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“Gawayn,” I heard myself croak. “What is this?”

“This is for the good of Annwyn,” he said, and he sounded so tired as he did. An exhaustion I’d read in his face so many times since I’d become queen. Ancestors, I’d actually felt guilty for all the worry I’d caused him. But this?

“You truly mean to kill me? Who will rule in my place, Esa?” I threw it out there, my only coherent thought. That he must have been working with the traitor hiding on my council.

“None of the royal councilors are fit to rule. I knew that the day you surrendered control to them,” he said. Gently, he nudged my shoulder. Too gently, for someone who held a sword to my throat. “Come, stand. I would not have you die on your knees like a criminal.”

My eyes darted around the room frantically as I released the chair I’d still been stupidly holding onto and got to my feet. There were two more sets of doors separating us from Cyara and the others. Not that I wanted them to try to come to my aid. No, I’d rather they stayed safe.

It would be easy, I realized, to let him kill me. I’d never planned to stay, to rule over Annwyn. I hadn’t avenged Arthur, but I knew that Arran would. I’d set him on the path, I’d made him see that revenge and protecting the realm were inextricably linked.

It would be so easy, to let that blade slice across my throat and end the agony I’d lived with for months. Years, really.

But it was only with the blade pressed to my throat that I realized the truth.

I wanted to live.

For the first time in months, I wanted to live. Not just for the sake of avenging Arthur, but for myself.

My eyes darted around the room with renewed purpose, searching for anything I could use to my advantage. I was armed, my knives in the scabbards at my waist, but I couldn’t reach for them. Gawayn would slit my throat the second my fingers twitched that direction.

I had to distract him, buy myself precious time to think.

“Then who, Gawayn? Arthur is dead. Did you have a hand in that as well?” I couldn’t control the words coming out of my mouth, didn’t bother to try.

“Never,” he hissed. He threw an arm around my chest, pinning my back against his chest and pressing that blade ever tighter against my throat.

“But you’d kill me? His sister, his twin? So that some distant, unknown Pendragon cousin can sit the throne in my stead?”

“I wanted it to be you, Veyka,” Gawayn said, voice softening. Through the doors, in the corner of my vision, I saw a flash of movement. My gut twisted horribly.

No, no, no.I couldn’t let this happen.

“I hoped that you would step up and fill the gap left by Arthur. I hoped you might become half the ruler he might have been. For months, I watched you waste away, content to do nothing but fuck and eat and fight. But then the Brutal Prince arrived, and I thought that maybe, just maybe, you would fulfill the promise of your Pendragon name.” A heavy sigh. A tightening of the blade. No more movement from my periphery.

“But you’ve proven again and again that you only care about yourself, Veyka. Sneaking out of the palace. Cavorting with Arran Earthborn. Pouring wine at royal council meetings as if you’re not the Ancestors-damned Queen of the Elemental Fae.”

The same judgments that Arran had made about me. But Arran had drawn me up from the darkness, walking at my side as I found something to live for. While Gawayn was ready to kill me for it.

But it didn’t quite fit. “You sacrificed all of these courtiers, elementals and terrestrials alike, just so you could kill me? Where’s the nobility in that?”

For a second, Gawayn’s face was pained. “I didn’t want this. I would have killed you in your sleep, if your prince ever left you unguarded. I made a deal.” He jerked his chin back toward the sounds of battle, still waging wildly behind us. “This was the cost, and I will pay it. For Annwyn.”

Someone had helped him. Whoever had killed my brother, who’d tried to kill me… they’d seen in Gawayn what I’d been too naïve to realize. It wasn’t worry that turned his hair gray, it was guilt at what he’d been plotting.

A plan formed in my mind, the steps like an intricate combination of movements in the training ring. But I had to try one last time. To beg.

“Please,” I breathed. “Please, Gawayn. You’re right, I was so very selfish. But everything I’ve done these past few months has been for Annwyn. For Arthur, I—”

“Enough!” The blade pressed into my flesh hard enough that it should have drawn blood. I cringed at the pain, the realization that there was nothing more I could do—nothing except fight.

“I won’t let you try and charm me, like you’ve done the other Goldstones and your handmaidens—”

Fire burst through the door, throwing them open. Three plumes of it, glowing and bright. Cyara, Charis, and Carly.

I spared half a second for a silent prayer of thanks that their parents had not tried to come to my aid as well. They must be safely back in the bathing room.

I’d scold my friends later. If we survived.