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The world went blank around me.

My feet propelled me forward before I could think, into the blistering morning air outside. The fingers of my left hand found my dress as my right arm swung up, aiming for the rows of fae who unwisely flew with their backs towards me.

Red exploded from my fingertips, bright with the force of my fury.

I took down four of them in that first outburst – four deafening thuds as they dropped to the ground with one wing cut off their shoulders, their agonised screams the only introduction I would ever need. For a moment and a half, it felt good. Heroic. Triumphant. Then the swarm faltered as every eye around the courtyard turned in my direction simultaneously, and my more sensible mind caught up – the part of me that could still count to a hundred and realised that the force opposite me was much, much larger than that.

‘Em!’ Tared shouted to my right.

‘It’s her!’ a Faerie voice cried in the same moment, shrill with elation. ‘It’s the unbound one!’

Oh, fuck.

I stumbled back a step, trying not to flinch as commanders yelled their orders and the army started moving – a brutal winged wave rising over me, carrying the vicious force of the Mother’s rage. On the bright side, at least they’d lost interest in killing Creon for a moment. On the more problematic side …

I needed more red than I could take from this single dress. I needed a level of cleverness I didn’t feel quite capable of, staring in the face of my own looming death.

Most of all, I needed Creon by my side.

And where I stood, surrounded by pale sandstone and golden wood, I had none of those things.

I flung another desperate swing of red at the ranks advancing on me. Three of the most eager fae went down screaming, slamming into the courtyard tiles with sickening splats – but the others at their side barely even paused, and my dress had turned a pale watermelon shade of pink. I’d kill another handful of them this way, without doubt. And then my dress would go white and my hair would go white and I’d die a useless death minutes before Creon would, defeated by the bindings and a battle that was never supposed to happen.

So I needed something better than this.

I staggered back another few steps, back through the gate through which I’d come. On the edge of my sight, Tared made another strained attempt to reach Creon, only to find his way blocked by a few dozen fae too many.

Something better than that, too.

‘Beyla?’ I managed, not taking my eyes from the battlefield. ‘Are you still there?’

‘Of course I am, and what for Orin’s sake are youdoing?’ The flicker of alf steel in the corner of my eye told me she was closer than I’d expected. ‘Sacrificing yourself isn’t—’

‘I know. Iknow.’ My voice cracked. ‘Listen, I was supposed to be having breakfast right now, alright? I’m trying to catch up. Don’t suppose you have any buckets of red paint around?’

‘No such luck,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘If you don’t have any better ideas, I’m fading you out in five counts, do you understand?’

‘No. No,please.’ Not with the fae already realising they had forgotten about Creon; I watched the rearguard turn around with my stomach clenching, unable to pick between screamingor unleashing another storm of useless red magic. ‘I’ll come up with something. I’ll—’

Beyla yanked me back. A bolt of crimson seared into the floor where I’d stood an eyeblink ago, slamming a crater three heads deep into the sandstone.

‘Four,’ she snapped, releasing me.

Another red flare came down. This time I had the presence of mind to dive away myself, withdrawing farther into the deceptive safety of that echoing hallway. Doralis shrieked a warning, and I spun sideways without thinking, landing ungently on all fours as a wooden beam splintered in the wall behind me.

‘Three,’ Beyla coldly said, unsheathing her second sword.

I barely even heard her anymore. I barely even felt the harsh sunlight or smelled the warm blood. My eyes had fixed themselves upon Creon, who had grabbed the nearest corpse in that moment and was dragging it over himself, a shield of dead flesh and wings to protect him from the magic raining down on him.

A shield.

Ashield.

My mind jumped so suddenly I gasped.

Last night – a full eternity ago – I’d wrapped myself in a layer of motionlessness to cross the shield around the Cobalt Court.Softness for movement, except I had used it to create the opposite of movement. It had been softness for stillness – a little godsworn trick to fool the Mother’s defences into believing I wasn’t there at all. So if I had been able to do that much …

Iridescence for magic.