No, you’re not. You’re more than half-starved and weak and—
I didn’t have time to argue with him. I felt the rest of the council about to move, and I screamed, “Stop!” I released a taste of our combined magic into the room. Just a pulse of it. Just enough to have the fighting slow.
I couldn’t see the throne from where I was standing—the room was too crowded for me to see past all the fey—but I knew where it was by chandeliers swaying on the ceiling.
I shoved my way to the front of the room, using my body and the power pulsing out from me to protect and clear a path.
I didn’t need to look behind me to know that the rest of the council followed me. They would watch my back, and I would keep them safe.
By the time we got to the front of the throne room, I could see Mother on the ground, ringed by four guards. They had a bubble of iridescent magic surrounding her, protecting her.
But it wouldn’t protect her from me.
I felt responsible for putting that broken look in Dastien’s eyes, but none of this would’ve happened if she’d left us alone.
She should’ve left us alone.
“Mother?” Cosette pushed past me, leaping six feet up onto the dais. “What’s going on?” Cosette’s command went unanswered, but the queen tried to sit up.
She tried and then failed. There was blood on the ground under her, but only a few small spots of red on the front of her white silk blazer.
I didn’t feel sorry for the queen, not then. Not even when I saw the pool of blood growing. But I felt sorry for Cosette.
This woman who’d caused so much pain for so many people was the only person Cosette could call Mother.
I had a real mother who was kind and caring and loving. Who would’ve done anything—anything—to protect me from a monster like the Lunar Court’s queen.
What’s happening? Dastien asked though the bond. You have a plan, but is this it?
Kind of. I’m trying to stop a war. I’m not sure that’s possible, but—
That’s why you let them take you. He was in my head again. He knew the answer, but I would give him the confirmation he needed.
Yes. I hated it. I mostly knew what I was doing when I let them take me, but I hated that I’d been apart from him. Hated that what I’d done almost killed him. Hated that he’d felt so alone for so long.
But that was done now. Now I was finishing it.
I gathered up the energy I borrowed from the council and used it to fuel my jump onto the dais next to Cosette. The others jumped up after me, supporting whatever my plan was.
I looked at the fey guards surrounding the queen. “Move.” They parted, and Cosette spun to me.
Her eyes were wide as she stared at me. “How?”
I’ll explain everything. Just let me get through this part, I sent through the bond that connected the new council.
I moved into the space the guards made and stared down at the queen. Her skin wasn’t quite so golden or glowing. Her power had dimmed enough for someone to attack her, and it was my fault.
I knew some of what would happen when Helen took me. I knew that she’d hide my bond from Dastien. I knew that she’d take me away, hold me somewhere. And I knew that to do that, she’d need to weave her magic through the pack bonds and into my soul. Her little barbed threads of magic would wind their way in and out of my soul, over and over until I was hidden. But when Dastien found me—if he found me—then he’d need to find a way to sever those threads.
That’s exactly what Samantha did. She’d destroyed our old bond, and when she did that, she cut Helen’s barbed threads from the source. And when Dastien re-formed the bond, the strands burned like bone-dry shrubs in a brush fire, but some of the barbs of Lunar Court magic remained deep inside of me.
Helen seeded so much power into me—to keep me under her control, to keep me hidden, to keep me from everything that I was—that when Samantha and Dastien finally broke through all of it, part of her burned with her magic.
She was weak today. That wouldn’t last, and I wasn’t even sure if the barbs would be inside my soul forever or if they’d burn up eventually, too. But now—when her court was in chaos, when a battle was happening, when she was weakened by the severing of part of her power—I had a chance to stop her before this turned into a bigger nightmare than it already was.
The last time I saw her, I’d been a little scared of her. But there was nothing terrifying about this woman now.
“You.” Her breath was thin and reedy. “You will give me back what’s mine.”