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But fear didn’t equal respect, and Estrella would slowly win the latter by doing nothing other than being herself.

The song increased in volume as Rheaghan tossed his head back and laughed, dancing beneath the stars with my mate. I longed to dance with her again, to feel her body move beneath my hands and let her chase away the shadows of the torment I’d tolerated earlier.

Watching her smile was almost as good.

Estrella wound her body in movements that were sharp when they needed to be, moving to the beat of the drums, and the fluid sway of her hips when the violin struck a chord that she felt within her.

“Men have always been blinded by beauty,” Mab said, her voice dismissive.

“I thought she was a dressed up pig?” I asked, thinking of the words Malazan had murmured against my mate when she cut my flesh to ribbons, watching it heal so that she could do it all over again. Mab pursed her lips, pressing the deep red flesh together as she always didwhen presented with a problem she couldn’t solve.

She couldn’t kill Estrella and use her, but she couldn’t allow her court to be turned against her either.

She smirked, the half-smile lacking the disdain it normally did. “Nobody said there was any accounting for the taste of males.”

As if in answer, Kahlo took my mate from Rheaghan and dipped her low. Her head snapped back in tune with the music, her hair forming a dark curtain as it nearly touched the ground. She lifted a single leg to help her balance, her dress parting to reveal more of her beautiful bronze skin.

Kahlo drew her back up to stand before him, the rare ghost of a smile lighting the God’s face as he shook his head at Estrella.

Taste, indeed.

I suppressed the surge of jealousy in my stomach, allowing my mate to do what was needed to open everyone’s eyes to how monotonous and boring life had become without any light in it.

Under the hand of Mab, we’d forgotten tolive.

Estrella remembered.

“They don’t want to fuck her,” I said, leaning my head toward my stepmother. She glared up at me, dark eyes glinting with the harshness of onyx. We both knew I would never allow Estrella to dance with males if that was their aim for the evening. “They just want to be near her. To let her shine her light on them for a little while.”

One of Mab’s captive children stepped into the fray, holding out a hand for Estrella. She took it, letting him move her into the motions of a dance as she grinned. He hesitated for a moment, his smile shy before he returned it andshook his head.

He was one who often warmed Mab’s bed; perhaps her favored nighttime companion for centuries, aside from Octavian and Malachi. He drew Estrella into the dance, touching her only where necessary but staring down at her face as if he couldn’t help himself.

Mab swallowed, shifting on her feet and looking far more offended than I’d ever seen her. I wondered for a moment about that little girl who was hidden somewhere beneath the evil that had consumed her. The one Rheaghan swore still lived, held captive in her own body.

“Then what is it?”

“She is everything you will never be,” I said, keeping all harshness out of my words. I didn’t want them to be an insult, only the truth. “She is life itself.”

Fallon stepped up to Estrella’s side, and she abandoned her male companion in favor of dancing with the sister the Fates had granted her. They might not have been blood sisters, but something in me rejoiced in seeing them smile at one another.

Estrella grasped Fallon’s hands in hers and they spun through the throne room—sharing a single, joyful moment between them. They should have had lifetimes together, their bond something that had been threaded through destiny itself.

Both girls looked toward the ceiling as Estrella closed her eyes, raising their tightly clutched hands to form two swirling balls of light. They rose toward the ceiling, growing in size until they nestled amid the stars. A smaller direct echo of the two moons shining outside the walls of Tar Mesa.

The Prophecy of the Twin Moons.

The moon on the back of the girl’s hands seemed to glow in response, the mark given to them by the Lunar Witches pulsing light throughout the room as they danced.

No one dared to interrupt.

Estrella shattered the moment when she spun, finding Nila standing against the walls with anacalica.The female was one of the most nightmarish of the humanoid species among the Llaidhe, reduced to making rounds throughout the throne room with Faerie wine to offer. Estrella danced her way over to her handmaiden, taking the serving tray from theacalicawith a grin. She handed it to the Sidhe standing nearest to the female, looked right into the wide, protruding eyes of the Llaidhe creature, and took her by the hand.

The female looked down at her in shock, and if she’d had eyelids, she would have blinked. She had no lips, her skin a pale, leathery white as her long, bony fingers wrapped around Estrella’s hand and wrist gently. Her nails were long enough to cut to the bone, but she held my mate in her grasp as if she was the most precious thing she’d ever touched. Her skin peeled back to reveal razor-sharp teeth that formed some semblance of a smile as Estrella walked backward slowly, guiding theacalicainto the dance.

The room went silent but for the sound of the music as Estrella moved her body, guiding the Llaidheto join her in her dance. Fallon came up at her side, taking theacalica’sother hand as the room watched in stunned, horrified silence.

Nila and Imelda joined them from the sidelines, theacalica’sears and pointed fly-like wings fluttering as she learned the steps to the dance she’d never been allowed to partake in. The other Llaidhein the room watched in rapt fixation, their faces lit with the first hints of hope.