My ribs feel too tight. She has the rose, which means when she took control of Kairyn and Heidigog, it was part of something greater. All those creatures I recruited as the Prince of Thorns… She’s truly done it.
They could be marching now, on Castletree, on the realms, on all the Enchanted Vale.
Nausea roils in my gut.
I can’t let that continue.
“The Green Flame isn’t gone, Mother,” I say as I step forward, letting fire dance along my arms. “Let Rosalina go, return the rose, and perhaps we’ll allow you to live out your miserable existence back in the Below. Yes, you can command me, but remember, you only haveone. Choose wisely.”
“Oh, my darling boy.” Her smile widens. “I only need one command. And it’s not even for you.”
A pit drops in my stomach, and I feel twenty steps behind.
“Aurelia.” She turns to Anya, then gestures to me. “Turn that wretch under my control into a human.”
Into a human.
Into a human?
The years I cried myself to sleep wishing for that. The hours I pleaded outside Anya’s prison for her to turn me human. All so I could rid myself of the Green Flame.
But now I have mastered it, along with my thorns and shadows.
“No.” I throw a line of emerald flames up to protect myself.
And I’m not the only one. Keldarion raises a shield of ice, Ezryn a wall of rock, Farron a torrent of fire, and Dayton a barrier of water.
The queen’s magic bursts through them all as if they were as thin as a butterfly’s wings.
A beam of light strikes my chest and throws me to the ground. The other princes fly back, slamming into the pillars.
“Caspian!” Rosalina screams.
Light explodes in my vision, and I make out the queen, hands outstretched, tears running down her face. She’s screaming at George and Justus.
And then I can’t concentrate on anything more. It’s like I’m being struck by the sun itself.
I try to summon my magic, but it’s no use. This isn’t something I can fight. Not with shadows. Not with thorns. Not with flames.
It sears straight through me, slicing open everything I am. My ribs burn, my blood turns to ash, and there’s a sound—gods, a sound like a dying animal.
I think that’s me screaming.
My magic writhes, snarling, trying to hold on. But it’s being pulled from me, one thread at a time.
I rise to one knee.
“Anya,” I manage. Her name scrapes my throat like broken glass. She’s crying. Stars above, she’s crying. But she doesn’t stop. Her hands tremble, but the magic doesn’t falter.
The light tunnels deeper. I can feel it now, what it’s doing. Twisting the core of me into something…less.
“No,” I rasp. “No, no, no?—”
I’m unraveling.
Everything that makes me fae—my thorns, the shadows in my soul, the pulse of distant flames—is slipping away. Being scorched clean.
It’s like being flayed alive from the inside out. Not just pain. Loss. Someone’s carving out who I am and leaving a hollow shell behind.
