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Trapped, like the child inside of me.

Make it stop.

They moved around me—my mate. Ferocious, brutal mate.Arran. Oh, Arran.

I should have told you what I suspected all along.It is me…

Not just the queen from the Void Prophecy.

But the Queen of Darkness.

The Queen of Death.

The succubus had come because of me, because of my power. I was the cause of the darkness that would come for our kingdom, our subjects. Eventually, it would come for us.

But I loved him too much to burden him. Too much to let him realize that understanding my power wasn’t the key to solving our problems. I was the cause of all our problems.

Me.

For me, he would die—and willingly.

I couldn’t say it all, couldn’t think it fast enough or communicate it through the bond to male or beast.

I was not afraid of Gorlois. Not anymore.

But I remembered killing him. Even as Arran dragged me to my feet, holding me tight as my legs remembered how to function, I remembered.

My father was dead. But for me, that had changed nothing. I was still a prisoner. Still held in the water gardens. That was when I’d decided to do it. To kill him, to escape, or to die trying. Never again would they hurt me, Gorlois and my mother. I laid in wait, the water-smoothed stone I’d fashioned into a dagger over months and months clenched in my hand. When he came without my mother, alone for once, I struck. I drove that dagger into his heart with the rage of twenty years of torture to strengthen my hand. That was where Arthur found me hours later. Covered in blood. Reached for me without hesitation. Led me out of the darkness.

But maybe I’d never really escaped the darkness. Maybe it had been inside of me all along.

Arran shifted. He sprang for him—the male who’d tortured and raped me. Arran Earthborn, my mate, my love, the most powerful fae born in millennia.

It should have been nothing. No contest. As easy as his beast ripping his head clean off. Like he’d done with Gawayn.

But I knew it wouldn’t be like that.

Not this time.

Gorlois hadn’t plotted for twenty years to go so easily. Not twenty years, I realized. Hundreds of years. He was the one who’d removed the books on rifts and the Void Prophecy from the library in Baylaur. He’d been planning and preparing… he and my mother both. There was more he wasn’t telling us. More power that he was hiding. Waiting.

My mate was going to die.

The rage that had held me fixed changed. Sharpened. I didn’t need the blade—I was the blade. I was death.

I reached for my magic, that burning ember inside of me. And found it waiting, ready. Hungry.

86

ARRAN

He shouldn’t have been able to move that fast. The starling circled in the air, around and around, above the battle. Out of reach.

I would end it.

Veyka could have Igraine.

Gorlois belonged to me.