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From the hallway beyond my open cell door, Dyonisia Reeve herself slipped into view. Like usual, her midnight hair flowed past her shoulders, icy blue eyes skewering me with glacier sharpness.
Not like usual, a familiar black pearl necklace hung around her neck… along with a just-as-familiar knife sheath strapped to her thigh.
“They look good on me, don’t they?”
“No.” Indignation roared through me, a yearning to rip my things off her bones before she tainted them. “They just make you look like a copycat.”
“Ahh, so you do have some spirit left.” She stepped over Bilderas’s unconscious body without a glance, picking her way through the fallen instruments with prim steps until she was towering over me. “I was hoping some good, old-fashioned torture might trigger your catastrophic event. Help shape your innate magic. Apparently, it wasn’t traumatic enough.”
With as much energy as I could muster, I pulled myself to a stand in the corner of my cell. I’d never realized it before—that my aunt and I were the same height. That I didn’t have to let her look down on me.
“If you think a prison cell surrounded by antipower is the best way to cultivate a power,” I said, “then I’m afraid you’re not as smart as you think you are.”
Again, I should have just kept my mouth shut. But Dyonisia only sighed and strummed one of the strings of her milky mist like a lyre.
“You’re right. That’s why I let you get away with so many things at the Esholian Institute. I wanted you to try to cultivate your magic alongside your friends in the comfort of a place you could call home.” Her ice-laden eyes flicked back to me. “Unfortunately, you have decided that is no longer a possibility. You are just like your mother, too prone to flying away and disappearing among the cracks.” She reached out and brushed frigid knuckles against my cheek. “So now I must keep you here.”
I stared at her, the blood from my fingers drip, drip, dripping onto the floor.
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s simple, child. I can only control my antipower by the general batch. The dome around this island, for instance, keeps mature faeries out. The one around the Uninhabitable Zone keeps mature faeries in. And the one threaded through this prison suppresses all types of magic without discrimination. I can’t have my exiled ones escaping, can I?”
I shook my head. Despite the fact that I hardly felt any pain, it swam with a sudden wave of dizziness. “That’s not what I meant. I don’t understand what you want from me.”
“Why, I thought it was obvious.” A frown pinched Dyonisia’s lips. “I want you to kill my sister.”
The words vibrated in my ears like a far-off bell that had been set to ring long ago. Dyonisia waved a hand, once again misinterpreting my expression.
“Not your mother, of course. Her Majesty, Queen Mydusia of Sorronia. I have gone through countless candidates for the task over the last five centuries, including my own children I bred with humans to create time and time again—only for none of them to be strong enough,” she added bitterly. “But you?” She stepped even closer, head tilting. “You are the best candidate I’ve ever had. I thought you were handling two powers extremely well, only to find out you’ve been hiding a third this whole time.”
At that, she swept aside my hair and jerked my shoulder to the side, turning me to see the brand on the back of my neck.
“Beautiful,” she breathed.
My thoughts churned too fast for me to snatch all of them, but there was one thing I grasped onto: all this time, Coen and I had assumed Dyonisia wanted to create an entire army to attack her sister with and claim her throne. But this… this sounded more like she’d merely been trying to create a single entity to destroy the queen.
A single monster to defeat her with.
“You would be just as bad on that throne,” I whispered. “You’re just as vile, just as cruel as—”
“Just as cruel?” Dyonisia repeated, a hand pressed to her heart as if she’d never heard anything so offensive. “I make sure everyone on this island has a purpose, whereas she doesn’t care if her own people starve on the streets. I let you all live peaceful little lives in quaint little villages until you come of age, when I gift you magic and a place to learn how to use it. Do you know how many faeries die at Mydusia’s institute in Sorronia?”
She waited. When I said nothing, the words shrieked out of her.
“More than half! Do you know how many lives Mydusia has destroyed simply because she can? All of them! Every ounce of pain I inflict has a purpose. Everything I do is an attempt to save the world from the horrors my sister has planned!”
“Oh, right, like selling my mother and a bunch of human slaves to King Jagaros?” I snapped sarcastically.
She was insane. Delusional.
Livid too, judging by the way the ice chips in her eyes had just flared with something more akin to fire.
“I’ll admit, that was one thing I was wrong about. The truth is so much more riveting. Would you like to hear it directly from the source?”
What the hell was she talking about now? When she backed out of my cell and gestured at something down the hall, I used that split second to sag against the wall behind me, trying to keep myself upright. Conscious. In control.
Only to gasp when two elites clunked into view with chains snaked securely around the limbs of a white tiger who padded after them, head bowed.
