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“Middle finger it is.”
He moved closer until he was grabbing my left wrist, his touch cold enough to freeze over. With his other hand, he plucked a scalpel out of midair and brought it to a point beneath my fingernail. I tried to jerk out of his hold, but a string of mist had me cringing back just as his Object Summoning hands seized me like pincers, holding me as still as a statue. Only my eyes and mouth could move.
So that I could watch.
And scream.
CHAPTER
49
COEN
The sound reverberated in my ears—a cry that cracked through the silence once more, the Wild Whisperer named Mitzi bowed over the body of her friend.
A death Rayna would be mourning if she were here.
But she wasn’t. She wasn’t. And they could be doing anything to her at this exact moment, and the fact that I couldn’t Walk straight to her without my fucking tattoo forcing me to do even more harm to her…
My fingers twitched. Canines ached. Darkness quivered around me like a taut bowstring on the verge of snapping in half.
When I finally spoke, it didn’t come from my heart. That part of me was long gone, buried beneath the monster that had ruptured from my rage.
“Let me be very clear,” I told the Esholian Institute students still crammed together on Bascite Boulevard, most all of them still pale and trembling. As they should. They’d been told their whole lives that faeries were extinct until recently, and I had just ripped my way out of the new rumor that we were still alive to murder their president in cold blood. Without remorse. “The Good Council will die, too. Alongside every last one of you if you side with them.”
Reddish morning light had broken through the mansions and slashed across the crowd. It glimmered on a body I hadn’t even noticed until this moment: the Gileon impersonator Rayna had killed before they took her.
My rage sharpened at the sight of him. If only I could cleave through a dead man’s brain to find out what else he’d known and what he’d relayed to the Good Council before Rayna had slit his throat…
No matter. Even if Dyonisia knew everything, she couldn’t stop me. Every last person who’d had a hand in Rayna’s exile—anyone who might be laying a hand on her this very second—would beg me for a quicker death before midnight.
The thoughts of the crowd rustled, rising in volume even if every mouth remained shut. Is he the king? Is he King Jagaros?
“I am not the king,” I continued, my voice so lethal that it cut across the street with the ease of a knife through flesh. All of them could hear me, I knew. Nobody dared interrupt. “And I am not asking you to fight with me. But when the real king emerges, I would suggest taking a knee.”
That was it. All I had to say to those who had witnessed Rayna’s exile and done nothing to help her. As for the few who had, I couldn’t seem to dredge up even the roughest of thank yous. It wouldn’t be enough, just as their fight hadn’t been enough. Just as no words would ever be enough to make up for the one they’d lost.
I simply turned to leave when another voice cried, “Wait!”
Emelle stood on shaking legs, tears still seeping down her cheeks. Eyes bloodshot. But hands curling into fists nonetheless.
“What if we want to fight with you?” she asked.
“What?”
“Yeah.” Lander had stood up beside her, speckles of sweat and blood gleaming on his forehead. “We want to help you end this. Once and for all.”
I opened my mouth to snap with impatience, but Rodhi stood next, and his jawline clenched so hard that I almost didn’t recognize him.
“Don’t you dare tell us no on this.” He took a step toward me, and several onlookers gasped as if he’d just staggered toward his own death wish. Maybe he had. “You’re not the only one who lost Rayna. You’re not the only one who wants the Good Council to fucking drown under a mountain of hairy legs and fangs and poison for what they’ve done to us.”
I wasn’t sure the murder I had in mind involved hairy legs, but I couldn’t deny the change that had rippled over the crowd at Rodhi’s words. Whispers passed from student to student. Movement stirred among them, heads turning from him to Emelle and Lander and back to me.
“Fine,” I clipped. “You three—”
“No.”
If Rodhi’s voice leaked venom, Wren’s absolutely dripped with it. She rose to her feet with enough wrath tightening her face to rival mine, inky-black strands of hair curtaining the glare she skewered the elite’s body with.
