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Excalibur moved with me. No longer my brother’s sword that I wielded out of necessity. It sang for me—the song of death. I was Queen of the Air and Darkness; I may as well be the lady of death as well.
Arran’s beast lifted his head to the sky and howled.
Gorlois—he wanted Gorlois.
Wait—I tried to tell the wolf.We don’t yet know his game.
But Arran wasn’t listening—whether he was more beast than fae, or he’d simply closed off that connection between us somehow. He started circling the clearing, running on his four massive paws, faster and faster—he leapt into the sky as the starling swooped down.
It didn’t work. It didn’t—
Arran shifted as he crashed down to the ground. It was a feint. The starling swooped away from the beast’s jaws, careening into a wall of branches and tendrils of willows that Arran had called to battle.
The starling ripped through the vines as Arran tried to strengthen them. Gorlois shifted, snapping loose as his size doubled, tripled, more until he stood on the ground a male once more.
And he shouldn’t have been able to do it, not without the witch. Not at all. How could he create rifts without the void power—
But it didn’t matter how.
Because he did.
Gorlois’ hands closed around Arran’s head, one on either side, in perfect position. Blades came from everywhere—sentinels who’d been waiting within the forest rushing forward now. They pointed them at Arran from every angle. Every vital organ covered.
They didn’t know the significance of what hung at his waist, but it didn’t matter.
The scabbard would stop him from bleeding. But it wouldn’t stop Gorlois from snapping his neck.
The soldiers might not know it. But Gorlois did.
“Such lovely scabbards,” he said, grinning at my glance. “Where did you unearth them from, I wonder? I’d searched for so long… but it is no matter. Once you open those rifts for me, you can hand them over.”
I had to buy time. I had to figure out a way to get Arran free.
“You want the sacred trinity. You want to use the rifts, my void power. But what use is it to you?” I flipped through options, each one less likely than the next.
Asking the questions was a distraction. I could live without those answers. I could not live without Arran.
Isolde was with Lyrena. Cyara had landed atop one of the willows, watching. But she was all harpy. I could count on her for outright bloodshed, but not for any sort of complex strategy maneuvers.
Gorlois toyed with Arran’s long hair, knocked loose in the fight. I watched Arran flinch, and my heart clenched.
“This is about Annwyn, and taking my rightful place. Uther Pendragon came too late for his bride. Igraine was already mine.”
I stilled. “I don’t understand.”
“I should have been the terrestrial heir. But I was born too early.” Gorlois shrugged, as if we were having a casual conversation. As if my mate’s life didn’t hang in the balance. “But I came to Baylaur, anyway. I met Igraine, and we both knew. We were more than the agreements between the elementals and terrestrials. We were not meant to rule one realm, we were meant to rule them all. And with the void and the sacred trinity, we will. We thought it would be our child that would fulfill the Void Prophecy. I am a starling. Igraine is the descendent of Nimue, the Elemental Heir. Alas… Morgyn was a disappointment.”
I blinked. That couldn’t be.
Yet I knew if I slid my eyes behind me, to the edge of the water, that she still waited there. Watching only because Avalon was neutral.
My sister.
“Morgyn… Morgyn le Fae,” I heard myself say.
Gorlois’ oily smile slid beneath my skin, reaching into the recesses of my memory. The smile he’d given me so many times, before he took what he wanted. What my mother had given him freely. “Le Fae is the surname they give fae bastards in this realm.”
“You abandoned your own daughter.” The eyes I recognized—my mother’s eyes. So similar to my own.
