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And Kanuk… Kanuk exploded on impact.

Pieces of him flew outward, bascite sparkling like silver dust in the air. His bow clattered to the ground on top of his remains.

A moment of silence swallowed me whole. My breath stopped moving. The trees stopped singing. I didn’t even hear the sound of Bilderas thumping to the ground as Coen made a final slice through his lungs.

A moment later, something in me exploded, too. The monster in my blood burst out of its cage, my vision bleeding with rage.

Dyonisia hadn’t just imprisoned and experimented on her own citizens. She hadn’t just locked up my fathers and tortured me and so many others. She hadn’t just bred the cruelest Good Council possible, a Good Council that had killed Garvis and Cilia and Quinn.

She’d ravaged this entire island. Promised Jagaros she wouldn’t hurt any more of his people, only to murder his brother right in front of him. Right in front of me.

Wrong. Fucking. Move.

An otherworldly sound erupted from my lips. I pulled myself to a stand and threw out a palm, using all my force to fling my Object Summoning magic at my aunt even if it was the last thing I did.

My invisible hands ripped through the ship lodged somewhere behind me, snatched the pills Nara had made last year—every single one of them, filled with poison strong enough to kill a faerie—and hurled them at Dyonisia.

Thanks to Kanuk, she didn’t have any more antipower left. Completely exposed, the ice-blue of her eyes reflected the handful of pills zooming her way as they widened.

Her mouth parted in surprise.

And I stuffed the poison down her throat.

My crescent knife clanged to the ground. Dyonisia released Jagaros, staggering forward and falling to her knees, hands clutching her neck where my black pearl necklace still hung. Her eyes had popped wide open, pupils blown as they seesawed back and forth until they met mine.

One foot in front of the other, I moved toward her. My vision narrowed as if the entire world had shrunk into a dark, hazy tunnel. All I could see was Dyonisia Reeve, leader and oppressor of this island, my aunt, trying to heave in a deep breath and failing as the poison took root in her system.

Maybe she would have been able to survive the arrow in her chest, but she couldn’t survive this.

Her palms slammed into the floor. I knelt beside her as she used the last of her strength to look up through the cascade of her midnight hair.

Moon goddess.

Witch on the mountain.

Sorronian princess. Exiled. Outcast.

“Rayna.” My name bubbled from her lips, along with a thick, red-wine substance that dripped and splattered at my feet like teardrops made of bloody tar—poisoned faerie blood. “You have—to kill her. Promise me—you’ll kill her. Not for me. For them.”

Dyonisia’s hand clawed upward to grab hold of me…

Coen was there before her fingertips could dig into me ever again.

He grabbed a fistful of her hair and wrenched.

I kept my eyes locked on hers even when her head ripped away from her neck, veins and arteries snapping apart and splattering me with her blood.

My vision fluttered. Coen’s arms wrapped around me in an instant, cradling me with a tenderness I wouldn’t have thought possible from someone who could also be so vicious. I blinked at him, trying to keep his face in focus when stars danced between us.

“Did it stop?” I whispered. “Your tattoo?” Is the oath fulfilled? I meant to ask. Did we save the island?

Coen’s careful scrutiny of me flicked sideways, and I saw what he saw through our bond: Jagaros collapsing into his rightful throne in the form of a brother he’d never see again. There was no triumph on his face, only complete and utter devastation as he gazed upon Kanuk’s remains.

But every living being in the room took a knee and bent their heads low.

I felt the snap of ancient magic just as much as Coen did. Like the island itself had just switched fealty to the faerie king of old once more.

Coen gave me a soft smile. “It is now.”