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I looked down the corridor leading to the vacant chambers, but neither heard, nor saw anything. Kade wrapped his hand around the hilt of his sword.
“Liana, we need to go back. We’ll send guards to find her.”
I had been about to protest when Thana stepped from the shadows next to the terrace, the frightened expression wiped from her face. “You’ve already found me,” she said, and I hardly recognized her voice.
“Is everything alright?” Kade asked her, his back rigid.
She walked forward, and a glint of steel flashed in her hand. A dagger. Jewels set into its silver hilt gleamed with blue and purple and red, throwing reflections against the polished tile.
“Thana? What are you doing with tha—”
“I’m sorry, Liana, but you were never meant to rule,” she said, and a heaviness settled deep in my bones. My heartbeat thudded in my ears as she raised her hands.
Kade’s sword fell to ground with a clatter and I turned to find him on his knees, clutching at his throat.No.I ran to him, falling to my knees. His eyes were wide, panicked. He couldn’t breathe. His skin cooled, and then heated, and then cooled again. Thana.Thanawas pulling the air from his lungs.
“Thana!” I screamed, my voice raw and breaking, my eyes brimming with tears at the obvious pain tightening the lines of Kade’s face, “Thana stop it, he can’t breathe!”
But she didn’t stop. Kade’s eyes bulged, and his face reddened.
“Stop, please! You’re killing him,” I cried.
I turned to her and found her smiling.Smiling.
I tightened my grip on Kade and felt the fire at my core build and burn, hotter and brighter than I had ever allowed it to be before. I swung my arm out in an arc, and the flames spilled from my fingertips in a roaring wave. She deflected them with a flick of her wrist, and they extinguished in mid-air.No.
With another flick of her wrist a tremendous gale crashed into me. My body left the ground. A shriek died in my throat as I collided with the stone wall, and all the breath abandoned my lungs. I gasped for air, unable to move. She had me pinned against the wall with a constant barrage of wind I couldn’t fight—couldn’t get free of.
I watched as Kade keeled over, his hands limp, eyes rolled back.
My heart twisted, cracking, on the verge of shattering.
“What have you done?” I shouted at her through the tears, “Let me go!”
She turned to me, releasing her hold on Kade, but my warrior didn’t wake. He didn’t so much as twitch.
Kade.My mind rebelled at the thought—at the possibility he wouldn’t wake. Searing fury replaced the fear, and the ring on my finger pulsed.
This is a nightmare. Not real.Notreal.
But it was real.
I’d kill her. I’d make her suffer.
“It’s time for him to reclaim what’s his,” Thana hissed, moving closer to where I writhed against the force of her Grace.
“I trusted you,” I snarled at her, looking down the corridor. Someone must have heard, there would be help coming any second. But none came, and I realized they couldn’t hear. The music from the ball was too loud. Even at this distance, the drums and violin echoed against the walls.
“Stupid child,” she spat, “If you had just eaten the hawthorn, there would have been no need for this. You could have died in your sleep. Peaceful. And your sentry could have lived.”
Who was she? This monster before me. She was not my Thana. Not the one who nursed me back to health when I first poisoned myself with verbane berries. Not the one who chastised me for hiding in the forest instead of attending my lessons. This Thana was a stranger with eyes like a serpent and the voice of a madwoman.
“You won’t get away with this.”
She laughed, raising the dagger before me, now only an arms breadth away, “I already have, thanks to you. Once you drank of the water of the Sidhe, I knewhewas right—that you were the one Morgana had chosen. All he needs is your power and he can return.”
Thana eyed the ring on my finger and considered the blade in her talon-like fingers. There was a jewel missing. Four stones ran a line up its hilt, but a diamond shaped setting sat empty at the butt of the blade. “Well that, and one more thing,” she said, “May you find peace, Liana.”
She raised the blade.
