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Endlessly.

That was what I was not prepared for—the driving relentlessness of battle. Killing was no chore. I relished the dying gasps, the spurts of blood as it drained from my opponents. But on and on it went. Longer than any training session in the courtyard. Longer even than the abuse I’d endured in the water gardens.

My muscles strained, but every face I recognized drove me on. For Annwyn. For Arthur. For the goodness he’d dreamt of, but been cut down before he could see. I couldn’t be the queen he’d have wanted, but I could protect our kingdom. I could keep going.

I dodged a plume of fire spearing for my back, the dagger an extension of my arm as I whipped it out, sending it straight into the male’s chest. He roared, fire wreathing his hands for a second attack. But I was there with my curved rapier, the wicked sharp blade cutting through sinew and bone with startling ease. I didn’t see his head hit the ground. I was already searching for my next target.

But through the fray, I recognized where we were.

Horror and fear and a thousand unthinkable emotions ripped through me.

I cleared the yards to their door. Slice. Behead. Thrust. Kill.

Then I was standing at the door, my Goldstones at my back. It was already open.

“Veyka,” Lyrena warned, her voice low. She was at my shoulder, Gwen and Gawayn watching the courtyard should anyone try to follow us. But I was fixed on what was ahead—on what was inside.

The sprawling set of apartments I’d given to my handmaidens and their parents were in total disarray. Walls were singed—all three of them possessed fire magic. My heart gripped; they’d battled here. Chairs overturned, shards of pottery and glass covered the floor.

I forced myself to keep walking. “Cyara? Charis?” I stepped over a dark-skinned body. “Carly?”

The rest of the apartment was the same—worse, maybe, because for each room I passed through, I saw only more wreckage and no evidence of my friends’ survival.

Finally, I saw it. The door to the bathing room was closed. The only one in the entire suite. Two heavily burned fae bodies lay before it, weapons nothing more than melted metal around their hands.

“Cyara! Charis! Are you there?” I cried desperately, pounding on the door.

For a second, nothing. My heart was ready to break.

Then it cracked open, a flash of copper hair and turquoise eyes.

Relief poured through me as the door swung open fully. I drank them in, counting bodies. Cyara, Carly, and Charis, my three stalwart handmaidens, standing in a line before their parents, who’d taken refuge against the back wall in the small room. Not powerless, but old. Too old for this sort of fight.

I looked closer at the three sisters. Their white gowns were singed in places, torn and hanging off of them in others. But there was no defeat in their eyes.

“You’ve done well, finding yourself a defensible position,” I said, looking at each of them in turn.

Only Cyara managed to smirk back. “I’ve learned some things, all these months tending to you.”

I smiled, because she clearly had. But that did not make her a warrior, and it would not save them if they were truly overwhelmed by the intruders.

“Stay here,” I ordered. “I will guard your door. No one will get through,” I promised, praying to the Ancestors that my tired muscles would make good on that promise.

I closed the door firmly, kicking the two charred bodies in front of it as a makeshift barrier. Then I strode back through the destroyed rooms, to where they opened on the chaos of the courtyard, still raging in bloodshed beyond.

I turned to Lyrena and Gwen, bastions of day and night, warriors. Friends. “Go.”

Lyrena opened her mouth to argue; Gwen growled, flashing those deadly lioness fangs.

“I will not leave,” I promised. “I will stand guard here until…” I forced my voice to steady. “Until it is over.”

More attempts to argue. I shot a look at my captain. “Gawayn will stay to guard me. But I will not leave them defenseless. Nor can I have three guards standing watch over me while my kingdom is bleeding. Go. Defend Annwyn.”

Lyrena still wanted to argue. But Gwen’s deep, gold eyes were different. They were warm. Lined with approval. She lifted her massive, powerful maw to the ceiling and roared. When she turned on her haunches and leapt back towards the battle, Lyrena was at her side.

I huffed a breath of relief. Gawayn was already closing the exterior apartment doors behind them. I grabbed an overturned armchair and started dragging it towards the doors.

“We should block each set of doors with as much debris as we can, to slow anyone who tries to break in—”