Cassian arched off the ground, bellowing in pain. A bone cracked somewhere in his body.
“Stop.”
The king looked over a shoulder as Nesta stepped forward. Cassian mouthed at her to run, blood escaping from his lips and onto the moss beneath him.
Nesta took in his broken body, the pain in Cassian’s eyes, and angled her head.
The movement was not human. Not Fae.
Purely animal.
Purely predator.
And when her eyes lifted to the king again … “I am going to kill you,” she said quietly.
“Really?” the king asked, lifting a brow. “Because I can think of far more interesting things to do with you.”
Not again. I could not watch this play out again. Standing by, idle, while those I loved suffered.
The Cauldron crept along with Nesta, a hound at her side.
Nesta’s fingers curled.
The king snorted. And brought his foot down upon Cassian’s nearest wing.
Bone snapped. And his scream—
I thrashed against the Cauldron’s grip. Thrashed and clawed.
Nesta exploded.
All of that power, all at once—
The king winnowed out of the way.
Her power blasted the trees behind him to cinders. Blasted across the battlefield in a low arc, then landed right in the Hybern ranks. Taking out hundreds before they knew what happened.
The king appeared perhaps thirty feet away and laughed at the smoking ruins behind him. “Magnificent,” he said. “Barely trained, brash, but magnificent.”
Nesta’s fingers curled again, as if rallying that power.
But she’d spent it all in one blow. Her eyes were blue-gray once more.
“Go,” Cassian managed to breathe. “Go.”
“This seems familiar,” the king mused. “Was it him or the other bastard who crawled toward you that day?”
Cassian was indeed now crawling toward her, broken wings and leg dragging, leaving a trail of blood over the grass and roots.
Nesta rushed to him, kneeling.
Not to comfort.
But to pick up his Illyrian blade.
Cassian tried to stop her as she stood. As Nesta lifted that sword before the King of Hybern.
She said nothing. Only held her ground.
The king chuckled and angled his own blade. “Shall I see what the Illyrians taught you?”
He was upon her before she could lift the sword higher.
Nesta jumped back, clipping his sword with her own, eyes flaring wide. The king lunged again, and Nesta again dodged and retreated through the trees.
Leading him away—away from Cassian.
She managed to draw him another few feet before the king grew bored.
In two movements, he had her disarmed. In another, he struck her across the face, so hard she went down.
Cassian cried out her name, trying again to crawl to her.
The king only sheathed his sword, towering over her as she pushed off the ground. “Well? What else do you have?”
Nesta turned over, and threw out a hand.
White, burning power shot out of her palm and slammed into his chest.
A ploy. To get him close. To lower his guard.
Her power sent him flying back, trees snapping under him. One after another after another.
The Cauldron seemed to settle. All that was left—that was it. All that was left of her power.
Nesta surged to her feet, staggering across the clearing, blood at her mouth from where he’d hit her, and threw herself to her knees before Cassian. “Get up,” she sobbed, hauling at his shoulder. “Get up.”
He tried—and failed.
“You’re too heavy,” she pleaded, but still tried to raise him, fingers scrabbling in his black, bloodied armor. “I can’t—he’s coming—”
“Go,” Cassian groaned.
Her power had stopped hurling the king across the forest. He now stalked toward them, brushing off splinters and leaves from his jacket—taking his time. Knowing she would not leave. Savoring the awaiting slaughter.
Nesta gritted her teeth, trying to haul Cassian up once more. A broken sound of pain ripped from him. “Go! ” he barked at her.
“I can’t,” she breathed, voice breaking. “I can’t.”
The same words Rhys had given him.
Cassian grunted in pain, but lifted his bloodied hands—to cup her face. “I have no regrets in my life, but this.” His voice shook with every word. “That we did not have time. That I did not have time with you, Nesta.”
She didn’t stop him as he leaned up and kissed her—lightly. As much as he could manage.
Cassian said softly, brushing away the tear that streaked down her face, “I will find you again in the next world—the next life. And we will have that time. I promise.”
The King of Hybern stepped into that clearing, dark power wafting from his fingertips.
And even the Cauldron seemed to pause in surprise—surprise or some … feeling as Nesta looked at the king with death twining around his hands, then down at Cassian.
And covered Cassian’s body with her own.
Cassian went still—then his hand slid over her back.
Together. They’d go together.
I will offer you a bargain, I said to the Cauldron. I will offer you my soul. Save them.
“Romantic,” the king said, “but ill-advised.”
Nesta did not move from where she shielded Cassian’s body.
The king raised his hand, power whirling like a dark galaxy in his palm.
I knew they’d both die the moment that power hit them.
Anything, I begged the Cauldron. Anything—
The king’s hand began to drop.
And then halted. A choking noise came out of him.
For a moment, I thought the Cauldron had answered my pleas.
But as a black blade broke through the king’s throat, spraying blood, I realized someone else had.
Elain stepped out of a shadow behind him, and rammed Truth-Teller to the hilt through the back of the king’s neck as she snarled in his ear, “Don’t you touch my sister.”
CHAPTER
75
The Cauldron purred in Elain’s presence as the King of Hybern slumped to his knees, clawing at the knife jutting through his throat. Elain backed away a step.
Choking, blood dribbling from his lips, the king gaped at Nesta. My sister lunged to her feet.
Not to go to Elain. But to the king.
Nesta wrapped her hand around Truth-Teller’s obsidian hilt.
And slowly, as if savoring every bit of effort it took … Nesta began to twist the blade. Not a rotation of the blade itself—but a rotation into his neck.
Elain rushed to Cassian, but the warrior was panting—smiling grimly and panting—as Nesta twisted and twisted the blade into the king’s neck. Severing flesh and bone and tendon.
Nesta looked down at the king before she made the final pass, his hands still trying to rise, to claw the blade free.
And in Nesta’s eyes … it was the same look, the same gleam that she’d had that day in Hybern. When she pointed her finger at him in a death-promise. She smiled a little—as if she remembered, too.
And then she pushed the blade, like a worker heaving the spoke of a mighty, grinding wheel.
The king’s eyes flared—then his head tumbled off his shoulders.
“Nesta,” Cassian groaned, trying to reach for her.
The king’s blood sprayed her leathers, her face.
Nesta didn’t seem to care as she bent over. As she took up his fallen head and lifted it. Lifted it in the air and stared at it—into Hybern’s dead eyes, his gaping mouth.
She did not smile. She only stared and stared and stared.
Savage. Unyielding. Brutal.
“Nesta,” Elain whispered.
Nesta blinked, and seemed to realize it, then—whose head she was holding.
What she and
Elain had done.
The king’s head rolled from her bloodied hands.
The Cauldron seemed to realize what she’d done, too, as his head thumped onto the mossy ground. That Elain … Elain had defended this thief. Elain, who it had gifted with such powers, found her so lovely it had wanted to give her something … It would not harm Elain, even in its hunt to reclaim what had been taken.
It retreated the moment Elain’s eyes fell on our dead father lying in the adjacent clearing.
The moment the scream came out of her.
No. I lunged for them, but the Cauldron was too fast. Too strong.
It whipped me back, back, back—across the battlefield.