Chapter Fifty-Eight
I slam into wood, heart pounding, mouth dry. Blinking, I take in my surroundings, a grand, cavernous hall with gilded columns and a painting of Lucan’s Tree across the ceiling. I have been here before, knelt here during the coronation.
My blood freezes as I realize what I am sitting on.
The throne.
Made from the trunk of Lucan’s Tree.
I leap forward, jumping off the seat. A figure melts from the side of a column, and I jump.
“Death!”
“Faerie.” The figure approaches, dark cloak trailing behind him. “What happened to you?”
I glance down at the sopping wet shirt, the cuts and bruises that mar my skin. The palace rumbles, deep and violent, as if the very earth it’s built upon is splitting. I grip the back of the throne for support, then rip my hand away as if stung.
Because it hums.
The throne hums with power from Lucan’s Tree, and I think of the hours Maxian spent lounging on it right before his testament during the coronation, when he made every attendant bow to him.
“The king,” Death says. “What has happened?”
What has happened? I laugh, shivering. The palace shakes again. What has happened?
Everything. The fae king isn’t a fae. The myth of Lucan’s Tree is real, and it is severed, used for the chair on which I sat.
“They cut down Lucan’s Tree and left it as a tortured stump in the middle of the Pith,” I say.
The executioner startles. “Oh?”
“That’s all you have to say?”
“I have felt the screams at night.”
The building quakes, thunders, as if a mountain is coming down.
“The king is on his way to kill me.”
“Will he change his mind like he did with Lila?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Then let’s kill you first so that he cannot.”
I lock gazes with the executioner, and his eyes flicker from amber to violet to amber beneath his hood. From my father’s eyes to Maxian’s to my father’s once more.
“Your fear is shifting,” he says. “Yet you hesitate.”
“Any creature would.”
“Three months ago, your soul ached to be taken. Now you sit on the throne with power pouring from your eyes. Golden, like the king.”
Or perhaps he is golden like me. Like a faerie.
I redirect. “Why didn’t you take my soul?”
“I do not believe in early deaths.”
“Only late ones?”
“I do not believe in death at all.”
The cloaked figure steps onto the dais. Only then do I realize I again grip the throne.
“You jest,” I say, moving back.
“No,” he says. “At least, not in the sense that the other Houses understand it.”
The tapestry of the earthly plane thunders to the floor, slapping against the marble tiles.
“He grows closer,” I say. “I do not have time for riddles.”
“Then maybe a short, simple truth. Before the Dark Rebellion, the Houses went by different names. My House was known as the House of Cycles.”
My brows raise. “What of the other Houses?”
“House of Reign was known for Control, House of Healing for Change, and House of Illusion for Creation. The four elements of magic.”
How do we know so little about magic?
Because it’s easier for them if we do not know, Kass had said.
“Well, I don’t feel like being cycled into nothing tonight, but thanks for the offer,” I say.
“You could always take the Desert Walk.”
“So, either death by king or death by desert?” My gaze falls to the platform I stand on, pristine, untouched, as if my friend did not die by a halfling’s hand a season ago. Only now I realize it was the wrong halfling who is to blame. It is the king.
“The Desert Walk does not necessarily mean you die.”
“Whom does the king see when he looks at you?”
The executioner pauses, tilting his head. “I don’t know. You would have to ask him.”
The palace thunders again.
“What’s the plan?” the executioner asks.
I grip the throne tighter, letting the energy pulse up and into my arm. It is strong and solid and lovely. Then I maneuver in front and take a seat. My body trembles, but I sink further into the magic as it emboldens my genius.
“I’m going to wait,” I say. “What of you?”
“I will watch, and if I can, I will help.”
The grand doors slam open, flying off their hinges.
I grip the arms of the throne, one hand sore and bruised.
The natural magic thrums behind me, a low, constant current.
A silhouette stands at the threshold, light spilling around him.
Maxian prowls into the space, dragging behind him something long and thin.
The Golden Whip.
I tense, clutching the throne. Even Death, from his column to the right side of the dais, sucks in a breath.
Maxian stops short, halfway down the aisle. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“Sitting,” I say. “I’m on my break.”
“Get. Up.”
It’s not just fury pulsing across his face—but fear. He knows I can feel the power beneath me. He fears what that could do to my magic. Why? Even as a halfling, he holds more power than most.
Maxian cracks the whip, its tail slamming into a column. A chunk of stone breaks off, smashes against the floor.
“Avery,” he grits out, stalking closer.
“Yes?”
