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Vori hated her.Hated what she’d made her become.“I’m not.”But she was.
She’d become what her father had wanted.Ready to tear apart anyone between her and the throne.Memories of being taught to become his monster in this room flooded her mind, crawled over her skin.Everything was too tight, too loud.She wanted to end those ghosts, to end Artanya, to end any connections to this place.
“Oh, you are.”Artanya crawled toward the golden throne.“You live to tear others apart.You’ll become exactly like him.A mad queen.”Crimson blood trailed down the side of her face, and her arm hung limp at her side.“You will be as the original, tearing apart what you need to put the realm together.Except it’s too broken now.Thanks to your father’s leeching of royal blood.You’ll finish it.”
Each word exploded in Vori’s head like land mines set by her father and tick-tick-ticking all this time.She needed to kill the pretender queen, to silence those voices.
“Wait.”Perry rushed forward.
Mykata joined him.
“You’ve no place here.”Vori wasn’t sure which one of them she was talking to.Both maybe?“Let me finish this challenge.”
Neither moved.
Artanya tried to climb the golden throne, but her arm gave out and she slumped to the floor.“Saved by a witch.We’re the same, Consort.Both married to someone we couldn’t love.Both wanting power.Both needing to bemore.”
Vori’s heart plummeted toward her stomach in a free fall.Truth was woven in the woman’s lies, and that truth cut deep.She’d been stupid to believe she might have something real with the witch who had been willing to commit horrible crimes for a prophecy.For the false hope he could marry a royal.When it was the one thing she’d never wanted to be.
Perry wouldn’t meet her gaze.He scanned the crowd as if looking for someone.Or for a way out.Had he reached the same awful conclusion?That they could never be together.Not really.
The lovely pretense was all they would ever have.He’d seen the truth of her father’s creation and couldn’t stomach being with her.It was the only explanation.Self-loathing wrapped around her and twisted, a throbbing that echoed the pain pulsing through her.
Glancing down at golden blood smattered on the stones beneath her feet, her breath caught.A ripple of green and purple spilled from beneath the cracks in the floor.Flowers?Growing in the throne room?Could it be a delusion, the berserker madness already setting in?
Mykata voice’s was the calm in the center of this oh-so-messed-up storm.“If the prince consort’s theory is true, then spilling more royal blood will only weaken Kradnovtl.Spare my sister.”
“Like she spared hers?”A familiar lyrical voice of smoky promises rang out in the crowd.
“Petra?”Vori spun, looking for the redhead from the Hollywood sex dungeon.There was no way she could be here.Unless she had followed them through Baba Yaga’s glass.But why?How?What the hell kind of detour off the jogging path had the woman taken?
A familiar goblin with silver scrolls threaded with gold that spiked above her nose wrenched Artanya’s head back, running a pointed nail over the scars.“Miss me, sister?”
The pretender queen widened her eyes, fear overtaking her features.
That goblin’s voice.There was no mistaking it.“Petra?”Sickness spiraled in Vori’s stomach, spreading hot and cold through her body.
Their killer.
Petra was the killer.
And Mykata and Artanya’s lost sister who’d had red curls and the pretty giggle.
She had met with Vori that night at the dungeon and ripped a man apart minutes later.She hadn’t been out for a run in the park that night.No, she’d been waiting for the goblin glass—same as they had.Not Petra.Phaedra—the little royal goblin who hadn’t died.
Mykata stumbled out of the crowd, her hands shaking.“Phaedra?”Her voice came out as brittle as spun glass.One tap and the captain might shatter.“You…you died.The mad king killed you.”
“Let me guess—our sister told you that.”The redhead yanked on Artanya’s hair until the woman hissed in pain.“It’s Petra now.Or it has been for the years since Baba Yaga found me in the woods of the human realm.Our oldest sister tried to follow the crown princess through the portal.”
Vori didn’t dare move.“But why go through the glass?”
“Go ahead, dearest sister, tell the princess.She won the challenge, but perhaps she’ll spare you.Even if you didn’t spare me.”
“You were a kid.”The pretender queen’s voice came out on a cough.“You can’t remember.”
“Oh, but I do.”Petra’s sneer turned storybook-villain scary, and her gaze locked on Vori.“The night the mad king came for you and the queen consort, my sister and I saw you escaping through the woods.We followed you.”
“Did you see what happened to my mother?”Vori asked.No one would say.No one would talk about her mother, and she’d been too afraid to ask.But this goblin, this killer wouldn’t shy away from the horrific retelling.Not after all the men she’d torn apart.“Did you see my mother die?”
