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My hands slip and the mirror drops from the wall, breaking into a thousand tiny shards.

“I am… free.”

The magic of the Midnight Queen begins to fade, and I run for the door, glancing back at the droplets of blood that serve as a reminder of my path. I look at my wound and heal it with a simple charm.

I must find Cambion and the others, to warn them. The door eases open without so much as a squeak. My bare feet tap softly against the petrified wood. Holding my breath, I move quicklybetween each open archway until I reach the throne room. The doors open just barely wide enough to let me through.

Water... there’s water everywhere.

So, my vision wasn’t completely false. Is my brother still alive?

The doors open suddenly, and the servant who watched over Cambion leads a throng of soldiers toward me. “Halt! I’m your king!” I shout, but the soldiers don’t stop.

The man looks at me with narrowed eyes. I take a step closer, my mouth set in a line.

“Until Oronrel falls, I’m its leader!” I say with steely reserve. “The Unseelie Court hasn’t yet removed me from my position. It’s still my bloodright to—”

“I am the head of the Unseelie Court now,” retorts the man I thought was a servant.

I pull back because I don’t understand his words. What the fuck is he talking about?

His eyes flicker and his face begins to shift, to morph into someone or something else. The men under his lead begin to back away from him, their mouths dropping open in astonishment and horror.

As we watch, he morphs into a creature I haven’t seen in many years. The Cockatrice… at least, that’s what he appears to be. He must have come across dark magic over the years in order to alter his appearance in such a way.

I should have recognized him. The Cockatrice snaps his fingers and the Unseelie suddenly jump at attention, clearly under the thrall of the creature’s dark magic. They thrust me to the floor, using their weight to hold me down as I fight against them.

Morrigan’s dwindling magic still weakens me, so it’s a fight I can’t win. A heavy, blunt object strikes the back of my head and I see stars as my body goes limp.

I can hear the sound of movement and action as the Cockatrice summons the Unseelie Court to this room. But as I watch, it is only the women of noble blood who fill the seats around me as I lay limply on the obsidian floor. I don’t know where all the men have gone.

“Our great leader has defied the orders of one of our most holy figures,” the Cockatrice announces. “The Midnight Queen has long been a treasured ally and friend to this great kingdom.” A round of shocked inhalations and sounds of outrage fill the room. The Cockatrice continues: “Oronrel may suffer the loss of a blood-born king, but we gain the Midnight Queen’s allegiance in return. He’s a traitor to our people and a known affiliate of the war criminals who plot our demise.”

“Don’t listen to him. He lies!” I scream as I lift my head from the ground and am rewarded with intense dizziness and nausea. The Cockatrice must have afflicted me with magic, as I can’t imagine the blow over my head would leave me feeling such.

The Cockatrice speaks over my pleading. “We have all watched the Unseelie King’s sanity slip further and further away since the Great War that sent his brother into exile. Haven’t we already suffered at the hands of his father long enough, a man who succumbed readily to the darkness?” A round of cheers and claps ripple through the room. The Cockatrice then quiets all the women and continues his speech. “At the very least Theren, Son of Elioth, is guilty of treason for conspiring with the enemy!”

I watch as heads nod and voices sound in agreement. I feel so weak, so ill, there’s nothing I can do to force them to listen to reason, to ignore this insanity. Treason is punishable by death in Oronrel. Without me to protect the Unseelie people, there’s nothing stopping Variant and Morrigan. The Cockatrice might not be working for them, but his greed will serve their interests if he’s still devoted to Abedon.

The soldiers, who were once under my rule, pull me from the throne room as the court deliberates, and they toss me into a grimy cell in the dungeons far below the castle.

Once I’m imprisoned within my own stone cell and the guards have left me to my solitude, I punch the wall, feeling my knuckles tear and bleed. I broke free from Morrigan only to be imprisoned by my own fucking people. My head still throbs painfully as I flop onto the rickety cot. The place where I carved the rune from my flesh is already healed. I must regain my strength if I’m to escape.

The door to the dungeon swings open. I look up but I can see little in the darkness. But I can hear and the sound I hear grates against my nerves. The Cockatrice chuckles darkly.

“You are now an enemy of your own kingdom, Theren.”

“What do you get out of placing Morrigan in charge?”

“When the Midnight Queen is confident she will be victorious in her mission, I shall set Lord Abedon free,” the creature responds. “He will once again rule these realms and my kind will flourish, as we did under his reign, before he was exiled from this land. The Singularity must be completed; darkness must eclipse the light and burn it with chilling fire until there’s nothing left but ash and rubble.”

CHAPTER TWO

MORRIGAN

Earlann

The kelpie is dead. The artificer is gone. The fae have escaped. TheThrestis destroyed. Physical pain is the least of my worries as I climb out of Variant’s bed. Servants scatter, trying to get out of sight as though they fear I’ll lose control and smite them.