivy. Through thornbushes. Through everything that grows in dark places and refuses to die.”
“Ash—”
“My name is Ashlynne Moonshadow.” The thorns tighten. “I am the last queen of the Wild Court. And you are going to die knowing that everything you built, everything you worked for, ends with me.”
His mouth opens. Closes. The poison has reached his lungs now. I can tell by the wet rattle of his breath.
“I...made you...” he gasps.
“Yes.” I stand. I watch him struggle with a sick satisfaction. One I’ll likely question about myself later. “You did. You made me into exactly the kind of monster who could do this. And I want you to spend your last moments thinking about that. Thinking about how you created your own destruction.”
The thorns constrict.
