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“It was me who stopped it. The Glacian King would have clawed us all to death that night. We had been in the middle of council, and every court noble was there. We all watched as our King’s head split against the tiles, and no one did a thing.”

The Queen’s breaths grow unsettled. Her chest heaves, and her complexion reddens with ire. “Ispoke to him.Ioffered an alternative. I told the Glacian King to take the village at the mountain’s base. I told him to take them to their mountain and remain there. I convinced him that returning to Terrsaw would only weaken them. I told him to keep them alive, keep them fed, and let his species take only from their provision, leaving the rest in the valley to live peaceably, and by some miracle, he agreed.

“He left that night, taking no one, leaving all the courtiers alive. It was unheard of. The council voted, and all agreed that the village before the Boulder Gate would have to fall for the good of the entire kingdom. All agreed that it was a hefty price, but a necessary one.”

Silence follows the end of Queen Alvira’s tale of heartache and sacrifice. But Dawsyn has heard all she needs to hear.

“All but one,” Dawsyn says finally. “There was one who did not vote in favor. Wasn’t there?”

Queen Alvira meets her eye for a moment, alarm flitting across her face. She warily nods her head. “Yes,” she says, “there was one.”

“My grandmother,” Dawsyn presses, her voice rising. “Valma Sabar, the crown princess of Terrsaw.”

Cressida makes a sound of annoyance. “Princesses do not hold the will of an entire court in their hands–”

“Enough,” Queen Alvira warns, her eyes like daggers to her wife. She regains her composure and continues, “Valma was my friend, and I was loath to be pitted against her. Her father had just died before our eyes, and it made her act rashly. She ran away to the village the next day, somehow escaping the attention of her guards. We didn’t learn until after the village was taken that she had been taken with it. When I heard… when we all heard… It was like we’d lost after all, like it was all for nothing.

“But the Glacians did not return to Terrsaw. Years went by, and not a single soul was taken to the mountain. The people in the valley began to breathe, to live again. And we have your people to thank for that.”

Dawsyn watches the Queen’s shoulders sag, as though the weight of her kingdom burdens her. Two of the guards rush forward, and they bring with them a simple wooden chair. The Queen sinks into it, her face pale with the effort, and it is this that tips Dawsyn over. The woman who assumed her grandmother’s crown, drained and despairing for the bad fortune she herself had bestowed on her countrymen, herprincess.

The wooden chair the Queen rests upon looks very like the chairs Dawsyn carved herself in her cabin, where one rarely sat, for muscles grew too cold and labor mounted too high in idleness.

A guard passes Dawsyn to fetch a second chair for Cressida, a woman who has seen more idle days than not, and Dawsyn shudders in rage.

“If you had been there, dear Dawsyn,” Alvira says, “I wonder if you would have done what I did. I wonder if you would have had the courage to make a sacrifice that would weigh on you for all your remaining days. Valma had the heart, but she never had the stomach to do what was needed.”

Something hot slithers up her spine, clutching the base of her skull. She recognizes an inherited wrath – a long, dormant anger that does not belong to just her, but to many. It holds her, guides her like a puppet, but before she submits to it, she lets its voice slice through the air like a blade, lets it cut the Queen to ribbons.

“My grandmother carved tools from the mountain rock she’d hacked from its face. She cut and shaped lumber into a home. She fought the ones who tried to take it from her and killed them when it was needed. She cut through her own toes with a knife when they became frostbitten. She went days without eating so that her grandchildren could. She stood before our cabin at the start of each season and waited for the Glacians to carry her away. And she did it all without flinching.” Dawsyn pauses, her breaths now coming in heavily, and she strains to hold it in – that thing that screams for release. “Youdareto tell me she didn’t have the stomach? She would have cleaved yours in two and fed your innards to the hungry if she had known you for the murderer you are.”

With that, Dawsyn relents. Her fists unclench, and she turns to the guard as he passes her with the second chair. She watches in fractions as he steps around her, all too close, unaware that she is a powder keg and the fuse is alight. She grabs the legs of the chair and wrenches it from his grasp. She uses it to shunt the guard back until he falls, and she pounces as he does, unsheathing the short sword at his waist.

She wheels with the sword glinting a spectrum of light and drives its hilt into the stomach of another guard who lunges toward her, his own sword drawn. Ryon is already wrestling the other two, holding them off, and Dawsyn is left to face the Queens, both of whom have risen, and now back away unsteadily, their panic evident, their footing clumsy. She’d kill them inside a minute. She’d watch their blood absorb into the mosaic at their feet and call it art.

There is no room left within her to pay mind to what might happen after she slays the Queens; she only knows that Alvira does not deserve her crown, her palace, her breath, and Dawsyn wants to be the one to take it.

Beyond the pulsing rage, she hears a clamor of steel on wood, but she pays it no heed, pointing the tip of her sword to align with the Queen’s throat. “A true queen would offer her own neck to the Glacians. You gave them a class of people you found expendable. Admit it.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“FUCKING LIAR!”

“Please, the village was close to the mountain, far from the Mecca. It was the safest!”

“It was convenient. And you and your court regarded your own lives more highly than my people’s.”

“There was nothing left to be done!”

“There ismuchleft to be done,” Dawsyn tells her, stepping toward her with the sword. “But you won’t be the one to do it.”

“DAWSYN!”

Ryon’s shout rattles through her core as his arms wrap around her. She turns in time to see his mighty wings extend, knocking into the arms and swords of what looks like a hundred guards, all flocking into the throne room. Ryon roars. His body crouches with her against him, fighting him off, flailing wildly, and then he takes flight. He rockets them both from the ground, his wings encasing them, and just before they break through the glass ceiling, Dawsyn glimpses the crowd on the floor, shielding their Queen – the stolen crown glinting on her head.

CHAPTERTHIRTY-THREE

“Stop fighting me, Dawsyn. I’ll drop you.”