Chapter 54
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
When the thunder sounded, Rhiannon paused mid-strike. She stared down at me, her eyebrows lowering.
Two seconds later, a streak of lightning lit up the sky and her face in silver. In that flash, she wore an expression I had never seen on her. Uncertainty.
The wind picked up, and so did my blood. I felt its current through me and over me, as though it circulated inside and outside my body.
This wasn’t Rhiannon’s wind.
It was mine.
Sylvanwild magic danced over my upraised arm, needles of it pinging off my skin and leathers. Me, mine, no one else’s.
Dorian was right. Faun was right.
I had magic. A fuckton of it.
The wind flowed in from high above, sweeping down through the trees. It carried over the meadow, blowing the grass horizontal and whipping Rhiannon’s curly hair into her face, slapping my braid against my cheek.
We stared at one another. The eyes are where the fight is. Her uncertainty deepened. It became confusion—shock. My expression had changed, and she seemed to have clocked the feral curl of my lips.
“This can’t be you,” she whispered.
I thrust one foot in front of me and rose to a knee. She didn’t move as, with two quick breaths, I got one foot under me, then stood.
I was breathless. I wasn’t going to stop.
Her sword had lowered to her side in the rising wind. Her eyes lifted toward the sky; mine followed. Above us, clouds rolled in, thick and low. Soon they would obscure the moon.
My blood kept circulating, inside and out. Anger and longing pulsed through me, and I felt nature answer me. It responded to my feeling, even if I couldn’t explain the chemistry.
Death made me a blade.
The clouds converged, and the moonlight shrank smaller and smaller until we were cast in darkness. The thunder clapped again, and under a second later, lightning lit up the meadow and Rhiannon.
“Tell me one thing,” I said, raising my voice to be heard above the wind.
Rhiannon’s eyes lowered to me.
“You sent Dorian and the wraiths,” I said. “You sent them to kill me.”
“Kill you? You? No.” Her upper lip curled. “I sent him to kill every changeling. Every changeling from every other court.”
So I was, after all, from another court. And Rhiannon was without a heart.
Another clap above us. This time, the rain followed. It came fast and hard and driving. We were soaked within seconds, our hair and clothing plastered to us.
And I knew Rhiannon must die.
She had to die like a flower budded and bloomed and withered. Like the sun passed into the tree line and the sky changed to night. The crown had made her small and cruel and murderous.
She wasn’t worthy. Her time as the Sylvanwild queen was at its end.
“Come,” I said. “Come at me.”
Her chin lowered. “With pleasure.”
In one motion, almost faster than I could follow, she came. And as she did, she changed her sword hand—right to left. Her left wrist is stronger, Faun had said. She’ll switch eventually, and if you live that long, that’s when you’ll know she’s no longer holding back.
That time was now.
She came at me with a snarl, her sword whipping through the air toward my head. This time, I could see her magic. I watched it move over her body in the rain, sliding over her. Air magic.
She was attuned to air. And me? It was obvious now. It should have been obvious back in the cave. Fuck, it should have been obvious when Dorian and I were trying to escape the Eldermaze and the thornstalkers closed in on us. The rain I’d called. All that acid rain that answered…
Water. I was attuned to water.
And there was no dearth of water in this meadow.
Her sword swung fast, a quarter-inch slice of death approaching.
Need pulsed through me. The rain responded. It drove against the downward thrust of Rhiannon’s blade, just enough to slow the arc. I stepped back and jerked my head aside, the steel passing in front of me.
Her eyes flashed with fresh shock. The rain had obeyed me, just like the air obeyed her.
She slashed again. This time I brought my sword up to meet hers. The rain drove at her head-on, blowing her hair back from her face and slowing her swing.
Her eyes narrowed against the deluge. Her lip curled like she knew something I didn’t.
“You think you’ve harnessed water,” she said. “But you don’t even know its weakness.”
Weakness?
The magic around her seemed to move faster, sliding over her skin like a growing current.
Its radius enlarged, swirling larger and larger until the rain was caught in a driving, tornadic wind.
Around and around it went until the rain became pellets hitting me sidelong.
My braid came loose, the twine caught in the wind and carried away.
My hair flew around my head, obscuring my eyes.
Water had a weakness.
Air.
Water was susceptible to motherfucking air.
I tried to keep Rhiannon in my sight through the veil of hair and the darkness, but she seemed to disappear. One moment she was there, and the next she was gone.
I raised my sword and spun. Wind seemed to batter from every direction, the rain pelting me and forcing me to squint unless I wanted to be blinded.
With a yell, Rhiannon swung in on me from behind. I turned just in time before her blade sliced my skull open. The two swords sang against one another, sliding off until they came apart.
Remember death.
She swung again, again, every stroke bringing her closer to my head and heart and gut.
My hair stuck to my face like a damp cloth, and it was only the many hours I’d spent training in the barracks’ yard that kept me blocking.
But I was getting weaker, slower, and she wasn’t letting up. Nor was the wind.
She brought her sword up for a two-handed downward stroke. The wind whipped my hair out of my face to quicken her blade. Thunder clapped, and lightning seared the meadow white.
