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Wrong.

You finally have everything you ever wanted, another voice, lilting like a lullaby, coaxing her back into the moment, Jett’s lips secured firmly around hers. This is your happy ending.

Chapter Forty-Six

Lavender laughed. “To think, after everything you did to protect her, she will end up choosing someone else. That must just be your fate.” She smirked, watching as his eyes fell, throat bobbing as despair claimed him. Lavender almost felt a twinge of sympathy. He was like her, unloved by magic—the world, forced to deal with the rotten hands they were dealt. Doomed to never be loved by those they cared for.

Marcel’s head lifted, eyes burning. “Fate might not be on my side, but I will never let it or anyone else define me.”

Enola’s alpha symbol wavered. She stood, growling, the violet aura around her pulsing. Fighting.

It was impossible. Enola shouldn’t be struggling to hold him this much. Not with his red fire.

Slowly, the piranha’s fiery tendrils, once colored a deep, useless crimson now shifted, darkening to purple.

No… Blue.

Enola’s alpha symbol sputtered and went out. Lavender stood from her throne. Impossible. That guard shouldn’t have a blue flame. It just wasn’t possible.

Marcel’s head angled over his shoulder, turning his smoldering glare on Enola.

“Fya,” he said, a lethal calm slipping over his voice.

Lavender shielded her eyes as an explosion of light surged from the center of the throne room. Marcel’s piranha expanded, growing larger and larger until it was the same size as Enola. In a blur, it shot for the wolf.

“No!” Lavender cried but it was already too late. The piranha latched its jaws onto Enola’s bright white pelt—and set it aflame.

“Enola!” Lavender ran for her. The heat of the flames devoured the throne room, making the very air ripple and distort. The fire surged and Lavender threw her arms over her face. Her skin blistered and peeled. It happened so fast she barely had time to feel the pain before the nerve endings went numb.

A wave of cold washed over her and she lowered her raw, shaking arms.

She barely registered Marcel collapsing, body giving out from the surge of magical energy. All she could see was Enola—her only friend in the entire world—now nothing more than a pile of ash skittering across the throne room floor.

Her eyes burned. Her chest ached. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t feel. Couldn’t do anything as she knelt beside the ashes and felt her heart shatter.

She clenched her fingernails, almost drawing blood with her sharp, manicured points, as she peered over her shoulder to where Marcel cradled her sister, stroking the strands of unruly hair that Lavender had always despised.

“Wake up,” he pleaded, gripping her hand as though it would be the lifeline that would bring her back. “Please.”

Seeing them together made the realization sink deep into Lavender’s bones.

She was all alone.

As always, Thicket had it all, while she was left with nothing. Nothing but a defiant kingdom whose loyalties lay with another, a dead friend, and a trashed castle, now in the same pathetic ruin as Bilya.

At least she had this. Her throne, her crown, her victory.

She reached for her discarded sword. “You are going to regret that,” she hissed, finally drawing his attention. “I am going to kill your precious princess. And then, once you’ve watched her take her last breath, I am going to kill you.”

“No.” The look he gave her was born from the most stubborn of souls.

“What do you mean no?”

“You are wrong. Thicket will wake up. And then, she will defeat you.”

“Do you think you are going to be able to save her?” Lavender laughed. “Go on, then. Kiss her. See if your unrequited love is worth more than the Delmore boy’s.”

The guard’s eyes flicked down to her sister, landing on her lips. There was temptation, hesitation, doubt—and then, steely hard resolve.