They continue to speak as though thousands aren’t listening and waiting with bated breath, the coin still in the air as the entire castle waits for the outcome of the toss.
“I’ve heard your tales of grandeur, the propaganda you fed the covens to take their Maidens and twist them into these creatures, the witchlings you took from our forests and never returned. I know it all and more. I’m here, Kharl Balzog, to deliver your fate.”
My eyes narrow, and footsteps sound behind me as Tauron finally reaches my section of the wall, standing beside me with the bow in his hands as he watches the interaction. His gaze lands on the witch and gets stuck there as he witnesses the fearsome power that emanates from her, the shield holding strong around us all and pulsing with that same power.
“My fate? Good sister, I don't have one. The Seer delivered it to me, and I killed her for it, then I rewrote my fate to my own liking. Even the Fates themselves bow before me. If you think yourself strong enough to stand against me for the sake of the high fae, then come down here to face me as hundreds have before, all of them now nothing but ash.”
She lifts her arms, the sleeves of her robe parting at the slits that run up to her elbows. She holds her hands out before her as a small pinprick of light shines from each of her elbows for a fraction of a moment, fast enough that it could be confused for a trick of the early morning light, except for thepopsof power that pierce the ear and make way for a sword to appear in one hand and a long scepter in the other, a ribbon tied through the twisted wood and a raw emerald glowing at the top within the clutches of the oak staff.
She holds each of them with the calm confidence of not just a soldier but a warrior, trained to fight with magic and blade. Finally, something close to apprehension worries at Kharl's brow, his lips curling up as he stares at that scepter.
The witch nods, grim death in her eyes. “I know your fate, Kharl Balzog. To die at the hand of a Ravenswyrd witch, generations of neutrality and tradition broken for your demise. Your fate is a death toll calling.”
My heart stops dead in my chest, the Fates screaming underneath my skin as though they speak through her, my mate nothing but a vessel for their commands.
Kharl sneers, curses falling from his lips before he snaps, “The Ravenswyrd are dead, I killed them all! That is not my fate anymore.”
With one hand, steady and sure, she lifts the scepter and points the raw jewel directly at him, only the shield between them, and his eyes fill with horror at the sight of the relic.
“You missed me.”
A pulse of power bursts out of the emerald and through the shield as though it isn’t there, a beam of light that cuts through the masses below and tears them apart in a single blow like a bolt of lightning. The earth opens up around the light as it absorbs the power, but the enemy screams as they’re decimated.
The earth sings in triumph.
With every high-fae eye on her ignored, my Fates-cursed mate climbs onto the battlement with the sword hefted in one hand and her scepter held firmly in the other before she steps off the stone to plummet to her death on the other side of the wall. My heart stops dead in my chest, a strangled command to stop her trapped in my throat as I throw myself against the wall of the battlement, too late to do anything myself but watch her fall. The soldiers around us shout as they all scramble to look, all of us expecting her blood-soaked death at the bottom, only to find her standing tall on the grass.
She steps through the shield, unharmed and determined, and moving faster than I ever thought possible, she launches into battle. Her sword cuts through the witches there, the light of her magic bursting forth and cleaving them apart—it’s a massacre the likes of which I’ve never seen before.
Alone and with no regard for her own safety, the witch fights for Yregar.
CHAPTERFORTY-THREE
Rooke
The shield holds true.
Even without the moonstone talismans as anchors, shields have always been my strongest gift, an affinity for protection I’ve carried since birth, and the shimmering dome of magic that encases Yregar Castle is impossible to breach. The witches learn that the hard way, my magic killing them violently, but the high fae are more cautious in their explorations. There’s no need for their hesitation; the shield is held in place by my magic, and it won’t harm them, but they can’t cross it either.
I don’t need any distractions down here.
The power of the earth races through my veins, burning me with the glory and vitality of the land. It’s like holding fire, a devastating force that’s vital to our survival but could kill me if I hold on too tightly. The trick to not burning out is to channel the power and use it, to wield it freely until there’s none of that heat left within my veins.
I lift my scepter and cleave entire swaths of the raving mass of witches as somber screams fill the air, and I widen my stance as the first wave of them hits me, Kharl’s voice still ringing in my ears. It’s a sound I imagined for many decades after I learned who he was and why he came to the Ravenswyrd Forest. A fate to be killed by a witch born of neutrality, and I’ve already raged and mourned the fickle ways of the Fates we follow.
If he hadn’t come to kill my coven, I would have never left the forest.
I would have never become the witch I am now, the only version of myself who can fight Kharl and kill him. I would have never learned to hold a sword, the calluses still rough on my hands from decades of fighting in the Northern Lands.
These skills are so intrinsic to me now that I slip back into my soldier form, swinging and cleaving the witches apart, the magic in my scepter magnifying every blow as I fight them off two-handed and leave devastation in my wake. Two centuries in the Sol Army training every day, fueled by my desperation to somehow convince the Fates to change my fate through my acts of selfless service, these weakened creatures don’t stand a chance against me. I’ve learned to fight against all fae folk, the high fae and part-bloods and myriad fae in between, and though I mostly wielded my sword and magic against the Ureen on the battlefields, I’m more than adept to face the enemy before me now.
The raving army of witches pouring in from the fae door finally stops as Kharl realizes his fatal error, the victory he wrapped tightly around himself as a comfort now quickly unraveling as the lie is brought for all to see. He doesn't call for a retreat—every last one of these witches is expendable to him—but as I fight my way through the masses, I hear the cries of his own retreat as he leaves them behind.
He shoves one of his protectors off their horse and climbs onto the saddle then rides back to the fae door as he runs from his fate and my wrath. He's wearing the traditional robes of the Unseelie witches with ornate embroidery on them, the symbols a twisted cacophony of the covens he’s destroyed to create this new one of his own, and the long cloak of black and red trails in the wind as he flees.
I don't chase him down.
This isn't the marker of our fate, the moment his death becomes mine. The Fates were clear of my path and my union to the prince, in his tradition and mine. My sacrifice is still to come, after I join my soul to his in the old way.
