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Garvis’s eyes shifted toward me, and blood bubbled from the corners of his lips as he tried to speak.

“I hope…”

“You hope what?” I fell to my knees and tried to throw my sword away from me, but it was stuck in my grip, glued there. Glancing down, horror filled my chest at the sight of the pommel melding with the skin of my palm, becoming one.

“You hope what?” I asked Garvis again, taking him by one shoulder. “Tell me!”

Garvis didn’t tell me. His hands had stopped twitching, and—

Thump. Thump. Thump.

I shot upright in bed, breathing raggedly. The world swayed, and I brought my right hand to my face, making sure that Old Veracious wasn’t actually attached to me.

No. The sword was leaning up against the corner of my cabin as usual, its jades winking in the low light of the deck prism seeping below the crack of my door. There was no blood. No mountain of bodies. No dead Garvis.

At least not here. Not now.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

The knock came again, and annoyance flicked through me. Usually, my nightmares ended with Rayna reaching out a hand to help pull me out of that hellscape, but somebody had ended it before that could happen.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

“Coming,” I grunted, then hopped out of bed to pull on some pants. I was just finishing with the buckles when the door flew open of its own accord.

Sasha and Sylvie stood on the other side, their expressions telling me everything I needed to know before I even drew the information from their minds.

“The queen has requested your presence for a meeting in Sorronia,” Sasha said, eyeing the beads of sweat no doubt rolling down my forehead with a slight tilt of her brows. “She said the human ambassador from Pliyith has arrived early.”

Great. Fucking perfect. Just what I needed—to see the queen right when I was finally figuring out how to circumvent her orders. I’d need to be on high alert with my Mind Manipulating power, guarding my secrets carefully in case she decided to use one of her many stolen telepathy powers on me.

But I kept my features perfectly lazy as I turned to snatch a shirt from my chest of drawers and yanked it over my head. “When?”

Sylvie winced. “Now, actually. We just got done talking to her through the looking glass, and she told us to tell you immediately.”

Bending down to tug on my boots, I bit down on a curse. I wouldn’t have time to say good morning to Rayna and hated Her Majesty just a little bit more for taking that away from us. But that wasn’t Sasha or Sylvie’s fault. Straightening again, I gave them both a forced smile and a two-fingered salute. “Thank you.”

“Good luck,” they said together.

Then I vanished.

Moments later, the floor had stilled beneath my feet.

I blinked away the disorientation, finding myself exactly where I’d intended: not the throne room, but a long, silent hallway spreading left and right, a half-moon door before me.

The air here felt chilled. Free of voices and the sound of waves and the ever-present growl of distant thunder, like some kind of royal morgue. Still, it stirred with the faintest echo of suppressed thoughts just behind the wall in front of me.

Okay. I flexed my fingers. I could do this.

Burying every thought of Rayna and Jagaros and coups beneath a layer of protection, I pulled on the ringed, wrought-iron door handle and walked inside.

Immediately, six heads turned my way. Five members of the New Good Council sat on the left side of a long table made of smooth black quartz, white veins spiderwebbing through the dark surface like cracks. A single human sat on the right side all by himself. And Queen Mydusia herself sat at the head on the other end of the room, her veil fluttering in a nonexistent breeze as she stared at me.

Or, at least, I could feel her staring.

“Ahh, you’re here.” Her voice came out flowery and breezy, her lips puckering in a smile beneath the veil. “Noris” —she tilted her head at the human ambassador— “meet my Fated General, Coen Steeler. I’ve known him since he was a small child, but I must say, he’s grown into quite the remarkable faerie, don’t you think?”

The human ambassador was ruddy-cheeked with a slightly bulbous nose and graying blonde hair, but his hazel eyes held a warmth to them that the other five pairs of eyes didn’t. While the rest of the New Good Council eyed me with expressions ranging from fear to contempt, Noris gave me a quick, firm bow of his head.