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In a sickening crunch of bone, countless sea singers, merfolk, and battle fae twisted in unnatural angles.

They tumbled to the ground, convulsing.

Those whose fear of death hadn’t taken their lives screamed as the fiery gold of Malin’s mesmer dug into their eyes, their ears, their noses. They shuddered and pleaded for it to cease. Still holding tightly to Kase, Malin balled a fist, and dozens of brilliant webs of her mesmer crawled back to the glow of the ring.

The sea fae fell. Most with horrified expressions and a look of stun in their glassy eyes.

Doubtless, she’d robbed them of the memories to even know their own names.

In the next breath, Falkyns and warriors took those trembling fae to the Otherworld with swift swipes of knives and swords and a few curious looking powders. Niklas took a great deal of pleasure in painful deaths.

“He’s unnerving,” Silas muttered, watching the Falkyn lead laugh as he dusted a sea fae’s mouth with an elixir that seemed to thicken until the poor bastard suffocated on his own tongue.

“He is.” A grin split over my mouth. “We need to remember the gifts, Silas. That is how we fight this battle—everyone must remember their gifts.”

He offered me a poignant look, then nodded. “Those words matter. Keep those words, Little Rose.”

Chapter38

The Phantom

The archers rainedarrows against a throng of sea fae who’d managed to strike at the gates of Hus Rose. They’d taken the rivers and streams in the forest and emerged on our side of the battle.

Herja Ferus shouted her commands from above. Her consort stood with their daughter, a unit of Ettan warriors, and a few of the Nightrender’s Kryv guarding the entrance. With his arms open, the brother of the Shadow Queen opened his arms wide. Hagen Strom, as I understood it, was a type of shield with his magic. So was the woman on his opposite side, a silent Kryv who held back the forces of the sea singer voices, the flinging waves the folk kept using to break in.

“Speak clearly, my love,” Eryka said, a little curl to her mouth when Gunnar took a place beside his mother on the parapet.

The thieving prince tugged down the mask covering his face. “You wish to fall on your blades. The lot of you.”

A mere boy when these battles began, now Gunnar Strom was a man, vowed, and stronger with his dark mesmer. I’d seen it change and shift through glimpses of my connection to these fated battles.

He was a little horrifying. Hardly any of the sea fae arched a brow as they took a knife, a dagger, one even gathered a shard of glass from one of the windows, and rammed the points through their flesh. Eyes, throats, bellies, it didn’t matter, their minds belonged to the prince, and he took it without a flinch.

I raised my sword, embracing the heat and energy of the armies at my back.

Archers shouted from the towers as sea fae began to retreat. More fiery arrows arched across the sky. Deep in the trees, to either flank, warriors shouted as the pyre roared below, the flames reaching for the silver moon like a beacon leading us forward.

The flood of our armies shuddered across the damp soil. Sea fae were no simple foe. They filled the canals, the edges of Raven Row. For folk of the tides, they knew how to hold a blade well enough.

I kept catching sight of the boy king. With all his venom laced toward Valen, the Ever King kept his distance from the earth bender.

Then again, there was something there. As though another force kept them parted. Something unseen.

“I sense it too,” Calista said through a grunt as she rammed the point of her knife through a spindly fae with mossy hair. She kicked his body into the canal, watching a bloom of dark blood spill out over the surface. She nodded toward the Ever King. “There is a time and place. That’s what I keep thinking. Paths are soon to cross, and I don’t understand it.”

“We never do.” I dropped my sword against a sea singer. Without the trance of his voice, his horrid face was carved in threads of rotting flesh and sunken cheeks and bloodied eyes. He stumbled under my sword and fell beside one of the water-filled crevices.

Like the waves sensed the loss of one of their own, a whitecapped curl rose and devoured the dead sea singer into the depths.

Another wave of burning arrows assaulted the towers of the fortress along the edges of Hus Rose. Screams mingled with bodies falling from walls they’d been attempting to scale. The collision of steel and blood burned between two sides.

My sword struck a fae’s short blade. The man had ghastly deadened eyes, as though no color could find them. A shard of bone pierced his nose, and his teeth were shaved to resemble the merfolk with their jagged mouths.

Our blades locked, spun, and dodged until I sliced the back of his leg. At my back, another came. And another.

Focus forward. Ari’s words reeled through my brain while I kept Calista in my sights. We were tossed into a cruel existence as children, but through the lifetimes, we’d managed to gain a bit of know-how when it came to the sword.

She preferred knives; they fit her smaller figure, but she managed Annon’s old sword well. Her cuts and stabs went to ribs, to thighs, the back tendons of the knees.