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No pity stirred in Ruhn’s heart as his father gurgled blood. As it dribbled onto the stones. The Autumn King lifted his head to meet Ruhn’s stare.
Betrayal and hatred burned in his face.
Ruhn said into his mind, into all their minds, I lied about what the Oracle said to me.
His father’s eyes flared with shock at Ruhn’s voice in his head, the secret his son had kept all these years. Ruhn didn’t care what Morven made of it, didn’t even bother to look at the Stag King. Bryce and Athalar could handle the shadows, if Morven was dumb enough to attack.
So Ruhn stared into his father’s hateful face and said, The Oracle didn’t tell me that I would be a fair and just king. She told me that the royal bloodline would end with me.
He had the sense that his friends were watching with wide eyes. But he only had words for the pathetic male before him.
I thought it meant your bloodline.
Ruhn lifted the bloodied Starsword. Flame simmered along his father’s body, limning his powerful form. But Ruhn was no longer a cowering boy, inking himself with tattoos to hide the scarring.
I was wrong. I think the Oracle meant all of them, Ruhn went on, mind-to-mind. The male lines. The Starborn Princes included—all you fucks who have corrupted and stolen and never once apologized for it. The entire system. This bullshit of crowns and inheritance.
His father’s sneering voice filled his mind. You’re a spoiled, ungrateful brat who never deserved to carry my crown—
I don’t want it, Ruhn snapped, and shut down the bridge between their minds that allowed his father to speak. He’d had enough of listening to this male.
Blood trickled from his father’s lips as his Vanir body sought to heal him—to rally his strength to attack.
The line will end with me, you fucking prick, Ruhn said into his father’s mind, because I yield my crown, my title, to the queen.
True fear turned his father’s face ashen. And out of the corner of his eye, Ruhn saw Bryce’s star begin to glow.
A serene peace bloomed in him. I always assumed the Oracle’s prophecy meant that I would die. He let his kernel of starlight flicker down the blade, an answer to Bryce’s beckoning blaze. One last time.
But I am going to live, he said to his father. And I am going to live well—without you.
Even Morven’s shadows weren’t fast enough as Ruhn whipped the Starsword through the air again. And sliced clean through his father’s neck.
* * *
Bryce had no words as Ruhn severed the Autumn King’s head. As her brother skewered the skull on the Starsword before it even hit the stone.
She got to her feet. Came up beside Ruhn where he stood rigid, still holding the bloodied sword, their father’s head impaled on it.
The fire around their friends remained, an impenetrable prison. As if the Autumn King had imbued the flames with energy he’d cast outside himself, to linger even past his death. A final punishment. Lidia rushed over, as if she could somehow find a way to undo the flames—
“Let them go,” Bryce said to Morven in a voice she didn’t entirely recognize. “Before we skewer you as well.”
Morven bared his teeth. But despite the blazing hate in his eyes, he lowered himself to his knees and lifted his hands in submission. “I yield.”
The fire vanished. Morven blinked, as if surprised, but said nothing.
Their friends were instantly on their feet, Hunt putting a hand on Sathia’s back to steady her. Then they all came to stand, as one, behind Bryce and Ruhn. And she saw it, for a glimmering heartbeat. Not a world divided into Houses … but a world united.
Bryce walked a few steps to pick up Truth-Teller from where it lay near the Autumn King’s decapitated corpse. She didn’t look at the body, at the blood still pooling outward, as she said to Ruhn, “Helena created the prophecy to explain what these weapons could do, the power needed to take on the Asteri. But I think, in her own way, the prophecy was also her hope for me. What I might do, beyond wielding the power.”
Confusion swirled in Ruhn’s bright blue eyes.
“Sword,” Bryce said, nodding to the Starsword in his hand. She lifted Truth-Teller in her own. “Knife.” And then she pointed to their friends, to the Fae and angel and mer and shifter behind them. “People.”
“It wasn’t only about the Fae,” Ruhn said quietly.
“It doesn’t have to be,” Bryce amended. “It can mean what we want it to.” She smiled slightly. “Our people,” she said to Ruhn, to the others. “The people of Midgard. United against the Asteri.”
