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I saw the disdain in his eyes. “Then there is no escaping it. You are not my child. No trace of the old Marzanna remains in you.”

“If she possessed anything of your cruelness, then I am glad for it,” I retorted. “But I doubt she did. She fought you. I fought you—with my aunts and with Khor by my side. You and Vela stood alone. Then and now.”

“You and your stolen mate will fall today,” my father warned. “My patience has been tried, and I have no more left to bestow. You might have stood at my side again, the most blessed and most powerful of all my children.”

“I’d rather die,” I said honestly.

He smiled. “Then so you shall.”

“Finally we are getting somewhere,” Vela snarled. “Finish her and take back what is yours, Perun.”

My father turned to her. “Take him. You know what to do.”

The fae woman nodded, smiling eagerly. “At last.”

She turned to Draven as my father lifted a hand.

I had no time to move, no time to scream. The floor was yanked out from under me.

I was pulled. I flew across the throne room like a child’s toy as my father marched out into the grove.

My father flicked his wrist and my back hit an oak tree. I hung suspended there with no need for bindings.

Then Draven was in the grove. Flying towards my father with long blades of slivered shadows in each hand.

With a cry of rage, he threw himself over the altar, his dark knives slashing towards my father’s chest.

The knives never reached their target. My father lifted his hand, and a gust of wind so strong it sent my head slapping back against the tree erupted around him.

Draven went reeling backwards into the throne room, sprawling onto the floor.

“Vela,” my father snapped. “Take your revenge. Finish him quickly or I will.”

The fae woman was already rubbing her hands together. She laughed gleefully as Draven picked himself up off the floor, and she carefully aligned herself between him and where I hung in the grove.

“It’s too late,” she crooned to Draven. “Perhaps if you are very, very good, my handsome Khor, I will let you watch her die.”

And then she sprung upon him. Long claws extended from her slender fingers, narrow and dagger-sharp.

She opened her mouth to snarl, and long, pointed fangs descended, dripping with a thick and viscous liquid.

Vela was a shapeshifter. With a whispered incantation, the silk-clad woman became a monstrous hybrid of human and beast, her form twisting and contorting into a fusion of scales, claws, and fur as she propelled herself towards Draven.

I twisted on the tree, helpless and trapped, able only to watch as Draven charged to meet her head-on.

With a swift motion, he raised his blades and lashed out.

But Vela was quick and agile, dodging and weaving, evading his strikes, her shifting form making her a difficult target to pin down.

Meanwhile, my father approached me, a silver knife in his hand. Without meeting my eyes, he slashed open one of my wrists.

Blood dripped down my hand. My father caught it in a small wooden bowl.

“Making a new grail?” I asked.

He ignored me. Walking back to the altar, he poured the blood he had taken from me upon it, then raised his hands towards the sky.

Lightning crackled overhead. White energy channeled down.