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But Ruskin does, I realize, because he used it to get us horses right after he came back from Interra. We portal there, stepping out of a lake onto a part of Styrland I’ve never been to before, right on the border with Grandom. The Faerie gate is buried in a small woods near a farm. The Sunshards insist on checking for traps before we advance beneath the cover of the trees, so Ruskin, Destan, and I have a few minutes to wait. Destan wanders off, and as I watch two healthy colts running around in the field, I suddenly remember Ruskin’s ominous promise that he’d made a fair deal for our horses after Interra.

Despite our hurry, I can’t help but ask.

“Is that the farm you took our horses from?”

He glances over at it. “Yes.”

“What did you exchange for them?” I ask.

“Their mares were old, but they’d both just had foals. I made sure they’d grow fast and be strong, so the farm wouldn’t be without.”

That seems “fair enough,” just like Ruskin said, but I also know fae magic always comes with a catch. It takes life to make a life, Ruskin once told me, and the health and quick growth of the horses had to come from somewhere.

“How did you do it? Where did you get the life force from?” I ask.

He smirks, a dangerous glint entering his eyes. “Apparently, their neighbors had stolen some of their sheep a month before. Let’s just say those sheep weren’t of use to the thieves for long.”

Totally innocent, then. I’m not surprised to hear it, really. I’ve seen time and time again that Ruskin doesn’t like to cause harm if it can be avoided. But still, it’s nice to have another piece of confirmation of who he is now.

General Sunshard emerges from the woods, nodding to us, and we follow her beneath the trees. Up ahead there’s an impressive pile of gnarled branches and twigs, stacked into a kind of pyramid, as if ready for a bonfire. But it’s twice the height of a man, and overgrown with so much moss it looks like it’s been there for centuries. The structure is crowned by two interlocking antlers. I suspect the humans who live around here know to stay well away from this thing, even if they don’t truly know why. Like the common gate to Seelie, when we get close enough it reforms before our eyes. It’s not as ornate as the one in the Kilda, but the knotted archway that blinks into existence is certainly imposing, the antlers forming the very apex of the arch.

We step through it, and the damp, quiet forest in Styrland disappears, to be replaced by the plains of Unseelie. Ruskin turns to us.

“I seem to remember there’s a stream nearby?—”

He goes rigid, every muscle tensing, and all of sudden I’m aware of our bond—and the pain currently ripping through it.

Ruskin falls to his knees, a deep roar of agony escaping him.

“Ruskin!” I throw myself down beside him, my hands on his arm. I tentatively reach across the bond, focusing on the sensation of something being torn away from Ruskin. It’s like a thousand tiny cuts to his being, cleaving, separating him from a fundamental part of himself.

“It’s going,” he grunts through gritted teeth. “She’s taking it from me.”

My heart drops into my stomach as I realize what I’m witnessing: Ruskin’s High King power—his connection to the Seelie realm and its magic—being wrenched away from him.

I hold my breath through the next few moments of agony, wondering what I can do, and then Ruskin’s muscles loosen, and he nearly falls forward, barely catching himself. He’s panting, his hair damp against his brow, and when he looks up at me, his eyes are full of despair.

“She’s taken me off the stone,” he gasps. “My mother is High Queen again.”

Chapter 29

Lord Sunshard tosses a stone into the stream, his mind clearly on other things. It makes a plopping sound as the water swallows it up. I feel a bit like that stone, with the cold water rising up over it, dragging it downwards. Looking away, I focus on where General Sunshard sits beside me on the riverbank, as we discuss what we’ve learned.

“What you’re saying is that she doesn’t need either of you anymore?” the General asks, her hand permanently glued to the pommel of her sword.

“She wanted to use us to gain control of the founding stone.” Ruskin says flatly. While he seems to have recovered from his powers being removed with no lasting damage, I can tell that mentally this blow has hit him hard. “Now she’s lifted the protections Eleanor laid on it, and has used her new power from Interra to pass its tests, nothing is standing in her way.”

“So now we need even more in our arsenal than we did before,” General Sunshard says.

Ruskin rises, taking a leaf out of Lord Sunshard’s book and kicking at a stone. It’s as big as my head, and flies straight across the water to smash against a boulder on the other side. It splits in two with a loud crack.

“Yes,” he says, staring at the boulder like it’s personally wronged him. “We couldn’t best her even when I was High King. Now she has the power of the Seelie Realm on her side and we…” He trails off, and the edge of despair in his words makes me stand too.

“She isn’t the only one who gained things from Interra. We have powers she doesn’t have, and allies too.”

Ruskin’s expression softens, though he doesn’t look any more hopeful.

“You really think that will be enough?” he asks.