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‘Nothing I can see,’ Tared muttered, gaze scanning the area. ‘Although there is no telling what she’s hidden in those sheds and stables, of course. She must have known we were coming, and it wouldn’t be like her not to greet us with a few surprises.’

I swallowed, studying the quiet silhouettes of the buildings scattered across the farmland before us. ‘Can’t we ask the phoenixes to burn them down?’

‘If they can reach them alive, yes,’ Agenor grimly said.

I tried to swallow again and found my mouth had gone dry as dust.

An hour ago, I’d thought it would be horrific to finally see her fae army in all its venomous glory – that force that so easily outnumbered ours, even without the disadvantage of our bindings. But somehow this was worse, to not see our opponents at all. To stand here and look out over what could have been mistaken for a peaceful scene, having to guess at the horrors that lay in wait for us … to not know when she would suddenly rise and strike, ready to wipe us off the face of the earth.

Was it a game she was playing on purpose? Pretending to ignore us entirely, reminding us that we were little more than annoying lice in her pelt?

The unease was spreading – I heard it in the whispers and mutters around us, ranks of warriors allowing their grim composure to slip for the first time, confronted with the strangely empty battlefield before us. Had we misjudged after all? Was the Mother no longer here despite having moved her throne? Were we looking at nothing but the rearguard of the army she’d brought here to take the city the night before last?

But Agenor didn’t even blink, squinting at the stretches of golden grain, calculating a thousand and one possible moves behind those familiar green eyes.

‘If she’s trying to lure us closer …’ Creon muttered.

‘Yes.’ My father shook his head as if he’d been yanked from his sleep, suddenly all tightly controlled composure again. ‘Ask the phoenixes to take down a stretch of the outer wall for those of us who cannot fly. Then send a group of alves inside and tell them to fade back to us the moment anything happens. Do wehave a few with enough sense to remember that when things get heated?’

Tared let out a grim laugh; he was already strolling down the hill, to where several of the alves had begun drawing their weapons. Lyn swept out her wings in the same moment. I watched her soar towards the far-left flank in a streak of fire, doubtlessly in search of Khailan, and only barely managed not to hop from one foot to the other as we waited – the serene quiet growing more ominous with every passing minute, the lull before the deadliest storm.

Events unfolded swiftly, as if time itself shared my growing impatience. A small group of phoenixes rose from the left flank not long after Lyn’s arrival, wings of flames carrying them to the outer wall. A downpour of fire spilled from their hands, and mortals and immortals gasped around us as fifty feet of that age-old, god-built wall burned to the ground within seconds, the white-hot fire leaving scorched bricks behind on either side of the breach.

Tared seemed to have found his delegation in the meantime. From the teeming ranks of the alves, a dozen individuals came forward, swords loose in their hands as they cautiously made for the smouldering remains the wall had left behind. One step over that blackened line, as the rest of us held our breaths, bracing for a sudden attack. A second step. One more, and still nothing moved near the city proper but for the occasional fae flying back and forth between homes …

‘So what are we waiting for?’ Edored loudly said, looking ready to leap after the other alves beyond the wall. ‘If nothing is happening to them, shouldn’t we—’

Alyra let out a screech above us – a single high-pitched, ear-splitting warning.

The next moment, the alf delegation started screaming.

It was over so fast I barely registered what had happened. One moment the twelve of them were still standing, walking, not a sign of hurt or injury. The next …

They crumpled simultaneously, collapsed to the ground in a shared outburst of excruciating cries. Limbs twitched and shuddered. Swords dropped from hands. There was blood, suddenly, so much blood, pools of crimson rapidly widening around each of them even though there were no wounds to be seen – two, perhaps three seconds, and then the twelve of them lay dead on the grassy earth, eyes wide open, faces frozen in eternal agony. Only the blood still moved, trickling through the grass around them, soaking into the dark earth below.

A tick of baffled silence.

Then the alf legion below the hill erupted in deafening shouting.

Alyra landed on my shoulder, still shrieking. Even Creon breathed an audible ‘Fuck’ beside me. Tared reappeared on the hilltop the next moment, in a furious flicker of light. ‘What for Orin’s fucking eye—’

‘Blood magic, I’m guessing,’ Agenor interrupted stiffly. He hadn’t paled, not exactly … but the usual deep bronze of his skin now held a tinge of greyness, and the square lines of his jaw looked substantially squarer than a minute ago. ‘Korok’s own contribution to her godsworn powers.’

Zera help me.

I stared at those twelve cramped corpses beyond the wall, gall rising in my throat. Godsworn powers … Was it delusional to wonder if this was a message aimed directly at me – an ungentle reminder that even if I wieldedsomegodsworn magic, there were still powers only the Mother possessed? That even if Zera had woken my latent surface magic, Korok had blessed Achlys and Melinoë with both thatandblood magic of his own?

‘… suppose she drew a defence line around all of the territory,’ Creon was saying next to me, his face hard, his voice rough. ‘She had no way of knowing where we’d try to enter.’

Oh, hell.

What if we couldn’t pass through at all? Did the Mother plan for us to lay siege to the city while she waited for sundown and made a start on slaughtering every last human soul between those walls?

‘I could go and take a look at it?’ The words were out before I could stop them. ‘Perhaps if I use my iridescent magic, I can neutralisehermagic, and …’

Agenor closed his eyes. ‘You’re the very last person I’d send to take a look at this mess, Em.’

‘But—'