I find Lavender House first. Every moment I spent inside, chained to spill my blood in the name of jealousy, swirls in my mind. Every snide comment. Every cruel prank. In seconds, I’ve called the fire in the lanterns. Casings burst. Flame canters through the garden and climbs the walls of the house. The Grace pennants are cinders. Windowpanes shatter onto the snow-blanketed hedges. There’s a chorus of screams as my fire plugs doorways and broken windows, ensuring that there is no way out—not for any of them. The same way they’d trapped me for twenty years.
A new cry splits the air, and I look up to find a speck on the horizon. No. Not a speck. A shape I know very well. But one I never thought to see above the rooftops of the Grace District.
My heart swells. “Callow!”
She soars toward me in the steely sky, her black eyes fierce and vicious. A warrior’s.
“How did you get here? Where have you been?”
The kestrel lands on my shoulder. Nudges her head against my cheek in greeting. Callow. Come to fight beside me. Our wings were clipped, but we’re flying anyway, two birds freed from our cages. Untethered.
“Come,” I tell her. “Let’s show them what we can do.”
Callow needs no encouragement. She swoops and dives, talons slicing the faces of our enemies. Pecks at fingers and hair and arms. Before long, the Grace District is nothing but smoldering green fire and the sweet, addictive scent of blood. Already, ships are beginning to leave the harbor, frightened passengers falling over themselves to get below decks. I find the wooden magic of the masts and break them in half. Set the rest aflame, dragon figureheads charring black.
We wing back to the palace. The fires I set are growing steadily. Tendrils of black and green smoke curl in the air. But the windows of the king’s war room are yet untouched. Another familiar figure looms behind them, staff pulsing gold. Endlewild.
Fresh rage boils in my belly. The Fae ambassador regards me with cool detachment, as if he doesn’t care that I’ve wrecked half the realm. As if I’m still something he can crush under the heel of his boot.
Show him who we are, Mortania urges.
With a feral yell, I send my magic into the famed windows of the war room. For glass that is said to be able to withstand dragon’s fire, it carries a flimsy heart indeed. It cracks almost instantly, a long fissure spiking up the center and webbing outward. And then, with a last push of my power, the glass implodes.
Endlewild doesn’t flinch. Not even as the storm of glittery shards whooshes into the room and cyclones around him.
Callow settles on my shoulder as I tread the air current.
“I see you have ignored my warnings once again,” Endlewild says, indifferent as ever. “Your anger will be your undoing.”
Callow shrieks at him, her talons digging into my flesh.
“It will also be yours, Lord Ambassador.”
“Wicked creature. This is not over. You will have all of Etheria upon you. Kingdoms from beyond the Carthegean Sea. It will mean a war.” He raises his staff. A gilded aura shimmers around the orb, where his own heart of magic dwells. “We will bring you down.”
But for once, that staff doesn’t make me wince. He can’t hurt me anymore.
The Etherian snarls. The magic in his staff crackles. He draws it back, lips moving in words I can’t hear.
I close the distance between us in a single wingbeat and give in to the beastly instinct coursing through my blood.
Endlewild’s eyes widen at my charge, as round as the golden plates at the king’s dinner. Within their reflection, I glimpse my own. Wild-haired and ravenous. Claws stained with blood. Tail poised to strike. The Fae lord throws his arm forward. An arc of his Fae power erupts from the orb like a shower of stars. It slams into my shields and sizzles away.
And then there is only the sound of flesh tearing and the splatter of gold among the glass on the war-room floor. The staff falls from Endlewild’s grasp and cartwheels end-over-end toward Briar. The Fae lord’s blood is smeared over my face. It tastes like the fizzy wine from Aurora’s parties. I want more of it.
Deep within my soul, Mortania laughs.
Callow beside me, I return to the decimated roof of the library. The smell of woodsmoke engulfs me as I bid my trees stretch their limbs, steeling this place against the fire chewing its way through the palace. Command more thorns to grow. Strengthen. Keep Aurora safe. I can almost feel her heart beating with mine, as it was always meant to be.
Briar burns below me, nothing but emerald ash and plumes of smoke. A wisp of guilt coils around my heart when I think of Hilde. Of the innocents in the Common District, their lives upended through no fault of their own. But I wouldn’t change anything.
It turns out Kal was right. Sacrifices must be made.
Screams roll in from the harbor, miniature boats pulling out to sea. One of them is Elias’s, I think, his navy and bronze flags retreating toward the horizon. But I don’t bother to chase him down. Let him go. There’s nothing for the star-chosen prince here.
I know what they will say of me, those who escape to the realms beyond the sea. The Vila who cursed the lovely princess. Trapped her in a tower, never to wake. Razed Briar to the ground for spite.
Malyce. I laugh. Rose knew me all along.
But that is not your name any longer.
Mortania. Her presence brushes against the inside of my skin, a missing piece clicking into place. Her face in the cursed mirror surfaces in my mind like a wave breaking, green eyes ablaze and pointed teeth gleaming. And suddenly I understand. That connection I felt from the start. I was afraid of it. But I should have embraced it. Our fates have always been entwined.
And with her power inside me, the Dark
