I don’t know what to do with that.
The ground under my knees feels very solid. I focus on that.
Kestra sits down beside me in the grass. Tiana doesn’t sit, but she stops moving. Which, for Tiana, is the same thing.
Nobody speaks as the hills breathe around us.
The moment is too loaded, too heavy for words. All I can do is stare at that mound and feel every little injustice brought to my people.
My people.
That’s who they are. Mine. My people. My babies. And some waited a long fucking time for me to show the fuck up.
“Okay,” I say finally. Not to them. Just to the air.
Kestra’s hand finds mine in the grass. I don’t look at her. She doesn’t let go.
“The fallen?” I swallow. “Where even are we?”
“That, Ashlynne Moonshadow, is only in your knowledge. Even if no mother told you, you will know how to get here. How to wake them.” Kestra taps the mound. “But not before they’re ready.”
“What do we do now?” I look at the two other queens of Faerie. Fear pulses through me. There is so much at stake the fear of fucking it up is real. My people have a second chance and by my gods, I’m going to do everything in my power to make that happen.
“We take back the Academy.” Kestra blows out a nervous breath. “We must move by nightfall tomorrow.”
“Why?” Tiana questions.
“I don’t know why.” Kestra’s eyes take on a faraway look. “My intuition is telling me time is up. My people see me as treasonous.”
“Mine as well.”
“Then what do we do?”
“Take them by force,” Kestra says. “One king. One queen at a time.”
I don’t ask how. She clearly has something and she’s clearly not sharing it yet. But the soldier part of me that never fully sleeps is already running numbers. Two queens without armies.One wild card who can dissolve a man into the earth with her bare hands. A nightfall deadline with no stated extraction plan.
Kestra always knows more than she says.
I file it. Trust it. And keep my mouth shut.
“You’re going to kill your father?”
She looks at the mound and pointedly doesn’t answer me.
“Tiana?”
“I know what I need to do.”
“And me?”
“You?” Kestra smiles. “You’re our wild card.”
I open my mouth to answer.
And wake up.
48