He pauses at the base of the altar, adjusting his grip on the handle. If he whips me now, he could destroy the throne, cut off the power boosts he gains in front of the public so that he may perform his tricks and testaments.
No, he will not do that. He is not willing to risk the facade just yet, afraid that the thing beneath it is weak and hollow. If he wants to whip me, he will have to remove me from the throne first.
“Get off,” he growls.
“No, thank you, my king.”
He takes a step forward.
The throne shifts.
Maxian stumbles back, mouth agape.
The throne unfurls.
Roots slither out from under the chair and wind around my ankles, my arms, securing me to the spot. My pulse flutters as panic threatens, but I force myself to keep calm.
Thank you, I tell it.
The only reply is a tightening of the plants around me.
“Call it back,” the king snaps.
“I didn’t do this.”
Reign magic tumbles through my mind, encasing my own genius, trapping it. I shout in protest, and thorns protrude from the roots that surround me. I suck in a breath, but they do not come close to my skin. They point toward the king.
“I don’t think they like the whip,” I say.
“I don’t care what it thinks,” Maxian snaps, but his eyes fall on the thorns once more, the Reign magic tumbling away from my mind and body. Even if he forces me to remove myself, the throne will not allow it, not without damage.
The king takes another step forward.
“If you lace me away, I’ll just lace back.”
“You can’t.”
“I already did. And besides, if you harm the Tree, won’t it stop producing sap?” I ask.
He meets my eyes. “It depends.”
“On?”
“How much it can take.”
Maxian advances. I press my back into the wood, the plant pulsing beneath me. It seems to cushion me, envelop me a little more. The roots tighten around my limbs, and although my heart pounds, although fear curls in my stomach, I keep breathing.
He discards the whip, kneels before me.
My breath catches. He can’t be conceding already, can he?
The king’s arm draws back, something silver flashing in the light. I realize it too late: the diamond dagger. I squirm.
The executioner steps forward. “Wait—”
Maxian plunges the dagger into the roots around my thigh.
A scream erupts, a thousand wailing voices, the howls filling the throne room. The Tree shrieks, and the executioner drops to his knees, covering his ears. My magic shudders, my throat raw, as the screeches rip from my tongue.
Maxian begins to saw.
The room wavers, the squealing and squawking higher and deeper than any sound I have ever heard. Blood drips from the king’s ears.
Still, he hacks at the roots. Pain splinters through my entire leg and it is as if he is slicing me open and yanking out my entrails. He may as well be.
The roots around my thigh retreat.
He starts on the ones around my ankle. I reach for my genius, but it spasms in circles in my mind, the shrieking tearing holes in its wings.
The diamond dagger clatters to the ground, splattered in red and green liquid. He severed the roots from my leg. Now he reaches for my calf. I kick at him, but he grabs hold and yanks.
“Stop!” I say. “Stop that—”
Maxian jerks on my leg again. “Let go!”
“I can’t, it’s the Tree—”
Maxian wrenches with all his might.
Something pops in my hip. White-hot pain erupts in my socket, shooting down my leg. The world fades, darkness pulling me under. It would be a mercy, it truly would, I think, as the leg goes limp.
If I die, do not let my body go, I tell the Tree.
If the king is determined to rip me apart, to kill me, then I shall go down in the worst place possible.
Let him try to explain why there is a faerie corpse on his throne.
Let me stay here, decaying, rotting, staining his power.
And if he chooses to keep the chair in the end, then he must brush aside my bones to sit on it and be reminded of who the throne chose.
Just as how he lay awake at night in his bed, remembering who his lover preferred.
“Stay with us,” Death says beside me then. “My king, you dislocated—”
“I don’t care,” he snaps.
“Sir, this is wrong—”
“Shut your mouth, and do not interfere.”
The plane grumbles. The executioner stiffens. Then, in choppy movements, he steps down from the dais, his body under Reign magic.
Maxian grabs the dagger again. I take a breath. I am on my own—and I will have to take more of this, much more, before my body gives out.
He stabs the roots around my other thigh. My body jerks as the Tree yowls again, the sound piercing and sharp and deep. The king grits his teeth and saws, blood dripping from his ears, from mine.
Something flickers over his shoulder, at the other end of the hall. Something shiny, silver—
The dagger flies from his grasp.
The king staggers back in shock, the Tree’s tears abating. My forehead is slick with sweat. I am cold.
The dagger scrapes down the aisle, stopping halfway. At the end of the hall, in a blood-red gown, stands Kassandra. Her expression is frigid, and she lifts her chin, striding toward us.