EPILOGUE
COEN
“Her Majesty would like a word with you… General Steeler.”
I was back on the ship with Terrin, Dazmine, and the twins, the ocean air stinging against my eyes.
It had only been six hours since I’d last seen Rayna, and I already missed her: her warmth, her beautiful, wild mind, the softness of her skin, and that glimmering, jade-green light in her eyes.
But she was at the Institute, currently taking her rescheduled second quarterly test. I didn’t want to disrupt her focus, and the captain of our ship was mashing her lips at me with an impatient crossing of her arms.
The captain hated me for accepting the oath, I knew, but there was nothing she could do about it—except, perhaps, gloat in my face when the queen of Sorronia wanted to speak with me.
Nobody in their right mind enjoyed the presence of the queen of Sorronia… even when she was hundreds of miles away, speaking to us through glass.
My newfound tie to Her Majesty was punishment enough.
Spitting out a few curses and catching the pity-filled glances of the others, I stomped after the captain. She led me into a room where crimson drapes lined the windows, casting an eerie red glow around the ornate mirror looming over me.
Her Majesty was already a shimmering image in the mirror. A veil fluttered over her face, covering those eyes that could suck out someone’s magic with a single glance. Only her mouth and chin were visible beneath the veil, the lips painted bloodred, the chin dainty and unassuming.
As always, loathing tightened my muscles when I bowed my head before her.
The mirror had been imbued with a complex charm from one of her ambassadors back in Sorronia, and the result was a two-way communication device that flowed as well as if we were talking through a watery window.
I could practically feel the weight of her attention through her veil.
“I have your first official assignment, General Steeler. I think it will be a good way to practice for some upcoming events I have planned.”
Like her sister’s, Queen Mydusia’s voice was a jagged collection of sharp knives and chips of ice, but with a higher-pitched tone. As if she wanted to sound like an innocent, giggly schoolgirl instead of a cold-hearted bitch.
Well, she was failing miserably at that little endeavor, wasn’t she?
I didn’t hide the disapproval tightening my mouth as I raised myself back up to my full height. Behind me, I felt the captain shift uncomfortably on her feet.
“An assignment?”
I’d known it was coming, but I dreaded it anyhow. Whatever the queen of Sorronia asked me to do, I wouldn’t be able to refuse—even if it meant taking me away from the island of Eshol. Away from Rayna.
Not that I’d ever let it slip to the female faerie before me that Rayna even existed, and thankfully, the captain seemed to be withholding that information from the queen, too. For that, I was grateful.
I shuddered to think what Her Majesty would do in the face of that knowledge: the daughter of her long-lost little sister. Another Reeve with all that potential antipower lurking in her veins.
Queen Mydusia’s smile made the edges of her veil flutter.
“I’m getting quite tired of waiting around for my sister’s dome to crack. I have to admit, she’s gotten good at upholding her power—I should have nabbed it from her while I had the chance, but alas. I was much too merciful and generous to do such a thing at the time.”
I waited for the punchline. None came.
Queen Mydusia went on with a bit less flair. A bit more irritation.
“I want you to kill my sister within the next year, General Steeler. Her and all the mutants she’s experimenting with. They are abominations to our kind.”
The queen began to turn away, but my blood had seized up in every vein.
“What... Your Majesty?” I tacked on. I could feel the tattoo writhing along my back, like gears and cogs clicking into place as the power of her command washed over me.
But I couldn’t have heard right. Couldn’t have understood what that command was.
Dyonisia had been raising an army for the last five hundred years, yes, but any regular faerie from ten thousand miles away could see that they were harmless.
Innocent. Blacksmiths and cooks and farmers and builders.
Not soldiers. Even the exiled ones would never pose a real threat against the queen who currently brewed with a hundred or more stolen powers.
Yet through the mirror, Her Majesty’s lips stayed upturned beneath the bottom of the veil, as if my disbelief had seeped right through the glass. She leaned forward, until I could see the whites of her fangs glinting in that flickering palace light.
“You will bring me Dyonisia’s head within the next year, General Steeler. And within that same time frame, you will also kill every branded citizen under her rule.”
The tattoo came to a shuddering halt, the queen’s command sinking into my skin and settling there like an elaborate scar that I would never be able to smooth over.
Kill. Every. Branded. Citizen.
The entire Esholian Institute. My family in Hallow’s Perch. Rayna’s friends and fathers.
Rayna herself.
No. No. No.
Anyone but Rayna.
My knees buckled. My power shivered around me, darkness tugging on every bone in my body to try to help me escape... but there was nowhere to go where this binding magic wouldn’t follow. Not even the Cosmos. Not even that sacred place between stars.
As if to prove it, I felt the invisible hand of the oath push against my head, forcing me to bow before this wretched excuse for a faerie queen.
Go fuck yourself, I tried to say, but my tongue wouldn’t obey me. Instead, a different set of words left my lips, as if Fate herself had pried them out of me one by one.
And the queen of Sorronia smiled when I said them.
“As you wish, Your Majesty.”