She’s going to kill me and there isn’t a weapon in this room that can stop her because she’s running on the full power of the Unseelie king and nothing any of us carry can match that.
Nothing any of us carry alone.
The thought arrives without permission. Not a strategy. Not a calculation. Something deeper. Something that lives in the Wild Court magic humming through my bones and the thorns blooming under my skin and the bare feet that haven’t left Faerie soil since I kicked off my boots on the back of a dragon.
I need them.
Not their protection. Not their weapons. Not their magic.
Them.
“Kieran.” His name comes out raw. He’s still half on top of me, shadows flickering, ice-blue eyes blazing with fury.
“I’m here.” He coughs, rolling gently off of me.
“I need you to stand with me.”
He doesn’t ask why. Doesn’t ask for a plan. He trusts me by taking my hand.
His shadows pour into me through the contact. “The Spear,” I whisper.
His quick intake of breath is answer enough before I turn to Finn. “Finnian.”
He looks up from across the room. His amber eyes wide and in shock. Blood drips from his temple where the blast caught him. The Crown of Destiny sits on his head like it was grown there.
“Come here.”
He doesn’t hesitate. He crosses the room in four strides and takes my other hand.
“Orion.”
My guardian. My fire. He’s on his feet before I finish his name, crossing to stand at my back. His hand finds the space between my shoulder blades, palm flat, and warmth floods through me. It tastes of soil in spring.
There aren’t words for what these men, these Fae, mean to me. Time slows. My life pulses before me again. Showing me the spaces between moments that mean the most. The way Finnian looked at me when he didn’t think I noticed. I put the memory in my back pocket.
With the one of Orion while we sparred, the way I could see him fall in love with me first. He really was love at first sight.
And Kieran, the way he protects me as though it’s a damn compulsion. He hated it, he fought it. But he didn’t care if his actions were right or wrong, they were made because he couldn’t help himself. That is how true his love is.
And each of them carrying a treasure that I started looking for months ago. On a mission that led me to this very moment. Back to the Treasures. But they’re not bound because they’re simply together.
They’re bound by our love.
And somewhere deep inside me, the Stone of Fál pulses.
Not in my pocket. Because it hasn’t been in my pocket for a while now, has it? I haven’t felt it since the moment Aengus snatched me to the in-between. It soaked through the fabric, through my skin, into my bloodstream while I was there with Aengus, remembering and feeling the deepest of my wounds. Where bleeding wasn’t physical but spiritual.
The Stone of Destiny was the trial magic all along. It had to have been. When Aengus used the magic for the stone in my crown?—
Wait. I reach up, feeling the stone pulse once, then twice. But it isn’t just the jewel in the crown. It’s all of me.
I am the Stone.
The Stone is me.
And when Kieran’s Spear hums through my left hand and Finnian’s Crown sings through my right and Orion’s warmth burns against my spine — the four Treasures of the Tuatha Dé Danann come together for the first time in four thousand years.
The sound that comes out of me isn’t a scream.
