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Ancestors, she was quick.

“Perhaps I shall kill you and see if that improves matters,” she hissed, twisting the blade.

I leaned forward, just a fraction, just enough to breathe into her ear: “You can try.”

The roots surged up from the ground and wound around her ankles, yanking her from her feet and dragging her across the ground.

Veyka cried like a skoupuma, hissing and fighting. I felt her cutting away at the vines with her daggers. Each severed vine was like a cut to my own flesh. But I didn’t retreat, summoning more, summoning the sparse grass to curl around her.

Somehow, she managed to roll onto her stomach.

Good, easier to slam her face against a tree root. I was merciless. I wanted to punish her, to make her see that she was not invincible. That if she’d been a half second slower, if I had not been there, Annwyn would have been without a queen. I would have been without Veyka.

“Enough of this!” she roared, driving the dagger into the root of the tree where it connected to the trunk.

It forced me to loosen my grip, the shock of it ricocheting through my body. That was all the time she needed to get back on her feet. Her blue eyes, dark as midnight sapphires now, bored into mine, daring me to try again.

When no vines slithered up around her, she tipped her head back until the moonlight shone on her face, gilding her features in an otherworldly silver glow. “They killed my brother.”

She spat on the ground, eyes shining with the stars. “There is nothing I will not do, nowhere I will not go, to avenge him.”

“The elementals are not known for their loyalty.” I expected her face to crumble, but she sneered instead.

“No, we are not. But Arthur and I were something different.” She turned away, sliding her blade into its sheath on her belt with a fluid grace that still caught me off guard.

I had to stop underestimating her. It was likely to get one—or both—of us killed.

“That is why you’ve been sneaking out of the palace,” I said carefully.

Veyka snorted. “I have been sneaking out of the palace since I was ten years old.”

I did not ask her how she untangled the wards—I knew she would not tell me. This little bit of information she’d offered… why would a child sneak from their home? A princess, at that? A new thought occurred to me.

“You were upset when he called you the Queen of Secrets,” I said, forcing my eyes away from her even though I wanted to watch and read every line of her face.

She ground the toe of her shoe into the ground. “It is a fair name. I have been absent—first as a princess, by my parents’ doing. Then as a queen, by my own.”

I reached deep down inside of myself, quelling the parts that urged me not to say the stupid, stupid words.

They spilled out anyway. “It does not have to be like this.”

Her eyes rose.

“You could be the queen they need. The sort of ruler that Arthur would have been,” I said softly.

It was true. I would always be the Brutal Prince. Three hundred years of killing would not be forgotten, even by the long-lived fae of Annwyn. But Veyka, she could be anything, anyone. She could be the Princess of Peace, the Queen of Peace, the future of a stable and prosperous Annwyn.

As I watched, all the vulnerability in her face melted away. Until all that remained was a hard, angry mask. Was it an improvement on the devoid nonchalance? I couldn’t decide.

“The only thing I want is revenge,” she said, raising her chin. Not a hint of regret or remorse. “I want them all to pay. Every single one of them.”

“The humans who killed him were beheaded.”

The laugh that ripped from her throat was hysterical, unearthly. “If you think mere humans were responsible for killing the greatest king Annwyn has ever seen, you are as stupid as every one of those slimy, traitorous hypocrites on my Royal Council.”

There it was, finally.

The truth.