I knew what she was. She looked at me like I’d known her for a hundred years. One look at those eyes, wild with fury, and I knew.
Aefe—Reshaye—hit the ground hard. She dropped Tisaanah, who rolled and gasped for breath. I had only seconds to kneel beside her, touch her shoulder in a wordless “Tell me you’re alright.”
She nodded, rubbing her throat. Then her eyes widened, and she pushed me out of the way.
Aefe lunged for us. Her magic was unlike anything I’d ever seen, light and—fuck, were those flowers?—flaring at her fingertips. I was a little too slow. A glancing blow from her magic at my shoulder nearly immobilized me with unnatural, intense pain.
He needs her power, Ishqa had told us. He needs her to win this war.
It didn’t matter what face it wore. This thing should not exist.
I opened my second eyelids and met Aefe’s attack head-on. Blinding light erupted through the room, white and red clashing. She was strong— stronger than a human, maybe even stronger than a typical Fey. When fire licked her flesh, she barely reacted.
I slipped her grasp one, two, three times. Struck at her legs to make her fall. I crawled over her, pinning her. My magic burned up in my veins. I had been using too much of it. Something was unstable in the layers of magic beneath. My power was growing harder to control.
But then again, maybe I didn’t need control now.
My worst nightmares had been given a human face, but there was nothing human about this thing. Nothing real, just a power that should never have been allowed to exist. A tragic person who had been distorted
long past a time when she should have been alive, turned into something grotesque.
I had called Reshaye a monster the day it ruined my life. And as I leaned over this thing that had nearly killed Tisaanah, this creature that looked so deceptively alive, the word floated through my head again:
Monster.
With my free arm, I lifted my blade—
—Only for a crippling force to rip me away. I slammed into a wall, a painting frame shattering beneath the impact. My vision blurred. My connection to my magic stuttered. An arm pressed to my throat, pinning me. Looking at me with something akin to curiosity was an auburn-haired
Fey man with a copper crown on his head.
“Maxantarius Farlione,” he said, quietly. “I have heard so much about you.”
The Fey king.
The Fey king was right here, inches away from me.
I took my shot. Flames roared around us both. The king winced, but did not release me, his interest souring to fury. Vines wound over my arms, crawling to my throat like snakes. Tightening, tightening—
Tisaanah struck him, sending him collapsing to the tile floor. In an instant, Aefe was at his side.
I seized upon the opening. I reached deep, deep, sucking up any dregs of my remaining magic, and then released everything I had.
Just as they rose, the blast hit them with enough force to send them falling together in a tangle of limbs over the balcony’s edge.
It would stop them only for seconds. Tisaanah dove for me. Our hands intertwined. I was already reaching for the petrified heart. When I touched it, it seemed to call to us so much louder than before. Come with me, it sang. Let us tear the world apart.
Dizzying. Intoxicating. Seductive.
“Are they out?” Tisaanah panted. “Did everyone get out?” “I— I think so.”
Tisaanah looked pained, and I probably did too. I think so. So many uncertainties in “I think so.”
The plan had always been to get the slaves out as quickly as possible. We knew there was a possibility we would need to use this magic. Knew we needed to get everyone far away if we did.
Did they have enough time?
The thrum of magic from the heart shivered over us. Tisaanah looked to the balcony, which overlooked the east side of the city. Waves upon waves of Fey warriors poured through the gates.
The sight of it overwhelmed me. A horrible thought solidified into certainty:
Thousands would die if we did nothing.
“We push them out,” Tisaanah said, voice frantic. “Focus on the east side, where the Fey and Threllians are concentrated. We change the terrain, not the people. Block them with stone, just like we did in Niraja.”
Ascended above, I didn’t like the sound of this at all. We had no idea how to use this thing. Could we even direct that magic that way?
BANG, as more doors in the distance collapsed.
Over Tisaanah’s shoulder, I saw more Fey warriors rounding the corner.
In the window beyond her, the streets were awash in red and purple blood.
No time.
I slit my hand and reached for Tisaanah’s. We held the heart between us. Its power flowed through us so quickly, more potent than any drug I’d ever taken, more powerful than any magic I’d ever Wielded.
Let us rewrite the world, the heart sang.
The last thing I saw was Tisaanah’s nod, as the world went white.
