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Something feral and mournful and decidedly non-human.

‘Oh,fuck,’ Creon muttered as in the middle of the alf ranks, a farm shed collapsed and five, ten, fifteen dog-shaped, horse-high creatures broke free from their confinement …

The hounds.

The Mother had brought thehounds.

It was hard to see what exactly was happening, half a mile away – but the screams … The screams were unmistakable. I saw one of the creatures rip into the ranks of the alves in a spray of blood, dragging corpses along as it snarled and howled and clawed its way across the battlefield. Another hound emerged from the fray with an alf caught between its jaws, ripping the poor male to shreds like he was no more than a slip of parchment.

Around the monsters, more and more alves began fading away, breaking the unified front of their attack.

Andnowthe Mother’s fae surged forward.

‘Lyn?’ Agenor said, voice tight. ‘How many hounds did you and Tared take down during the Last Battle again?’

She gave a high-strung laugh. ‘Think we ended up with nine. Do you want us to see if we can top that?’

A rough exhale. ‘Please.’

‘Alright.’ Her wings flared from her shoulder blades, then sizzled out again as she hesitated and turned back towards us. A strange smile lay on her face, suddenly. There was no joy in it – not a sliver of optimism. ‘And if I don’t see any of you again …’

My heart skipped a beat. ‘Don’tsay that.’

‘Dying without saying anything would be worse,’ she wryly said, small hand coming up to squeeze mine. Her fingers were so hot it hurt. ‘So … it’s been a pleasure, everyone. And for the love of the gods, please make sure the alves don’t take over my library if I die, will you?’

And just like that she was gone, without waiting for an answer – shooting into the air in a long streak of fire. I watched her soar towards Tared with eyes that were suddenly misty. My thoughts wouldn’t stop hammering the same two words, over and over again:Last time. Last time. Last time.

Tared turned as she reached him, raising his hand at us from the distance. A swift, wordless greeting – no, a goodbye.

The next moment, the both of them had vanished.

And the fae … the fae were positioning for attack.

Strings twanged. A cloud of arrows darkened the sky. Khailan’s archers, who had treated their arrow tips with nymph poisons … but even though a few fae went down screaming, thousands of others flew on unhindered, descending onto our scattered army with wrathful efficiency. Red flickered over the battlefield. Bodies fell wherever I looked, unable to find cover on the open farmland.

Andstillmore fae were rising from the city and ships.

I threw a panicked glance over my shoulder. No one was coming through the breach in the wall anymore. On the other side of the blood mark, a few hundred humans had stayed behind, their desperation visible even from the distance; Nenya lay in Edored’s arms, head lolling back, arms dangling powerlessly to the earth.

He was holding his wrist to her lips – feeding her his own blood, I realised, thoughts scattering. So she might recover. She might be able to open the line again. But until she did, or until the Mother died …

We were trapped.

On these few square miles of a battlefield, locked in with fifteen ravenous hounds and tens of thousands of glory-hungry fae and the Mother herself, waiting to wipe out the fragment of our army that accidentally survived those opponents.

The last desperate march of the magical world … rounded up like deer for hunting, having never stood a chance.

‘We should go,’ I heard myself say. ‘We should gonow.’

I expected Agenor to object. The risks, the hastiness, the plans we’d made … but all he said, voice tight, was, ‘Stay near the ground. You’ll draw too much attention flying.’

And somehow that scared me more than anything that had happened before – because if even Agenor no longer cared about risks and careful planning …

It had to be bad.

It had to be really, really bad.

‘Will do,’ Creon curtly said in my place. He looked strung tight like a coil about to snap – the Mother’s perfect prince of war, aching to join the fray, every muscle and tendon drawn tight beneath the poised exterior. ‘Might help for you to show your face on the other side of the battlefield in the meantime. If we’re lucky, they take the bait and forget about Em and me for a moment.’