“You’re a thief many times over. You stole my magick. You stole the magick of others. You stole many lives. But most importantly, at this moment, you stole the life of Rania when you took her from the cradle. You owe her recompense, because she was the wrong child.”
“Wrong child?” Maeve demanded, rising to her feet in indignation. “What a lot of nonsense. She was a tithe owed to me, and I used her as I saw fit. It was my right!”
“Rania wasn’t the witch’s daughter,” Yasmina said. “She was the queen’s daughter, and the daughter of the swan-prince.”
“Ulrik has nothing to do with this,” the Dark Queen retorted. “He’s the last of his kind and I’ll take him out next...”
But Rania was a swan-shifter. If this Ulrik was another swan shifter, then he couldn’t be the last of his kind.
And if Maeve knew that Rania was a swan-maiden, then she had to have realized that Rania wasn’t the witch’s daughter, after all.
“You knew,” Hadrian charged in old-speak and Alasdair realized they’d made the same conclusion. Sadly, no one else could understand the communication of the Pyr.
“You knew,” Kade echoed aloud, turning to the queen. His expression was one of surprise and even a little disappointment. He turned the blade in his hand. “You knew,” he said again.
Maeve took a step back.
“It didn’t matter who she was,” the Dark Queen protested. “She was mine. I took her as a tithe and I used her as I saw fit.
“And for that, you owe Rania compensation,” Yasmina informed Maeve, then lifted the gem of the hoard.
“No!” Maeve protested.
“Yes,” Yasmina said with resolve. “I’ve already chosen the only gift that will suffice. This must be shattered to make amends to everyone.”
“No!” Maeve cried and Kade turned on Yasmina. Alasdair feared he’d have to watch her be slaughtered, but she crouched down then vanished, becoming a wisp of dark smoke. Kade slashed at her but his blade passed through nothing at all.
He realized then that Yasmina had rolled the gem of the hoard toward Hadrian. It glinted gold as it rolled, casting a red glow, until it disappeared beneath Hadrian’s chest.
“You can’t do this!” Maeve protested, shoving at Hadrian’s side without effect.
She pointed at Kade but he took a step back, his gaze clouded with doubts as if he was awakening from a dream. She summoned the magick again, gathering the red cloud to her and pointed at Hadrian.
He shifted shape in a shimmer of blue, taking his human form. He stood before her then, the amber sphere cradled in his hands. Maeve tried to rip it free from his grip but failed. Alasdair could hear Hadrian singing to the orb in old-speak, his chant sending a resonance through the ground. The sphere was soon covered with white frost, so that the spider and the wasp snared within it couldn’t be discerned. It cast a white glow instead of a red one and Maeve screamed in frustration.
Meanwhile, Maeve’s spell slipped. She was gathering magick in the hope of foiling Hadrian. As they were released, the Fae roused themselves to attack. They stopped to scratch their skin and their scalps, that purple stain spreading across their skins with remarkable speed.
There was an earthshattering crack as the gem of the hoard split into two halves. Maeve cried out in anguish, even as they crumbled into chunks of ice and melted away. Alasdair saw the wasp take flight, freed from the tomb of resin, carrying the spider in its grasp. The wasp flew high, illuminated by a faint red glow.
Alasdair had no time to think about that marvel, because dust began to fall on all sides. It was a storm of shimmering iridescent snowflakes, dark as ash on one side and glimmering a million colors on the other. The dust fell from above them, revealing that the sky was only an illusion. He felt as if he was on the set of a play and the curtains were being drawn back, the backdrops folded up, the set being pushed aside and destroyed. The borders and boundaries, the very fabric of Fae and its inhabitants, were disintegrating all around him.
The Fae court was fading. There was no other way to describe it. The brilliant red he was accustomed to seeing on the Fae was now burgundy, if not brown. The silver that shone in their hair and on their wings was now as dull as tree bark aged by the wind