Chapter 33 #2
She stamps her hooves, snorting loud. Trying to deny it. Willing me to take the words back.
I’m so sorry, I say, reaching for her head.
She jerks upright, breathing hard. Then, acceptance breaks, and she tosses her head up, letting out a sound somewhere between a howl and a cry that rattles through the city with the weight of her grief.
I know. I hold in my own grief as I fold forward and nuzzle her neck. I know. I loved him, too.
We stay like that, girl and horse, while our mourning finds a mirror in one another’s pain.
Then, holding his horn, I swing onto her bare back, legs fitting around her like a well-worn pair of trousers. He wouldn’t want us to cry. He’d want us to fight.
I click my heels. She hesitates, but then strides forward. Solid and sure.
A tribute to him.
As we ride through the broken city, people take a knee, lowering their heads to me. Bakers and soldiers. Children and tavernkeepers. Mothers and prostitutes.
But not only them: The street dogs stop and stretch their front paws in a bow. Chickadees swarm on every lamp post, tipping down their beaks. Every carriage horse lowers its head in honor.
I keep my chin high, bolstered by their devotion, which shines on me like the first rays of dawn, warm and welcoming and so full of love I could burst.
The fence surrounding Hekkelveld Castle is all but gone—either destroyed in one of Tòrr’s solarium blasts or from my raging flood. Myst strides straight into the courtyard, where puddles still hold flopping fish.
No guards stop us.
No gates stand in our way.
I dismount and briefly press my forehead to hers, Tòrr’s broken horn clutched tightly in my hands.
His sacrifice made it all possible, my pretty girl, I whisper in my head. He won’t be forgotten.
She bows her head.
We’re two souls who have lost someone.
A girl and her horse.
Best friends.
I draw in a long, fortifying breath, tuck his horn into my belt, then step through the shattered archway into Raven Hall.
They’re waiting for me.
Six of them—my so-called brothers and sisters. My father. The gods of the known world, seated on thrones they’ve used their powers to forge from the wreckage: bones and twisted metal.
Vale nods, his smile heavy and mirthless. “Daughter.”
“Father.” My voice is deep, almost as if the earth itself is speaking.
I focus on Woudix instead, slouched in the farthest throne on the right. Hawk is curled obediently against his shin, as always.
My gaze catches on the hound, and something cracks inside me. If it had been me tasked with her care, I would’ve given her a peaceful end beneath the roots of an old tree, her soul returned gently to the earth. Not this. Not an eternity prowling half-rotted and enslaved to a god’s will.
Woudix sits too still as he gazes steadily back at me—but I catch the twitch of his right eye.
He’s afraid.
I walk toward him slowly, deliberately, the light beneath my skin pulsing with new brilliance.
“Monoceros blood,” I say, raising my arms so they can all see the fey glow through my veins. “I’m the first fae ever to drink it, isn’t that right? I don’t recall any monoceroses dying for any of you.”
Artain’s mouth curls into a sneer, an insult poised on his lips, but Woudix answers instead.
With violence.
Black fey explodes from his palms, a cloud of ash and soot surging toward me.
I raise my hand, my own fey bursting outward in a wave of silver so bright it cuts through the dark like a sunburst.
I leap aside just in time as a blade whistles past me—Thracia’s glass-edged dagger, thrown with inhuman precision.
It shatters against the pillar behind me into a spray of mirrored shards.
Then, an arrow zooms at me from Artain’s bow, but I twist out of the way in time, ducking and it only grazes my arm. I look down at the already-healing wound.
With Basten’s strength in my bones, Rian’s devotion burning in my blood, and Tòrr’s final heartbeat alive in my chest, I rise to face them again.
“You thought you could tame me,” I tell Woudix, my voice barbed. “With lies. With mimicry of friendship.”
He leans forward, hands tented, and then slowly tilts his head toward Iyre beside him. “It was Iyre’s idea. She saw Basten’s memories before she consumed them—she realized how much true companionship meant to you. That friendship would hold more power than threats.”