That was when I saw it.
Black streaks running up the veins of her neck. Just like Dorian after the Eldermaze.
Unseelie magic corrupted. If Rhiannon went too far, she’d become a wraith. And she had almost reached her limit.
A jag of fear went through me.
For as much as she deserved to die, she didn’t deserve to become one of those things. No one did. Mindless, soulless, scythe-wielding killers. An ephemeral army of night.
I gasped and ducked, throwing up my blade to deflect hers as I stumbled by. I pivoted toward her.
She had to die. But not like this.
“Rhiannon, stop.” My voice was hoarse. Too quiet, lost in the wind and rain.
She screamed and threw herself at me, striking downward again and again. Every time I deflected, but more weakly. She wouldn’t stop. Of course she wouldn’t. Rhiannon had to win.
The thought struck me like a slap to the face:
She knew she was going to die, and she planned to take me down with her.
The storm drove around us, and Rhiannon struck. The wind was her friend, powering her sword’s thrusts. Her burgundy hair was a living shock around her head, curls caught by the wind and pulled upward into the swirl, then thrown forward as she called on the wind’s power.
The black streaks beneath her skin had grown like roots. Veins of shadow climbing her face, right up to her eyes. They spread across the backs of her hands like lace gloves.
I had to stop her.
“Please, Rhiannon.” I parried a strike, this one slicing through the thin cloth covering my bad arm. The cold iron of the blade reached my skin, and the line of pain screamed through my body. Every stroke brought her blade’s edge closer to home.
Finally, with her strong left hand and her Unseelie power, Rhiannon got inside my guard. She’d swung three times in succession, and I’d blocked every one of them with increasing desperation—until she cut me along the side of my thigh.
I cried out and hobbled backward. The rain had picked up; it drove sidelong against the two of us, stinging me even through my leathers.
Rhiannon didn’t hesitate. She came at me through the pouring rain, the sclera of her eyes turning black. Meanwhile, my world shrank to the size of my body.
This would be the killing blow.
After everything, it couldn’t end like this. Not after she’d killed my family, taken me from my home, forced me into these gods-cursed trials.
And beneath that, a deeper, more ruthless voice inside me whispered a truth:
She wasn’t the true queen.
She was just a placeholder.
You know, the voice said. You know what you’re capable of. It’s already happening.
Already happening.
My gaze flicked to my sword arm. There was magic there, but it didn’t just dance over my skin like before. It poured away from me, rolled over the grass, drew up toward the clouds. It rushed from every part of me, expanding into the air. Calling down the sky.
Remember death.
Rhiannon raised her sword—and cried out. A deep cut had appeared on her cheek. One of her eyes clamped shut, and blood dripped from it. Her blood had been drawn, and not by my sword.
The rain blew almost horizontal now. And it stung, but not just from sheer force.
From something else.
Something more.
Another cut appeared on her face, and another. All of them horizontal. More, more.
I knew this rain. Knew it like I knew my mother’s face. It stung, but I’d long ago grown used to it.
Death made me a blade.
Rhiannon raised her arm against the storm. It wasn’t enough; the rain cut through her thin linen shirt. It soon turned ragged, as did her pants. She didn’t yet know… linen and skin were no match for acid.
Not against acid like this.
The rain buffeted her, chewing her skin, drawing more blood. And yet she kept her sword raised high.
A pulse of fresh sympathy went through me. And with it, something else; it felt like power. “Yield, Rhiannon.”
“Yield?” Her black eye snapped to mine, framed by the line of her forearm. That single eye was wide, almost childlike—edged with fear. “Then I’m nothing.” Her voice sounded like broken marbles inside a can.
Rhiannon, the forgotten daughter. The night-killer. The grasping fae who’d gotten her hands on the Sylvanwild diadem through the spilled blood of her sisters.
A queen, or nothing at all.
She tightened her throat, then lowered her arm until her bloody face was uncovered. The acid had eaten away at her left cheek until the bone was exposed. Her sword extended toward me—a final challenge.
I took a hobbling step toward her. My sword rose, and our two blades met with a metallic clink. Her blood ran down the grip of her sword to the blade. And I could not help it: I looked into her Unseelie-corrupted eye and I respected her. She fought like a fucking banshee.
Her throat worked. Finally, she rasped, “You will never be accepted, changeling.”
She swung. The wind kicked up. She screamed, the blade arced high. I raised my sword to block. Iron met iron—
And then she collapsed.
She dropped onto her back. Her sword fell from her hand, and her fingers clenched. Every muscle seemed to spasm, and she curled in on herself in the meadow as Unseelie magic spread over what remained of her body.
I knew what would happen next.
I dropped down next to her. Her eyes stared up at me, dark as pitch, her lips in a wide grimace. I wondered if she saw the faces of her four sisters. Her parents, who’d died of broken hearts. Did she think of them, or only of Rhiannon?
I knew what I had to do; I didn’t hesitate. Hesitation was a bastard’s way. It wasn’t real compassion.
I lifted my sword, set the edge of it to her throat, and slit it.
Remember death.