“Or I could simply walk across this clearing, draw my knife and drive it through that merciless bitch’s heart,” she murmurs as she lifts her wine glass to her lips and drains it.
“She doesn’t have one.” Alarm spikes through me. There are no knives on her that I can see, but then the mysteries of female clothing are lost on me. Apparently, there’s a long-running vendetta against the lack of pockets on female clothing.
Thalia likes improvisation.
She designs her own wardrobe.
Which means she could be carrying half an arsenal in the folds of those skirts.
“What’s wrong, Thi?” She knows exactly what I’m looking for. I can see it in those wicked green eyes.
“I love you and you know that. But I wouldn’t even send Eris after Adaia, and she can kill anything,” I point out. “You wouldn’t stand a chance. Don’t do something stupid.”
Thalia merely smiles. “Oh, please, Thiago. If I wanted to kill the Queen of Asturia, she’d never see me coming. But I won’t. Because that would prove a considerable headache for us right now. That doesn’t mean I’m not going to retaliate. All I can say is that Adaia ought to be careful how much wine she drinks tonight.”
I look at her sharply.
She taps the side of her nose, her mask obscuring the top half of her face. “Lysander might think my little legion is hardly going to win us a war, but he’s wrong. Nobody looks at the demi-fey. Even if they’re slipping powdered shepherd’s rot into the queen’s wine.”
Shepherd’s rot is a mushroom notorious for bursting the stomachs of sheep. It’s rarely deadly for the fae, but it does cause a bout of indigestion that is extremely painful. The effects last for months too.
On one hand, if Adaia suspects us of being behind it, then she’ll only be more intractable than usual.
On the other hand, maybe it will improve my mood.
If I could bottle Thalia’s rage and send her to war armed with only that, then I’d probably be holding Adaia’s crown in my hands by the end of a week. Thalia takes great joy in fine silks and velvets, and indulging in honey cakes and sweet wine, but mistake her at your own peril.
“I have a better idea,” I say as a hush falls over the gathering, my voice lowering. “Save it for the last night when we have Finn back. A gift, courtesy of Evernight.”
Thalia grins at me and I straighten my mask.
It’s subtle and molded expertly to my face, courtesy of Thalia. A hawk’s sharp leather beak with velvet feathers. The cloak I wear is plain, my doublet made of crushed black velvet. Among all the glitter and glamour of the fae courts, nobody would look twice at me.
It’s perfect.
“Let us all sing to the night,” the herald calls, interrupting our plotting. He lifts his enormous staff and brings it down upon the flagstones in front of the bonfires. “Let us sing to the fires! Let us sing to the coming dawn!”
The three enormous bonfires that stand in the heart of the clearing tower over us. The queens of Aska, Ravenal and Asturia gather before them, prepared to light them, and the crowd hushes.
Right now, Eris and Baylor should be making a furtive foray into the Asturian encampment. I doubt they’ll have much luck. Adaia will expect it. But I want more details about the way the camp is set up, and preferably a glimpse of Finn.
Just because the demi-fey say he’s alive, it doesn’t mean he’s in a decent condition.
All Thalia can get out of them is poison and iron sickness. Watching the little demi-fey pretend to choke and fall to the ground would be humorous in other circumstances, but I really don’t know what kind of condition he’s in.
We could kill her, whispers the Darkness. Look at her. It would be so easy.
I lift my gaze to Adaia as I sip my wine, and the clearing vanishes around me as the world becomes black and white.
Death peeks over many a shoulder here. It would be disconcerting to see if I wasn’t in the grip of the daemon within me. I am empty and hollow and my heart stills like a stone sinking to the bottom of a rushing river.
It doesn’t have to beat, for a heart is what stirs life through a fae’s veins, and I am nothing more than Death right now.
It’s quiet here, in the Shadow World.
Hungry faces leer at me, superimposed over the fae beneath them. Shadows writhe as they thicken and solidify. I see shadowy arms sliding up a young woman’s body. Dozens of them. Threatening to drag her back into her own silhouette.
She’ll die soon.
Days at best. Maybe a week.
But it’s Adaia who I focus on.
Adaia Thornborn.
Even in the Between, the light of her magic and power burns bright. Shadows writhe as her light pours over them, desperate to touch her and drag her down. She doesn’t even know they’re there.
It’s a simple flex of power. I twitch my fingers and they crawl up her skirts, dragging themselves claw by claw. The light shreds, dissipating around her like smoke. The shadows are hungry. So fucking hungry.
A rushing sound fills my ears.
Hunt, whispers a voice in my head and this time it’s not my daemon. It’s the Darkyn soul trapped within me that I’ve named Fury.
Torment is not far behind it. Gods, she tastes so divine. I want to eat her all up.
Make her scream. Make her bleed. Crush her bones. Crunch, crunch. Rage pushes against the wards tattooed into my skin.
It feels like a knife dragging over the inside of my chest. They want out. They always want out. They’re mere remnants of a whole and combined they’ll form a single entity, but over the centuries, the separation has fused them into individual beings.
Adaia looks down as if she senses something. Her light dims. Her face pales and stands sallow against the flickering torches behind her.
Behind her, a shadow drags the claw on its thumb across her throat and Adaia gasps as if she feels it, clapping a hand to the mark.
“Thi?” A hand grips my arm, wrenching me back out of the gloom.
Light and heat and sound burst in upon me. For a second, it’s more than I can handle and my grip tightens around the golden goblet I bear, crushing the imprint of my fingertips into it. I can barely see for the sudden brightness. Pain almost brings me to my knees; my heart, starting to beat again.
“Ignore her.” There’s a certain urgency in Thalia’s voice.
“Weren’t you the one arguing for murder?” The words sound so distant it’s a wonder they came from my mouth. I blink again.
Light. Fuck, I need the light.
Claws screech down the inside of my skin like nails on a chalkboard as the daemons retreat.
“Your skin is freezing.” Thalia searches my face. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing.”
Adaia smirks at me as she lifts her hands, her rings gleaming in the light of the torches that line the clearing. She will never know how close she came to dying this night.
Sweat breaks out upon my brow. It’s never been this hard to control.
What is wrong with me?
Almost as if thinking of him summons his attention, I feel my father turn to look at me from the north. I won’t give him the satisfaction of responding, but I can feel his focus sliding over my skin like the pad of a finger trailing down a long-bleached spine.
Searching for me. Yearning to destroy me. To consume me.