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I took Erix’s hand in mine, overtly aware of how small he made me feel. “I’m ready to secure our future.”

“That’s the answer I was hoping–”

A horn blared out across the world, making the tent walls flutter against the sound. Our heads whipped around, ears ringing long after the horn silenced.

For a second, the aftermath of the sound was almost still. Quiet. As silent as death. I supposed it was an omen, because what followed was exactly that.

Death. But not ours. Not yet.

Shouts soon began to fill the silence. I felt my chest crack in two, my heart splintering as words trickled inside our tent.

A part of me died as they finally reached my ears.

“Queen Althea Cedarfall is dead,” A keening cry split the camp, working its way deep into my bones. “Cedarfall has fallen!”

CHAPTER 32

I threw myself over the side of the armoured stag. My knees cracked against frozen earth, hands barely reaching in time to steady the fall. Then I vomited in my mouth. The wave of sickness caught in my cheeks, before erupting out of me. Pain ruptured across my chest, so viciously, I pinched my eyes closed and still I could see the image of Althea Cedarfall’s head, pierced on the end of a pike.

We were too late. We failed Althea. Our hesitation, our wasted moments, all led to this. Her death.

Erix was behind me, encasing me in his arms, telling me that it was going to be okay, over and over. And yet, when I was brave enough to look back up, the pike was still there, the amber eyes of my friend staring down at me.

It had been a fey scout who had seen the Nephilim fly into the dead zone between the armies. They’d been alone, sent by Cassial as a harbinger of death. The scout – alongside countless of our soldiers, watched as the Nephilim planted the pike in dewy-wet ground. They’d withdrawn the severed head from a gore-soaked bag and sunk it on its tip.

I could hear the Nephilim’s screams from here, as the fey tore into him. Maybe I should’ve stopped them, perhaps I should’ve turned my back on the severed head and called an end to the advancements.

But it was too late.

The damage was done. Cassial’s message received loud and clear. And, at my back, the shadow of the fey army proceeded forwards, their footsteps thundering across the ground.

“Stop looking at her, Robin,” Erix said, voice breaking from strain. He then turned around and shouted at the top of his lungs. “Someone take her down. Now! Show the queen some fucking respect and take her head off that fucking spike!”

He couldn’t be the one to touch Althea’s head, nor could I. But I couldn’t look away either. For hope that any moment this illusion would break, and it would be someone else’s head on the pike, I kept looking. But it never changed, the vision never wavered.

I searched the details, locating proof of who the head actually belonged to. Was it the real Althea or Seraphine under her glamour? Either option was no better than the other. Both had the ability to ruin me entirely.

Althea’s head looked down with endless eyes of amber-gold surrounded by the most beautiful freckles. Poppy-red curls hung limp and heavy from sodden blood. Her skin had turned a strange grey hue, the flayed torn bits of skin around her neck flapping against the subtle breeze.

“Cassial was never going to use her,” I stammered as tears fell down my cheeks. “I was wrong.”

I’d believed Cassial kept Althea alive to transfer Duwar into her, but that was never true. My hunch was what sent Seraphine on her own mission. And now I didn’t know if she still lived, or if this was her glamoured face I looked at.

Althea was always going to be used as a catalyst for war… unless Cassial found out she was not the only living monarch of the fey realm…

Pain cramped in my stomach. If I had anything left inside of me, more vomit would’ve followed the feeling. Instead, I was empty. Completely, inconsolably void. Even my sadness didn’t reveal itself in sobs, only silent tears that I had no control over.

“This isnotyour fault,” Erix said, reading between the lines of what I said. “Do you hear me, Robin? Put aside your self-blame, it will not bring her back. Nothing will…”

Erix cried then, chest-cleaving sobs that broke his demeaner like the fragile shell of an egg, spilling out all the contents of his raw soul. Althea meant the world to us both, and Erix had known her far longer.

I clutched the sides of Erix’s face, cold hands pushed on either side of his cheeks, keeping him facing me. “We will avenge her. Her death willnotbe meaningless.”

Seeing Erix so broken was the reminder I needed to focus – to carry on and control the situation. I had to for him… and for Althea’s memory.

“Another life lost,” he spluttered.

“All becauseIdidn’t have it in me to destroy Duwar when I had the chance.”