Page 157 of The Lure of Wolves and Whispers

If Cash has the throne, then it’s only a matter of time before he has the gardai combing every inch of this castle.

Before Wolf can sneak back in and come looking for me.

I just need to hold on.

“I suppose I should thank you.” The Lady of Shadows wipes her hands on the length of her crusted dark cloak. She sets the pincers down, what feels like hours later, and rummages in the far corner of the carved-out space. Thin strands catch the candle light. My eyes strain, dread making my heart flutter, and she uncoils a bound length of glinting fiber. “It’s been years since I had the chance to make sure these still work.”

She holds the coils out in front of me, as if I care what they’re made of.

“Ingenious things, aren’t they? Silver wires. They conduct lightning,” the Lady of Shadows explains, and sweat prickles down the back of my neck. “That means every strike your mages have sent crashing down into our turrets, we collect that energy and channel it from the spires on the rooftop all the way down here to…” She cocks her head, sharp teeth catching on her bloodred lips. “Well, to traitors likeyou.”

I wrench back.

The shackles won’t budge. I heave so hard that something cracks in my right ankle.

“Nothing?” A disappointed frown twists the Lady of Shadows’ drawn pale face. “That’s all right. We have plenty of time. And you’re not going anywhere.”

She pinches the clamps onto my collarbone.

A sob wells in my throat.

“Please.”The single word shatters what’s left of my dignity.

Her lips curl into a knowing smile, and she steps back as the wire leading from the clamps up the ceiling heats to a molten red.

“I can’t watch this,” Aoife mutters, wringing her hands in the fraying purple of her cloak. The crack of her voice lights a wave of rage in my blood.

“Fuck you,” I try to scream, but the words come out cracked and broken.

Still, she turns to face me.

“You’re the one who let me hear your plans,” Aoife says sadly.

“What?” I gasp on the cracking word.

“Cash will do it, right?”She turns her sapphire eyes on me, cold and unflinching. There’s no hint of the blood shock I saw in her on the castle stairs after I killed the king. After I tried to protect her.“Take the crown beforeshedoes?”

Crushing, gut-wrenching defeat pierces my lungs.

If Aoife warned the High Queen, then Cash… Old Ones, he could be on the Black Quay by now, or butchered and buried somewhere no one will ever find.

The Lady of Shadows trails a long finger down my throbbing cheek. “Aoife only did what any good daughter would. Repaying the debt of loyalty her family has owed to the Crown these lastfive years, ever since thatunfortunateattempt at an uprising. She is her mother’s last hope, after all.”

I blink back tears.

I was wrong. I was so terribly, horribly wrong about Aoife.

I let myself believe that because she knew loss, she would be like me. That because she’s seen the cruelty of the High King and the High Queen, she would want them gone and someone better on the throne. Her own second cousin, for fuck’s sake.

But I also know how far we’ll go to save the ones we love most.

The Lady of Shadows turns her cold gaze to me. “This can stop any time you want,” she says, as if her words are the only rational things left in this world.

Like they’re the only way to end this—and maybe they are.

That doesn’t mean I’m going to give in.

Finn is safe. My debt is paid. So if my life is forfeit, let it be forfeitforsomething.