Iyre smiles cruelly, drumming her long nails on her throne. “You were so easy to manipulate.”
“But Basten saw through you,” I say steadily, looking between them. “Through both of you.” I hesitate, regret lacing my voice. “Even when I couldn’t.”
Vale’s thundering voice commands all our attention. “I take it your memories are back, daughter.”
I turn to him and nod, slow and vicious. “They are. And there’s one in particular I recall in blistering detail.” I point a long finger at Woudix. “I remember how he can open any door and have it lead to the underrealm. Woudix, I advise you to open it now.”
Then I raise my arms, head tipped back.
The earth trembles.
A deep groan splits the mosaic tiles of Raven Hall as the floor beneath the gods fractures. Cracks spread outward, glowing blue from beneath. Brimfire magma boils up from the chasms, burning a sapphire glow.
I call to it.
Guide it.
Shape it with the fluid movements of my fingers.
With a sweep of my arms, I forge the lava-like brimfire into columns—massive coils around the six gods in the shape of a cage.
Before the cage seals, Woudix shoots to his feet in an attempt to flee, but the brimfire strikes him, driving him back.
Vale lifts a hand, blasting his fey against the brimfire—but volcanic stone absorbs energy.
Artain draws another arrow, but the brimfire columns are too tight for him to pull back his arrow.
They’re trapped.
The cage closes, its bars cooling into shimmering blue-black obsidian, but still hot enough to sizzle against immortal flesh.
Woudix grips the bars, silver blood hissing as it drips from his palms. “You think you can cage gods?”
“No,” I say softly. “Not forever. But I can delay you.”
“I’ll call my resurrected bodies to come break the bars.”
I pause, meeting each of their eyes in turn, before continuing. “It will take time for your dead puppets to free you. Hours, maybe. And we all know there’s a simpler way out.”
I step back, gaze sweeping over their trapped forms. With deliberate movements, I pick up the broken vestibule door, forgotten on the wrecked foyer floor, and drag it over. I shove it between the bars.
Iyre and Thracia have to scramble out if it’s way as it clatters to the floor.
I point to the door on the floor.
“Banish yourselves to the underrealm,” I say. “Or burn.”
I grab Tòrr’s horn from my leather belt and thrust it high, into the beam of sunlight from the broken ceiling.
Solarium—maybe the only thing that I’ve seen the fae afraid of. While it might not deal them a deathblow, it will wound them. Maybe even in ways they can never recover from.
And I know them.
They’d rather surrender with their pretty faces intact than risk a permanent scar.
Artain scowls but crouches down, reaching for the doorknob. “Woudix, brother. Open the fucking door. We can continue this discussion with our sister at a later date.”
I smile at Artain in mock sweetness. “You always were the most vain.”
“Woudix!” Artain prompts.
The God of Death’s lip curls back over his incisors, refusing to budge.
“Do it,” Vale hisses, low and impatient. “We’ll play my daughter’s little game, for now.”
Woudix’s jaw tenses, but he doesn’t dare disobey a direct order. He crouches next to Artain, whispering low in an ancient language, and the edges of the door begin to glow with black iridescent light.
Artain gives me one final scowl. “Be seeing you again soon, darling,” he hisses as he twists the doorknob. “Banishment to the underrealm is hardly a life sentence.”
He jerks the door open. Instead of broken floor tiles beneath, it’s a yawning portal now, earthen stairs descending into a darkened realm.
I stare him down, unblinking, the solarium horn high in my fist.
He descends the stairs into the wavering portal, which is windless, dark, cold as a grave.
Woudix stands next, leaning close to the bars. “One day,” he purrs, “You’ll join me in my underrealm. Maybe not for a thousand years—but you will.”
He takes a step down but stops when he realizes Hawk is not at his side. Instead, she’s looking at me. Torn ears raised. Big eyes wavering. My heart clenches for her—but he taps his thigh, and she turns to descend with him.
One by one, they leave.
