Page 18 of Three Dark Kings and the Gilded Serpent

“What happens if I end you, Lilis?” I ask quietly.

“My army is supposed to stop you.”

I study Brunkil and the Northerners. “If they can’t?”

“If I die, the Winter Strife dissolves.”

It won’t be that simple. The Strife may be ended, but I will have killed the Frost General. The Frost army, loyal to Lilis, will come after me to avenge her.

That isn’t the only reason I hesitate.

A weight settles in my chest. Up on the wall of the compound, a white crow caws, a haunting scream on the wind that brings a chill to my spine.

I should be moving already. Every second I delay is costing Stellen.

But he had multiple chances to end Lilis and he didn’t, and now that her life is in my hands…

It matters.

His choices matter.

“You know what you have to do.” Her expression is blank as she stares up at me. “Do it.”

Stellen told me a minute can be a lifetime. He told me to take peace in the quiet moments. This isn’t a quiet moment. Far from it. All around me, shapeshifters snarl. Bodies swish in the wind. My fear is chaotic. But part of what he meant was that the details matter, and I can’t ignore them.

Lilis’s silver hair is tangled in my armor’s threads. Her face is bloodied, but I’m not responsible for those wounds. Neither is Stellen.

Blood is clotting at Lilis’s temple, one of her cheekbones is busted, and her other eye is bloodshot. I saw clearly the claw marks in her armor when I leaped at her. The rents in the metal are real. The wounds beneath them are seeping blood.

She had these injuries when we arrived.

Her white wolf is nowhere to be seen. Neither is Edgar, the only fae she might care about.

Back to the shadows beneath the gate, my attention returns to Fable, to the blood matting her fur. Then up to the bodies, which have been dead for days.

Lilis’s wounds are fresh. So are Fable’s. They didn’t get them in a fight with the Silverstens.

My focus flickers to the wood-handled dagger strapped to my thigh. Like the knife Lilis drove into Stellen’s chest, this one’s handle is made of ashen-brown wood with unusual whorls in it.

Any number of pieces of this wood, have been used against me. I have no way of knowing how many times I’ve been prevented from foreseeing events that have harmed me or others.

I don’t know exactly how long Lilis carried these daggers, or if she knows what they do, but as long as she had them on her person, I couldn’t foresee any harm she might cause.

Or any harm that might come to her.

Finally, I consider Brunkil. The spittle in his braided beard. The fresh blood on his neck, glistening and tacky in the cold midday sun.

Damn.

“Lilis,” I whisper, “why did Stellen speak to you of justice?”

Shadows form in her purple eyes, but she doesn’t answer my question.

Turning her face away, she focuses on the snow. “I remember the first time we met. You and I. You had no weapons, and yet you faced me as if you would fight me with every inch of your very soul.”

I never surrendered. Not to her.

“You called me ‘a wretched, ugly creature’ and ‘a pathetic lowborn.’”