She broke Finnian. Spent years manipulating him after she had his parents executed. And he’s the strongest person I know.
Kieran’s warning echoes in my skull as the attacker steps back. Not retreating, deferring. Even Moros’s right hand yields to her.
That tells me everything I need to know about who’s really running this court.
“How does attacking me in the middle of the night teach me anything?” I keep my chin up even though my thigh is screaming and my hands want to shake.
“You’re right.”
She steps into the dim light, and that smile, gods, that smile. The one Kieran warned me about. The one that broke Finnian over years of careful manipulation.
She doesn’t want to own you. She wants to break you.
“Let me take care of that.”
The attacker sheaths his blade.
That’s worse. So much worse. Because whatever Amarantha has planned, it’s not a quick death in the dark.
It’s something she wants me awake for.
Fine.
I’ll remain awake. I’ll watch. And when they come for me, because they will come, I have to believe that now, I’ll still be standing.
Or I’ll die trying.
Same as always.
11
Finnian
Sleep eludes me.
I’ve catalogued the reasons. The location, borderlands magic sits wrong against my skin, neither Seelie nor Unseelie nor Wild. The wind outside howls stories I can’t quite translate. The bed that smells like dust and strangers.
But if I’m being honest, which I try to be, even when it’s inconvenient, it’s none of those things.
It’s the not knowing. The complete and utter uselessness of everything I’ve spent three centuries learning.
The Crown pulses beneath my temples. Uncertain. Lost.
That makes two of us.
There’s no historical precedent to search. No ancient text to decode. Only the ability to live through this moment and surface on the other side. Only the ability to survive long enough to tell the tale.
If we survive at all.
When I close my eyes, I see the Trial of Truth. Ash standing before three courts. The way her knees buckled. The way she looked at the crowd like she was searching for someone to help her. And me, useless in the crowd. Watching. Doing nothing.
I knew what Amarantha was planning. Suspected, at least. I had pieces of the puzzle scattered across my desk for weeks. The ward-work designed to kill guardians. The way she kept pushing Ash toward the trials before she was ready. The cold calculation behind every “kindness” she offered.
I didn’t put them together fast enough.
And now Ash is in Moros’s court, and I’m in a dusty tavern, and every time I reach for the bond it’s like pressing my hand against glass. I can feel her warmth on the other side, faint, distant, alive. I can’t reach her.
The Crown pulses again.Failure, it seems to say.You had the information. You didn’t act.
