Page 135

I know his gait and cadence. I know the vibrations of his breath.

I know he is coming for me.

As iron strips magic from my flesh like a layer of skin, two strengths keep me upright and propel me forward—love and hate. The memory of Cove’s face clashes with the urge to punish, the familiar impulse to be brutish.

A lethal hiss ripples across my tongue. I stalk through the carnage, pace through the iron fumes, buoyed by new and old instincts. The iron may take my magic, but it shall not take my will. Nor that of my brothers.

Among the rampant bodies, his footfalls materialize. They stride my way, direct and with deliberate slowness. Mermen who can shift between water and land have a distinct tread. I have committed his to memory.

My blood’s temperature reaches its boiling point. He has tried to kill my lady. He has tried to murder my brothers with the raven. Therefore, he has tried my extremely limited patience.

My ears blot out the surrounding cacophony. My mind envisions his cursed sneer, the ink markings glistening across his chest, the black drizzling from under his eyelids.

During Cove’s game, I had plagued her with questions I knew she wouldn’t want to answer. Deep, provoking questions that would do her damage. Yet she had bested me with similar ones, inquiries that peeled back my layers until there was nowhere left to hide, until my greatest weakness had been exposed. Where I had attacked with savagery, she had retaliated with empathy, because my lady knows how to bring vulnerability to the surface.

That’s why her question in the aviary had made Scorpio shut up. Not long ago, she asked the Fae who broke him.

The answer is twofold. He broke someone first. And that someone had died before he could atone.

That someone had died trying to save me.

This is the part I haven’t shared with anyone, including my lady. Scorpio had quarreled with his grandfather just before mortals thrashed into our realm. The merman had spewed words he hadn’t meant.

After that, his grandfather raced to the human world, intent on saving me. My mothers had been weakened by iron fire and unable to so much as crawl to rescue me. They’d only begun to recover the night they died beside me.

Scorpio’s grandfather had been their friend. He promised to help but got speared through by a human before he could succeed. And although Scorpio could have blamed me, he did not.

Not while I became a ruler, and he became my soldier. Not while I thrived, my ferocity eliciting his admiration.

Not until I changed.

Up until then, I had never raised a hand to Scorpio. He had respected me, relied on me to avenge our kin with him, to make sure his grandfather’s death wasn’t in vain.

That trust had ceased the moment Cove arrived. Each time Scorpio put her in danger, my punishment was severe, because she mattered more.

He’d felt betrayed. I had failed him.

I spin the forked daggers in my hands and prowl toward Scorpio. His trident vibrates as he tears it from the strap across his back.

The distance shrinks. We move faster, advancing across the field. I listen to his arm arching and shove my daggers upward.

Overhead, our weapons crash with a force that rocks the earth. Beneath the crossed blades, our foreheads thrust together.

Sweat and brine wafts from his skin. His voice shakes from iron-laced exertion. “I had no choice.”

My own breath fuses with his. “But you did.”

Not long ago, Cerulean had said as much. Faeries cannot lie to others, but they can lie to themselves.

We all make our choices.

His gasp is broken, unbridled. We shove ourselves backward at the same time, and we stalk around one another like vipers, like reptiles coasting around their prey.

Then in quick succession, our weapons blast forward. The noise floods my being, each blow another destructive wave.

We change angles at a breakneck pace. His trident bites into the points of my daggers. The prongs block his thrusts.

My arms glide, as if through water. They move in swift, serpentine motions.