Chapter 51
Finnian
Amarantha knows she doesn’t have the true Stone.
It’s a feeling in the core of who I am. Twisting and twisting and twisting like a knife. From the inside out. My ribs ache with someone else’s rage.
Rage I cannot escape. Just as I can’t escape anything that comes next, and I have no reference point for what that could even be.
All I know is the Seelie sigil on my shoulder throbs.
But she isn’t summoning me. And that is why I taste fear on my tongue. That is why my nerves hum incessantly with warning.
And the Crown.
It whispers of paths spiraling and merging and missing before converging.
“Kestra.” Ash stands so fast her chair scrapes. The color drains out of her cheeks in a single pulse. Her hair curls around herself like a blanket of protection. The green strands at her roots brightening to a sage before turning emerald. “What happened?”
The tavern grows silent. Every eye and every ear on Kestra.
She steps inside. The doorway swallows her. Kestra has never looked smaller. Her dark hair is pulled back, braided and ready for war. And the leathers she wears? Some spots are splashed with blood. Some of the leather is ripped and torn.
Which begs the question. What creature can rip leather?
Her eyes dart to her brother, who takes one step toward her. His face goes dark. Not unusual. Then his jaw locks and his nostrils flare and he registers, in real time, that the blood on her leathers is hers.
I don’t have siblings. I can’t register what it’s like. But I’ve known Kieran for a long time. And though his sister isn’t someone he talks about often, it isn’t because he doesn’t love her.
It’s because he loves her that he remains quiet. He values and respects her more than anyone I’ve ever seen him regard.
And right now there is a stillness in him I have only seen twice before. Both times someone died for it.
“Amarantha knows about the Stone.” Kestra turns to Tiana.
Tiana stands tall to my left. Leaning against the sticky bar top, her elbows resting against the ledge. Her face is composed. Only her violet eyes move, tracking Kestra across the room.
“It was only a matter of time.” She sighs, pushing off the ledge. “How mad is she?”
“She razed the Dark Forest near the Seelie grounds.” Kestra finally steps fully into the tavern. Behind her, before the door shuts, Jadeve and the other exiles file in.
“Impossible.” Tiana steps forward.
“Possible I’m afraid.” Kestra walks in, her boots tapping on the hardwood. She grabs a beer off the counter, drinks half of it, and slumps in a chair.
Threads of possible futures sear through my synapses, they branch off Kestra’s words like cracks in ice. Most of them end in fire. A few end in something I can’t look at directly, something the Crown shows me in flashes and then pulls away like even it doesn’t want me to see the whole picture.
And one. One thin thread barely visible. Three queens standing barefoot on broken stone.
I hold onto that one so hard my teeth ache.
“Unplanned—”
“Obviously.” Tiana snorts.
“She went to remove the Stone, to bring it to the Academy and summon Ash.” Kestra glances at Tiana before refocusing. “She was going to use a fake. But instead, she found a fake.”
“Damn good fake,” Tiana mumbles under her breath.
“She detonated. The antechamber shattered. And the Dark Forest burned to the ground within miles of the castle.”
“My forest?” Badb stands. Her face twitches and shudders as though it isn’t sure whether to stay here or there. “I didn’t feel it. Peculiar.”
“Because there was no time to feel anything.” Kestra looses a teary laugh. “It was fast, it was too fast. We were too close. And—” she closes her eyes, tears dripping from her long lashes. Her pain moves through the room.
“Razed is a poor word.” Badb opens her eyes. “Amarantha went nuclear. This is good.”
“Nothing about Amarantha going nuclear is good,” I interrupt. “Yes, she is volatile, but most of that? Was held in check. This was her breaking point and that changes the story.” I stare down Kestra. “What is she planning?”
“Planning?” Tiana snaps. “Planning? Poor choice of words, Finnian.”
“Noted.” I sigh. “Amarantha has made too many plays. We just need to outsmart her.”
“How, how the fuck do we outsmart her?” Tiana challenges.
Every person in the room stops breathing at the same time. No one wants to be the first to start again.
Amarantha didn’t just lose control. She burned her own court to the ground. And a woman who burns her own home down isn’t following a plan anymore. She’s just burning.
Which means whatever we thought we had time for? We don’t.
“We have the Treasures.” I turn to Dagda. “Don’t we?”
His burly body gives a soft little shake I’m deeming as laughter. He reaches under the bar and grabs the Cauldron. “Come here, little guardian.”
“Ain’t nothing little about me.” Orion gruffs, flexing his hands, then holds one up. He swings around dramatically to point at Morrigan. “How’s this work? You know the Stone, the Treasures.”
“The Stone?” Morrigan steps toward Kieran with her hand outstretched.
He holds the Stone a beat too long before his fingers open.
“The theory,” I say, something hot climbing the back of my throat as the Crown pulses forth on my head. No hiding it now. “Is we surround Ash. Call upon the Treasures. And she steps on it.”
“And what the fuck kind of fairy tale bullshit is that?” Pepper crosses her arms, magic literally dripping off of her. “Step on a stone.” She makes a whooshing noise. “Magical fairy saving on a stone.”
Ash lets out a small garbled laugh.
“The Stone is the last Treasure.” I laugh at her cousin. “When she steps on it, barefoot, her body absorbs the Stone. Just as we absorbed the Treasures.”
“That’s even weirder.” Sabina points at me with an arrow.
That one is a little unhinged.
Fuck it. They’re all unhinged.
“Let’s do it.” Ash, already barefoot, grabs the stone and tosses it on the floor. “Dagda.”
“We’re doing this now?” Kestra asks, standing too fast and causing her chair to clatter behind her. “Do you know what will happen?”
“Not sure anyone does.” I frown turning to Dagda. “This is your creation.”
