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Once more, I stood in a hallway with columns spreading into infinite space. Free Will was back at a nearby window, painting with her fingers and singing that haunting melody as if she hadn’t just unleashed an entire army upon us.

Beside her, Fate raised her chisel.

Anger such as I’d never known coursed through me. My very bone marrow blazed, and I could have sworn Fate herself cringed back against the heat unspooling from the new chasm she’d created where my old heart had been. With a strained nod her way, I flipped my sword to readjust my grip on the hilt…

And strode back the way I’d come.

The temple’s double doors flew open at my approach. Starlight bled down on the isle, and I spit out a curse before spinning into darkness and landing on the weather deck of the flagship with my tattoo riling again.

The clamor of a thousand different voices halted the moment I materialized. It wasn’t just the captain and Nara and Barberro and every other Sorronian faerie who’d been patrolling the island for the last five centuries from other vessels in the fleet, but all the Esholian Institute students and instructors Wren had recruited, as well as Kanuk and Jagaros’s warriors from the Uninhabitable Zone. I’d Walked every single one of them here before leaving for the temple, ensuring that when the time came, we’d all be in one place. One force against Dyonisia’s army of elites.

The only one missing was Jagaros himself. When I’d arrived at the Uninhabitable Zone, Kanuk had said he’d never returned from Wasteon after saving Rayna—because she’d gone there, I knew now, to try to save me.

Had barely made it out alive.

Again, an entirely new level of anger surged through my being, reshaping the way I saw each obstacle, each threat before me. When I turned in a slow circle to survey the humans and faeries surrounding me, it was through a detached sort of lens. The Sorronian faeries were eyeing the humans with obvious disgust, the Ranuqians were eyeing the Sorronians with obvious mistrust, and the humans were all quaking in their shoes, glances flitting this way and that as if searching for an escape route on the open ocean.

It didn’t matter. The moment my attention landed on them, every spine straightened. Every breath sucked in. Every eye turned back to me.

As one.

“This is it,” I said, and even the waves seemed to quit battering against the hull of the ship to listen. “The moment we’ve been waiting for our entire lives…whether that be two decades—” I nodded at Rayna’s group of friends, huddled together near the mainmast. “Or fifty decades.” I nodded at Kanuk and the captain, both of whom had claimed spots on the forecastle.

Earlier, I’d crashed into the captain’s mind to see if it was she who had told Mydusia about Rayna, only to find her innocence blaring back. Hatred for me, yes, but innocence—and even if it was shaped like blades, loyalty, too.

Finally, my gaze crashed down upon Agathea Temberlein, who stood apart from everyone else. Her nearest neighbors, faerie and human alike, had taken one glance at the rats and roaches scurrying in circles around her feet and inched away with sheer terror written all over their faces.

Ironic, considering we were about to break four more of her kind out of that prison. Although my number one priority—no matter what had been declared in that temple—would always, always, always be Rayna.

“We each have our own reasons for dismantling Dyonisia Reeve and her Good Council,” I continued. “Whether that’s freeing the Sorronians she imprisoned or saving the exiled ones or seeking justice for a realm that was brutally maimed too many years ago, the time has come for us to put aside any differences or reservations we may have with another and unite against our common enemy.”

I glanced at the Sorronian faeries in particular. For all they knew, our primary goal was to destroy Dyonisia and free the original Good Council. They didn’t know about the details of Mydusia’s other commands.

Still, I’d have to tread carefully with them, lest they report the specifics of my triumph to the queen across the sea. I cleared my throat.

“That being said, I will only give you one last chance to back out now.”

The thoughts of everyone on board thrashed and twisted and tangled, but every one of them was molded out of some kind of determination: bloodlust or revenge or a sense of righteousness. Nobody backed away.

“Good.”

I brushed one last glance over the only people here I considered family. Nara and Barberro jerked their heads at me. Sasha and Sylvie both flashed me a thumbs-up. I knew Terrin would give a whoop if he were here, and Garvis… he would have reassured me with a smile and a nod.

Maybe, somewhere out there, he was.

With the blade of my sword imbedded in the deck, I sank to a crouch and pushed my free hand against the grainy swirls of damp wood. Closed my eyes. Called upon my power like I never had before, gathering more and more of it until it swelled around me, shaping itself around this entire ship.

Through a rush of star-flecked darkness, I wrenched us all out of existence, dragging everyone on board through dark, fathomless space. It was heavy, like sailing through near-solid loam, but nothing could keep me from her now. I ground my teeth together and…

We dropped back into reality. Frigid night air hammered into us from every direction. Ice cracked and snow sprayed up in a blinding white skirt as the ship skidded to a halt mere inches from the spiked gate that looped the prison on top of Bascite Mountain. The bow just barely poked its nose through Dyonisia’s antipower threaded like one giant spiderweb through it.

A moment of creaking silence later, the Good Council elites stationed along the perimeters burst into shouts.

Magic whooshed our way, but we’d already prepared for that. At the captain’s command, our Sorronian faeries hoisted up shields made of their innate powers: stone and glass and pure, sizzling heat that bloomed out of thin air, blocking or slicing or melting anything arcing down on our heads.

At the same time, Jagaros’s warriors aimed their magic-infused weapons, and I turned to Nara, Barberro, Sasha, and Sylvie.

“Ready?”