Samaur, grinning ghoulishly, says before leaving “Remember—this is far from over. You struck a bargain to provide us with games, theatrics, and recreations of legends worthy of our stature. Your Fae Games ended halfway through, but don’t fear.
We’ll plan something truly memorable for the conclusion—a new game.
Something no one’s ever seen before. Something to be written about in the history books for ages. ”
Thracia follows him through the door, looking my tattered gown up and down, unimpressed.
Iyre follows.
Finally, it’s only Vale. He stands tall behind the brimfire bars, towering over me, and I swear I see a cold vein of pride in his eyes.
Almost…the thrill of a challenge.
“Enjoy your peace, daughter,” he says. “While you have it.”
He joins the others, taking slow, heavy steps like the clatter of a funeral bell—and then the underrealm door smashes closed.
I’m alone in the cavernous Raven Hall. The glow beneath the door cuts out, and now it’s just a splintered old door sitting on top of tiles.
My legs give out.
I crash to the broken tiles, which were once such a beautiful tribute to humanity’s virtues, and cradle Tòrr’s horn against my chest.
I don’t rest like that long before I hear heavy boots on the castle steps.
“Sabine!”
I whirl around to see Basten charging into Raven Hall. He pulls me to my feet, wrapping his arms around me so fiercely I can barely breathe, but I don’t care. I squeeze him back just as viciously, sobbing against his shoulder.
“Basten. You’re okay.”
He kisses the top of my head, messy, desperate caresses like he’s afraid someone is going to tear me away from him. He takes my cheeks between his hands, tilting my head to look at him.
“Are you hurt?” he asks.
I shake my head. Physically, I’m in prime condition. My fae blood has healed every tiny scratch, repaired my bruises, and restored the strength in my muscles.
But my heart aches as I clutch Tòrr’s horn.
“One final thing,” I whisper, and stagger to the tall doorway of Raven Hall, with the twin carvings of the words brAVERY and VIRTUE still standing—one of the few unbroken parts of the castle.
I glance back at Basten. “You have the fae needle?”
He takes it out of his pocket, carefully wrapped in a blood-stained handkerchief. “Stolen from the exhibit hall, as you asked.”
I set to work stitching apart the fabric of space along the stone edges of the castle’s entry. I don’t rush, remembering all the times I’ve used this tool before, and exactly how to set the portal’s opening point to the exact place I wish to reach.
When I’ve finished, the view through the archway—the broken castle courtyard with the destroyed fence—falls away.
In its place, Basten and I stare at a river valley.
This one, however, holds no glistening lake, no leafy trees.
It’s a shell of what it once was.
Bones and rot.
I set Tòrr’s horn down carefully at my feet and press my hands together. I draw in a breath, letting the ancient knowledge his monoceros blood awakened in me settle into my core.
Slowly, my silver fey spreads from my feet, along the broken mosaic tiles, bleeding through the portal into the poisoned Lunden Valley.
As my fey crackles over the wrecked earth, grass sprouts in its wake. The barren lake gleams once more with blue shimmering waves, as a trout jumps with a splash. Leaves burst to life on the skeletal tree branches, welcoming the birds that sweep in to settle there.
I turn to Basten, leaning into his steadying weight, with tears in my eyes.
“I can’t bring back those who died,” I whisper. “The cursed souls Woudix manipulated into terrorizing the city. But it’s a thriving, living valley again for everyone who lost their homes. Not just the refugees in Norhelm. The birds who lost their nests. The animals who had to flee their dens.”
He cups my cheek in his hand, gazing into my eyes with awe and love—and a touch of unease. “The Fae Court isn’t going to let this go. They’re going to come back at us with every army they can gather, fae and mortal alike.”
I let out a long breath. “I know. I’d hoped for peace. For a balance between fae and the mortal world. But now I see that I have to choose—and I’ll choose this every time. Humanity. Nature. Animals.” I look into his eyes. “You.”
He presses a kiss to my forehead and lets it linger, flooding me with something more than his devotion.
With love, always.
“I choose you, too,” he says. “Together. Always. Against any damn storm coming our way.”