“Everything is mine.” He grins, all cocky. Then he rolls his eyes. “I wasn’t trying to make things complicated. Just trying to make them true. Royalty proof.”
“Well, it’s been a gods damn wild goose chase,” Orion mutters.
“Potato. Potato.” Dagda waves him off.
“You said that the exact same way,” I point out.
“In theory.” Dagda ignores me. “When you step on the Stone, you announce who you are. Your true name. And your title. The Stone accepts it or it doesn’t, along with the magic of the other Treasures. If accepted it will sink beneath your skin. And you are the true holder of the Stone. For now.”
“What does that mean?” Ash frowns.
“You are but one court, Ashlynne,” Dagda points out. “Kestra and Tiana must also prove their title.”
“So we break the stone in three,” Ash states, picking it up and holding it in her hand.
“Whoa!” Dagda leaps over the bar. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going to break it in three. And we are going to end all of this in secret right the fuck now.
We take back power in secret. I don’t give a fuck if Fae think it needs to be ceremonial.
It’s now or never.” Ash leaps out of his way.
“I have a whole court to wake up. Tiana has a court burnt to a crisp. And Kestra? The Unseelie? No one has heard from Moros and that’s a bad, bad sign. ”
“Gimme. I’ll bite it.” Vanessa launches herself at Ash and they go tumbling over a table.
I rush across the bar to the tangle of limbs. Ash is laughing, sitting up, the stone sits broken by her fall.
In three pieces. “Fate agreed,” Ash says.
“You broke my stone.” Dagda looks surprised even for him.
“Tiana? Kestra?” Ash glances at them.
“Honestly, I agree with Ash.” Tiana toes off her sandals and Kestra is already on her second boot. “Fuck everyone else.”
“I like these queens,” Macha says, chomping on what looks like a bone.
They stand in a circle each with a foot on a stone.
I step forward toward Kieran and Orion.
Orion grips the Cauldron with both hands and shoves it into his chest like a man trying to put his own heart back.
The sound he makes. I don’t have a word for it.
Not pain. Not relief. Something between the two that lives in a place language hasn’t reached yet.
His knees buckle for half a second before he catches himself.
His gaze flares orange-bright. The heat rolling off him doubles, triples, and my shirt singes at the collar.
“Little guardian,” Dagda murmurs, and his voice is the softest I’ve ever heard it. “Welcome back.”
Orion doesn’t answer. He just stands there breathing like he’s remembering how.
There’s a sadness to the air that I think only the three of us can feel.
Kieran’s jaw is set in that way that means he’s already said goodbye to something and doesn’t plan on talking about it.
Orion’s gaze is bright. Almost feral. The part of him that was always too wild for any court has finally been let out of its cage.
And me. I keep waiting for the grief to hit and instead there’s this lightness in my chest that I don’t have a name for. No longer Seelie. No longer hers.
Wild Court.
I’ve never said those words about myself before. They taste the way a first meal tastes after a long fast.
My entire life existed in the Seelie Court. A home that never truly felt like home. A place to go when the days were lonely and the nights sleepless. Even though it never truly felt like one? It was mine. And now? To sever it.
I wouldn’t have it any other way.
“My Cauldron.” Orion holds his hands out.
“For now,” Dagda says. “One court must not own all the power.”
I tilt my head. The Crown whispers.
“It’s time.” I exhale, knowing one day I’ll need to find someone worthy of carrying this. But not today. Today it’s mine and it’s going to help me protect the people standing in this room.
I reach for Orion’s hand and his warm fingers close around mine. Steady and sure. The Cauldron hums through him and into me and the Crown answers, harmonics layering on harmonics until the air between us vibrates.
Then I reach for Kieran.
His fingers are right there. The bond mark pulses at his wrist. His shadows reach back toward me like they know what’s coming even if he doesn’t.
An inch. Maybe less.
And then I’m gone. Simply fucking gone.
The air tastes like ash. Not her. Actual ash. Smoke and char and something sweet underneath that I don’t want to identify.
My hand is still reaching for fingers that aren’t there and the absence of Orion’s warmth against my palm is so sudden and so complete that for a moment I think I’ve lost the hand entirely.
“On your knees.”
Amarantha. She’s summoned me, stealing my last breathe of hope.
But everything is so much worse than I thought. Her eyes are now pure white. The once violet bled out all over her eyes like lightning strikes. There’s something fundamentally wrong with her.
“I said on your knees.”
I focus on her. On what’s behind her. The Seelie Court that used to gleam like captured sunlight is gone. Charred walls where golden arches stood. Marble cracked and blackened. The perpetual twilight replaced by a kaleidoscope of colors from a failing sun.
And the bodies.
I count them. Because I can’t not. I count and I catalogue and I file because that is how I have survived every terrible thing that has ever happened to me.
I stop counting at thirty. Not because there aren’t more but because somewhere between twenty-eight and twenty-nine my mind just quietly says no and refuses to go higher.
She killed her own people.
“On your knees,” she breathes for a third time.
The lack of venom in her voice is somehow worse.
Hands behind me shove and my kneecaps crack against marble that’s still warm. I don’t think about why it’s warm. I can’t afford to think about why it’s warm.
When I look up it’s to Davis standing beside Amarantha like he belongs there. Like he’s always belonged there.
I wish I were surprised. I’m not. The man is a cockroach in a suit and cockroaches always survive the fire. That’s the whole point of being a cockroach.
“Finnian Willowheart.” Amarantha’s voice shifts into the formal cadence of court proceedings and the absurdity of it almost makes me laugh.
A trial?
She’s holding a trial. In front of thirty bodies on a floor still warm from burning them.
“You’re on trial for treason.”
That’s not good.
Especially because the only one left to judge me? Is her.