Chapter 55 #2
I raised my dagger-arm, caught Liora’s sword on the edge of it. The dagger sliced through her blade, and the end of it clattered to the grass with a hiss.
I ducked under her, spun toward the Dawnmaker. She landed with her back to me, the half-sword still in her grip.
Above us, the sky cracked. Not the soft bellow of thunder; it sounded like glass shattering.
The first drop fell on my hand. Liquid gold—gleaming acid. A strange light played over the land, half clouds and half sun.
More droplets fell, and the blood on the grass smoked. Liora turned toward me with a lowered brow. Her beautiful platemail hissed where the gleaming acid hit, and she tore off her helmet; a golden braid fell over her shoulder. Behind us, Iseris let out a sudden wail.
“What have you done?” Liora’s voice was soft, disturbed. “What monster are you?”
Fear shone naked in her eyes. She looked on at a stranger—a creature she couldn’t comprehend. She had hardened toward me. Now, forever.
I can’t let her live.
“Your veyre should have let you be dragged down to the underworld.” She began to crouch as though to kneel. As though to bend the knee. Her face lowered—
She leapt. Half-sword raised. Mouth open, canines visible, eyes bugging. Not the Dawnmaker now, but a desperate woman. Her world had been reduced to two truths: death or life.
I could be the monster. I could be her.
I stepped into her leap. Feralis made me fast, moved my arm so quickly her eyes didn’t even register my motion. I raised the dagger like any other blade, sliced it through her exposed neck. Through skin, viscera, bone, all the way to the other side.
Liora’s body left the ground in one piece. It came down in two.
I caught her head by the braid as the rest of her slumped to the ground beside me. Her mouth hung slack, a twitching rictus, every part of her that had been Liora now dangling from my grip. Her insides dripped to the grass—more blood soaking into the earth.
Theo had once told me that a severed head could live for ten seconds. He claimed he’d seen it at a guillotine execution—the lips moving, making words.
I turned the head toward the other two queens until the beautiful blue eyes, still wide open, swung around.
Twenty paces away, Iseris had thrown her hands over her head. Acid ate through her pink hair. She hunched under the rain, still on one knee, barely cognizant of Maeronyx or me.
But Maeronyx knew pain—a great deal of it. She stood facing me, shoulders back, staring not at Liora’s head but into my eyes. Her fingers didn’t shake; her lips didn’t quiver as the rain hissed off her pauldrons and helmet. Like me, she knew pain was temporary.
Maeronyx’s true fear stood before her.
I stepped forward, and Liora’s head bobbed with me.
“Kneel.”
Maeronyx remained frozen, statue-still for so long I wondered if I would have to cut her down just as I had the summer queen.
Then, her armor clinked. The knee of her plate mail bent, and when it touched the earth every plate on her glorious ebony armor seemed to groan. She set down her sword. Her gloved fist touched the ground, and still she stared at me.
Dark defiance smoldered in her eyes. A spark of winter fury.
She lowered her chin, slowly, until the top of her helmet faced me.
A smart woman. More practical, in the end, than Liora. But I’d never be free of her malice; I’d never stop having to watch the border of our lands.
If it meant I didn’t have to kill her, I’d take that. Because while it felt fucking wonderful to cut through Liora’s skin, muscle, bone, I’d already broken the wheel. I didn’t need to deprive two other courts of their queens.
Behind Maeronyx, Iseris went on crying. Until, finally, the winter queen snarled: “Bend the knee, you fucking ninny, lest she sees fit to end your whimpering for good.”
Maeronyx’s words must have penetrated; Iseris’s cries stopped. Her gaze flicked to the winter queen, then me, then Liora’s dangling head.
Iseris should never have been crowned; one like her was never meant to rule. Perhaps she had the most power in the spring court, but she didn’t have the disposition. Only by the wheel’s turning had she ever managed to rise.
At least Liora had died a queen. Now, before me, Iseris bent her head like a scared child.
I stepped up to the two of them, until I knew Maeronyx could see the toes of my boots even with her eyes on the ground.
“The queen trials are done. Now, in a hundred years—forever. No longer will young fae be slaughtered for queens. No longer will queens ascend on the backs of others.”
Beneath me, Maeronyx hissed. “You defy the gods’ law.”
“Then I welcome the gods’ intervention.”
Around us, the rain went on falling. The ground went on steaming. No cry from the dawn hawk. No thundering of stag hooves. No flapping of pegasus wings or padding of panther paws. Nothing but acid rain and three queens under it—and only one on her feet.
“Until then, I declare a new law.”
Maeronyx didn’t speak. Iseris went on softly crying.
“A queen rises or falls by her own power.” I dropped the Dawnmaker’s head in front of the two of them. It rolled once and stopped, face up to the sky. “She meets the fate she deserves.”