All those years of him uttering about the Balance and true mates and he was bonded to my mother… He wasn’t, was he? “You never bonded my mother.”
“No.” He slumps back onto the throne.
My mother never had a chance.
She was with a man who was never hers.
Kestra makes a sound beside me. Small. Like something breaking that was already cracked. I reach for her without looking. My hand finds her shoulder and squeezes once, twice. Maybe I’m the one who needs her.
“The darkness.” Finnian chokes. “The darkness I tasted on you in the Seelie Court. It wasn’t consumed power. It was him. Unseelie shadow magic bleeding through a mate bond.”
“Clever boy.” Amarantha’s voice could cut diamond. “You always were too clever.”
“You broke the Balance.” Kestra’s voice shakes but holds. “Not through politics. Not through war. A Seelie queen and an Unseelie king bound through a mate bond. Two courts that exist in opposition, tied together through the most unbreakable magic in Faerie.” She looks at our father. “You broke the thing you spent your entire reign screaming to protect.”
Moros says nothing. His silence is the loudest confession I’ve ever heard.
Amarantha shifts behind the throne. I track her movement through my shadows. She’s not trying to run. She’s positioning. Closer to Moros. Between him and every blade in the room.
Because his death is her death.
That’s why she ran here. Not strategy. Not alliance. The mate bond. He offered his throat and she felt it through the connection and it dragged her across Faerie because her heartbeat is tethered to his.
She will never let him die. Not for Kestra. Not for justice. Not for anything. Because Amarantha has only ever loved one thing in this world, and it isn’t Moros.
It’sherself.
And he’s the only thing keeping her alive.
I open my mouth to speak—to take this revelation and forge it into the weapon this room needs it to be—when the corridor behind us fills with sound.
Footsteps. Several sets. Moving with a familiar cadence, people who aren’t trying to be quiet because they’re done hiding.
She walks in and the room rearranges itself around her.
Not physically. Something deeper. Like gravity shifting its allegiance.
Ash. Crown of thorns sitting on her head like it grew there. Blooms I’ve never seen spread past her collarbones. Bare feet on Unseelie stone, and the stone doesn’t fight her. It welcomes her.
Behind her stands Orion. Fire in his hair, and he finds me across the room before anyone else.
Then Pepper, chaos magic sparking purple at her fingertips, and Sabina with an arrow nocked. A boy with the green eyes brings up the rear, and I file him under we’re going to talk about that later because right now I cannot afford to know.
Ash’s eyes find mine across the room. She reads me in a heartbeat—the rage, the devastation, the ice holding it all together. She doesn’t ask what happened. Doesn’t need to.
She crosses the room. Past Finnian. Past Tiana. Past Kestra. Straight to me. She doesn’t even flinch when she feels the tension in the room that is impossible to ignore.
Her hand presses flat against my chest. Over my heart. Over the place where the Spear sleeps.
“I’m here.”
My hand covers hers. One breath. Two.
Then I let go. Because this room needs a weapon, not a man in love.
I step forward. Shadows pulling tight around me. Every person in this room—ally and enemy—feels the shift. The temperature doesn’t just drop. It plummets. Frost crackles across the floor in patterns that follow my footsteps.
At least it’s frost again and not snow.
