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Felicity. Willa. Fabian, still chained up in that abandoned classroom.

So many Rayna had taken care of and would want me to take care of, too.

“We’ll leave tonight,” I told Emelle, Lander, Rodhi, and Wren, who had all gathered around me. “In the meantime, take care of your dead.” Then I turned on a heel and stalked off.

As torturous as it was to refrain from Walking to that prison by myself right now, I knew Rayna would beg me to do this the right way.

Which meant I had a few final things to do.

For her.

CHAPTER

50

RAYNA

“Thank you,” I sighed.

“Of course. You don’t have to emerge until it’s over.”

I hunkered deep within my own mind, huddled up against my subconscious in her gazebo. She’d thrown up a shield of frost around us, like a sparkling curtain that blocked most of the pain. I could only feel a dull ache along my fingers now, the ghost of what Bilderas was doing to me somewhere in a distant reality.

Sighing, I rested my head against the arm of her throne.

“Do you know where Coen is?” I asked. She’d once told me I could ask her any question on my heart, and this one had definitely burrowed deep despite my best efforts to ignore it. “Why–why hasn’t he come for me yet?”

My subconscious reached out and stroked my hair like a mother would. I wished mine could be here for me—just this once—so that I didn’t have to comfort myself. But here I was, giving myself that maternal touch of solace simply because nobody else was here to do it.

“We both know the only reason Coen wouldn’t be here, crashing through the gates of the prison to get to you,” my subconscious said softly, gently, “is if he believed himself to be a greater threat to you than this.”

I understood the moment the last word left her lips. Coen had been so afraid that Mydusia would alter or add to her command, and that fear must have come true. He would never abandon me unless he had no other option… and even then I trusted he’d be doing everything in his power to reach me anyway.

What I didn’t understand was how Mydusia had found out about me. Who could have possibly told her?

My subconscious shook her head. “To that, I have no idea. It is crucial to trust your friends, but not everyone is a friend. You must tread more carefully in the future.”

If I even had a future. Dimly, I felt a greasy cloud of male breath on my face, spitting words at me that our frosty film blocked out. The pain was still there in a hazy sort of way, but it wasn’t moving or increasing anymore.

“He’s done,” I whispered.

My subconscious nodded. “I’ll be here whenever you need me.”

I might have stayed curled up in my own mind forever if something in my veins hadn’t swelled up, pulling me back to the prison cell.

When I blinked down at my hands quivering on my lap, it was to find most of my nail beds mutilated, either oozing a pinkish sheen or gushing with blood depending on how Bilderas had sliced the nails off. My subconscious must have continued to wrap my mind in a curtain of pain-blocking frost, because it wasn’t pain that made that thing in my blood swell even more.

It was his face so close to mine, breathing words into my mouth.

“—stupid, useless thing, didn’t you hear me? I want you to take off that last one yourself.” He nodded down at one of my ring fingers, the only one left untouched. “Show me how you prefer your—”

Whatever was in my blood didn’t let him finish.

Pure malleable energy burst out of me, knocking Bilderas back so hard that he slammed into the door of my prison cell. His head cracked against the metal bars with a clang, and he collapsed with all his tortured instruments clattering to the floor like sharp-edged rain around him.

My chest heaved. The energy that had burst out of me was already fizzling away, blocked by the misty strings of Dyonisia’s antipower, but I could feel it running through my veins once more. Not Wild Whispering or Mind Manipulating or Object Summoning, but my innate faerie power, shapeless as ever.

“How disappointing,” came a voice I knew instantly.