Will coughs against her grip. “Get fucked,” he says.
Morgana throws him. She hurls him backward, and he smacks into the wall of the magic circle, knocking his head and slumping down. Not for the first time recently, Will’s blood splatters the floor, staining the ivory carpet like a bruise. I push against the queen. I scratch the backs of her hands. I kick my heels back andscream.
“Stop it, please!Please.Please, let him go!”
“Stay where you are, Felicity,” the queen rasps.
“WILL!”
He groans and wipes his hair back.
Morgana crouches down. “You know I have ways to force you,” she says, “or you can willingly sacrifice yourself for the prince. Either way, I will get those words out of your mouth. You were friends long enough to make the love count. And if not, I’ll drag the fiancé back here or the father. Even the little petal over there will do. You choose.”
Will’s laugh shakes his whole body. He shuffles up to sit, back supported by the magical barrier. He angles his chin and grins. I jerk forward at the sight of blood running from his temple, and the queen’s nails shred my forearms in a pinch of sharp pain. I don’tcare.I told him the truth. I’ll come for him no matter what. I will crawl and fight and tear myself apart. I will let the queen cut my skin open. I willnotlet them take him from me.
“Screw you,” Will says.
Morgana’s face contorts. She lashes out once more, striking Will’s cheek with the back of her hand. He hits the floor, the crash of it interrupted by a set of hurried footsteps.
“Touch my son one more time and you will regret it!” Ruth bellows, running through the double doors hand in hand with my mum. Windswept and breathing hard, Mum guides Ruth down the aisle, past the obstacles of fallen chairs, past Pigeon and Lark. At the bottom of the steps, they face Morgana and Fern. For the first timesince before my birth, the four of them reunite. The four old friends, unrecognizable to each other now, meet again across a chasm of hurt.
“What are you doing here?” the queen asks, yanking me flat against her.
“Stopping this madness,” Mum says. “What areyoudoing? They’re just children!”
“Let them go,” Ruth says, as relentless as I saw in Will’s memory. “Now.”
“You don’t understand!” Fern screeches by my ear, high-pitched and frantic. “Morgana has always said that powerful magic is the best defense. Against our enemies. The rebels. She says anyone who tries to hurt us will be destroyed. We’ll make a desert of their homes until they kneel at our feet in surrender! But when we’re gone, when my children have no one to protect them—”
“Mum, they’re going to kill Will!” I interrupt, to be rewarded with another deep scratch from the queen, blood dribbling between my fingers.
“How could you?” Bastion’s voice is a feeble whisper of his usual command, but it still turns all attention to him. Fern clutches me like a port in a storm. “Taking a life for the use of magic? What kind of person would that make me? What kind of king would I be? I’m the best sword master in the entire eight kingdoms. I don’t need—” Bastion halts. He shoots piercing eyes at his mother and the betrayal behind them shatters my heart. “You thought I’d trade Card? Formagic? Mother, he’s the lo—”
“DON’T!” I shout. “Don’t risk it. Don’t say anything like that with the spell active.”
“Oh, honestly.” Morgana rolls her eyes. “Can we get on with it?”
My ears chime like the bell above my shop door. “Honestly.”The truth.The answer floods through my veins.
“Will,” I say simply, steadily. From where he leans against the emerald barrier, his eyes flick to mine. “Encho kaveh.”
The purple-petaled bittersweet nightshade I’d shown him this morning materializes. Nightshade, to compel the truth. It reeks ofa dark foulness that overthrows the queen’s foxglove perfume, until, a blink later, Will summons it to himself. He claws his fingers in a sphere shape and shreds the plant into minuscule green and purple grains. The wind in his hands bursts upward, into the air, right into Morgana’s face. She inhales the nightshade in her next breath.
“W-What—?” she splutters. She waves against the gust, but it’s too late. A deep chesty cough wrenches from her. “What did you do?”
“Your turn to tell the truth,” Will says. “And I’d be quick about it. A dose of nightshade in that amount won’t kill you, but you’ll be feeling pretty sick soon enough.”
Her lavender eyes shoot to me. “Y-You—!”
“Tell them!” I say, trying to heave myself away from the queen once more. “Tell them you possessed Will. Tell them you’ve been poisoning the king!”
“I’ve been poisoning them both!” Morgana shouts.
She seizes in shock. Her eyes flare wide.
Fern’s arms around me loosen a fraction.
“What…?” the queen says.
