Osalor’s smile widened. “I am so proud of you, my dear. I might be prouder of you than I am of this. My finest work. My triumph. Do it.”
“I will,” Saeldian said.
The amulet thumped as they turned to Kell’s frozen form, his hand outstretched to protect them, and smiled.
“I love you, Kell Redsong,” Saeldian said, “and I don’t care what that costs me.”
Osalor’s smiling praise turned to rage. Saeldian tore the amulet away from their neck and dropped the spell that held everyone frozen.
In the moment that Osalor shouted “No!” and the fey of Hearthaven’s Repose lurched forward in their charge, Saeldian threw the amulet to Ilondrel, who caught it and slammed it onto the clear glass lid of Jadiris’s casket.
Chapter Twenty-One
A Pact Ended
Where Destinies Meet
Light flared bright as a winter sun. The casket lid shattered. Kell caught Saeldian, covering their body with his. Saeldian went limp, and the magic that they’d woven to shape their perfect face dissolved.
Light and power flowed out of the casket, cloaking Ilondrel in magic and majesty.
“I am restored!”
Ilondrel’s voice rolled through the domain like thunder. She raised one hand, and a dome of force sprang up around Saeldian, Kell, Jubilee, and Lorzok, stopping the arrows, the blades, the bolts of force and fire and frost that hailed down on them before everyone could stop.
But when they did, every blade and arrow aimed at Osalor, collapsed to his hands and knees in the ash and mud, staring at Saeldian in horror.
Powerless, Saeldian huddled in Kell’s arms, and Kell held them tight to his chest.
Osalor clutched at the silver necklaces around his throat as if they choked him. “What have you done?”
Ilondrel, her winter robes spotless, drew her sword and answered, “Saeldian was your destiny, Osalor. You saw a child who needed love more than power, but you gave them one at the cost of the other. But they were never like you. You imagined that loving others had brought all the pain you suffered. But it was only fury at not getting what you wanted.”
Osalor never even glanced at Ilondrel. He had eyes only for Saeldian, and they were full of hate.
“You fool,” Osalor growled. “After everything I’ve done for you, and you ruined it. Threw everything I gave you back in my face!”
“I haven’t been your warlock for days, Osalor. I broke the pact when I stood between my friends and a monster, knowing that I would die so they could escape. I just didn’t know it, because I believed I was still a warlock. I didn’t know that I had become the archfey of a domain instead.”
Osalor roared and raised his dirty hands to strike the barrier, but dozens of bowstrings pulled tight. Ilondrel bound Osalor in vines of golden light, then stepped between him and Saeldian, majestic and terrible.
“All these years I spent mourning? I spent them all learning how to break your wicked curse. I found the witch-queen who gave you the means of your revenge. I found out exactly the words of the bargain you struck to take the life of Jadiris and use that power to lock away your own heart. I found the pact you used to bind the child and hide your heart-curse outside the Feywild. The child you made a thief. The child whose gift of love you stole!”
“That’s impossible,” Osalor said. “You couldn’t have done that.”
“She didn’t,” Dylstra said. “I did.”
She touched one of the dangling charms on her earrings and became Nobble, Osalor’s harengon servant.
Osalor looked on, aghast, as Helfyra transformed into Nobble too. “All those papers left for Nobble to dust and stack. All those gazing mirrors to clean and shine and match together to store away,” Helfyra said.
“All those mirror-matches that Master Beguiling never noticed were missing. Nobble put them away, of course,” Dylstra inher Nobble disguise said. “Nobble kept them safe here, so we could see Master Beguiling, and hear him too.”
Jubilee made an admiring noise. “Maid infiltration. They grifted in shifts.”
“Every word,” Ilondrel said. “All those long days of you complaining to Nobble, to the empty air, to your own reflection, about how you were trapped in your little domain prison, afraid to come out. About how you still hated me for taking what you thought was yours, like that first revenge wasn’t enough. It wasn’t hard to plant the seeds and tend them until you had a deception that was all your idea.”
“Master Beguiling is so clever, after all,” the Nobble who was Dylstra said.
