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Just a day ago this would’ve felt vindicating. Now their eyes feel intrusive.

One of them messaged the king. Told him of my existence. One of themcausedthis. Whether it was that village girl, or her father, or someone else who saw something they shouldn’t have. They told the king I lived. Surely they knew he’d come for me, surely they knew their words would doom us.

I stand slowly, my mother still in my arms, then turn to face them.

“Who did this?” I say slowly, my eyes moving over the faces of the gathering crowd. “Who wrote to the king about me and my mother?”

No one speaks, though many of them begin to shift uneasily, their eyes moving between me and each other.

“Who did this?” I shout again, my power sweeping out of me. Fairies scream as it knocks them to the ground.

My distinctive wings flare out. For once in my life, I deliberately keep them exposed. Those who haven’t seen them yet now get a good long look at them. I see their eyes widen fearfully.

No one comes forward. I stare at each one of their faces, and this is the moment where we all realize that the boy they thought I was, was a mirage. That this entire time they’ve been the field mice and I’ve been the viper lying in the grass.

“I swear on my mother’s grave,” I say, my voice ringing out in the night, “I will find which one of you did this, and I willmake—you—pay.” The earth shakes with my words, and again, people gasp, their faces terrified.

I glance up at the stars. There is one other fairy who needs to pay. One other who deserves the bulk of my wrath.

Without further thought, I bend my knees and spring into the sky, my mother still clasped to me. My wings beat at my back, and for the first time in my life, I force them to fly.

I grit my teeth as they propel me into the air, and at first sheer willpower and a bit of magic keeps me airborne. But then instinct takes over, and my wings begin to move as though I’d done this a hundred times.

And then I’m heading for the stars above me, and I don’t look back at my small town with its small people full of small dreams.

Wrongs must be righted. A king must pay.

And realms will fall for my vengeance.

Chapter 3

The Angels of Small Death

254 years ago

It takes aday for me to bury my mother and another to leave her.

She rests among the ruins of Lyra, one of the oldest temples dedicated to the goddess of new life, her body nestled amongst Lyra’s undying flowers. The story of the ancient goddess was always one of her favorites.

I stare at the freshly turned earth, my jaw locked hard.

She shouldn’t be buried here, in an unmarked grave in the land of Flora. But I can’t go back to Arestys, and that’s the only home I’ve ever shared with my mother. So I leave her to her final sleep in a land I’ve only ever read about.

As I fly away from her grave and the distance between us grows larger and larger, my anger and pain smolder deep within me.

I feel my identity tearing apart, refashioning itself into something harder, colder. There’s no more room in my heart for softness. I have one reason for existing, and one alone: to kill the king.

My mother wanted me to seek asylum in the Day Kingdom, but that was before, when my mother had saved up riches to give the King of Day. What are the chances that he’d take me in now, when I’m penniless?

I already know the answer.

She wouldn’t have saved up the money if I didn’t need it.

Which means that the last fourteen years of her savings, of us living off of beet stew and sleeping in Arestys’ caves was all for nothing.

All. For. Nothing.

The unfairness of it burns through me.