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Breathing deeply, I closed my eyes. Nerio’s ward slipped seamlessly over us, and I reached for Stanton’s ward and the trio within.

Kent

I strode away from Rue, praying that she succeeded. Resolving to learn every bit of magical theory I could once this was over, I focused on the task at hand.

“Stanton, your contention is with me!” I yelled and raised my personal wards moments before Stanton responded an offensive spell and a scathing comment about my mother. I deflected it with ease. “It is demeaning to your cause to bring humans into the matter, especially children.”

“You are the one who inserted the human issue into the conflict by aligning yourself with that human-loving pansy, Greyson.”

“Personal preferences aside,” I continued. “The matter of contention lies between you and me, not these others and definitely not the child.”

Stanton snorted. Behind him, my father trembled, and on the fringes of my awareness, I could sense magic gathering around Rue for the briefest moments before Nerio’s protections muted it. Hopefully, no one else sensed it.

“You half-breeds have no right to the throne of the Unseelie. Only a true-blooded high fae has a right to the throne. For endless generations—”

“Three?” Greyson commented from beside me. He pitched his voice so Stanton could hear him.

Greyson and I exchanged a look. He must have noticed Rue’s gathering power and caught on to at least the part of the plan where we were the distraction.

“Hardly a solid tradition,” he added.

Stanton’s features contorted. “For endless generations, the king has been a high fae, and those of pure parentage were the most powerful!” he bellowed. “Everyone knows it!”

Piro hunkered down in place, and his wards shifted and anchored with him. “Power isn’t everything.”

Stanton responded with an explosion of power that flashed across Piro’s wards in a messy waste of magic that bled off into sparks. Behind him, the former king moaned.

Rue’s efforts redoubled.

“Don’t provoke magical attacks,” I hissed to Greyson. “He is draining my sire of his magic and if he reaches the end of the reserve, my sire dies.”

Greyson paled, and Piro lifted his chin slightly to indicate his understanding.

Stanton raged and spouted nonsense for a bit.

“What is Rue doing?” Greyson dared to ask in a soft tone that Stanton hopefully couldn’t hear.

“Trying to break the spell connecting them.”

Piro hummed.

“How?” Portent’s stunned whisper from behind my left shoulder startled me.

“Her mixed heritage gives her unusual abilities,” Greyson muttered while maintaining an eye on Stanton.

“Traitor!” Stanton’s shout of accusation echoed through the amphitheater. He pointed at me. “You welcome a Seelie spy into our midst! Traitor!”

Greyson rolled his eyes. “He is not a spy. The health of the Seelie and Unseelie courts is connected. He is an envoy from the Seelie king. He has every right to be here as a representative of his sovereign.”

Dimly I sensed Rue pressing through Stanton’s ward once more. Thankfully, the mad fae didn’t notice. Instead, he jerked his captive, causing Mela to cry out in pain. Rue’s anguish at Mela’s pain rippled through me, followed by cold fury. I took a step forward, ready to act, before Greyson pulled me back with a hand on my shoulder.

“Liar!” Stanton began drawing magic again.

But before he could do much more than reach for it, Rue acted. The snap of the spell between Stanton and my sire reverberated through the clearing, making us all jerk with the power of it. In the following silence, everyone’s wards dropped, and a blast of a nasty miasma followed the bond’s snap. For a heartbeat, no one moved.

Then it was chaos.

My sire crumpled to the ground and lay still. Nerio launched himself over the stones that marked the edge of where the poisoned ward had been moments before and tore Mela from Stanton’s grip. Before Stanton could react, Nerio had whisked her away and out of range, beyond the edge of the arena.