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Death was lost in Graves’s thunderstorm eyes. Rage filled out the perfect suit. Nightmares in the set of his stance. And the spear at his side telling him to smite his enemies, the way it had always whispered to Kierse.

Her heart leaped at the sight of him. Had he heard her? Had their minds connected after all? She had been alone, prepared to go to the end of this ritual without help. And now he was here. He’d come. She wasn’t alone. She didn’t have to do any of this alone.

His eyes slid across the Druids on the perimeter of the room, Niamh struggling toward the throne, and Kierse and Lorcan at the center coated in magic, hands tied.

If fury had a face, it would be his beautiful visage.

“Graves,” she gasped.

His eyes landed on her. “My wren.”

He took one step through the rush of magic and into the Oak Throne room, and the chanting turning to terror.

Graves cut straight through the line of magic in the Druidic room.

He ignored everything—the spell whipping around the room, Niamh’s fight for the throne, the Druids that tried to come for him—as he headed toward her.

He was single-minded as he trod across the moss-covered floor.

Kierse felt the collapse of whatever barrier had kept her from reaching for the sacred tree.

She could feel it from a distance once more.

She closed her eyes and hoped to find access, to find a pool of power at her disposal.

But the spell was still ongoing, and a protective ring of magic still held them in place, so when she reached, nothing happened.

Two figures appeared behind Graves. A lanky yet muscular Black man in Druid robes and a short pale redhead in an oversize T-shirt and shorts.

Her vision blurred as she realized it was Ethan and Gen.

Ethan, who had betrayed her. Gen, who had been injured during the heist. They were both here for her. And they were both…working with Graves?

It felt unfathomable that Ethan would do so. After going to Lorcan and Niamh about her memory work, how could he be here working with his enemy? She couldn’t process the thought.

Still, Ethan dropped to his knees as soon as he was in the room and buried his hands into the soil.

He tilted his head up, and Kierse felt a flutter as he drew on their sacred tree in the adjacent building.

The magic flowed freely to him, and when his eyes burst open, they were blasted wide at the pupils.

Gold magic wove around his hands as they surged through the earth.

Gasps rang out as one by one vines crept up the bodies of the Druids. The chanting died as they focused their own magic on severing their restraints. But Ethan had the advantage of surprise, and most were too busy with his vines to escape.

Those who did were met with Gen. Not the warrior that Ethan had become in the last six months, but her tiny, prophetic friend. These were Lorcan’s strongest Druids. How could Graves bring Gen here?

Kierse screamed, “Watch out!”

But Gen lifted her hands, and suddenly she was floating in the air, her magic a soft glow around her body as she lifted effortlessly above the ground.

She drew from their shared tree, but Kierse could almost sense a shift in her powers.

As if something had amplified them since Kierse had last seen her.

Without the triskel to give them the additional powers, Kierse didn’t know how it was possible.

But she was seeing Gen with her own two eyes as she towered over the other Druids, releasing her energy in a burst.

The first Druid to escape Ethan’s vines took the brunt of her power full to the chest. He groaned and collapsed back onto the earth, knocked out. Kierse’s eyes were wide with wonder as she watched Ethan shift from someone she had always had to take care of to this formidable opponent.

And then there was Graves, almost standing before them. At the last second, Declan escaped Ethan’s vines, turning them to ash with his own magic and rushing for Graves.

A ball of light formed in the hands of Lorcan’s second as he whispered a quick incantation. “I’ll fucking kill you,” he roared.

He threw it at Graves, who took up a defensive stance at Declan’s approach.

His own magic deflected the power. It burst into a firework over their heads.

He blocked the next fireball and then a third.

Stepping toward Declan each time, until he was within range.

Declan’s eyes widened as Graves approached.

As if he truly had thought that he’d outmatch the Holly King.

“You always believed you were stronger than you were,” Graves said as he whirled the spear in his hand. Then he thrust it home, stabbing Declan through the chest.

“No!” Lorcan cried.

Graves plucked the spear out of Declan’s chest and pushed him backward. He collapsed to the ground, dead. Graves tutted in disgust before turning away, the dead body already forgotten.

“You’re a fucking monster,” Lorcan snarled.

“Yeah, I fucking am,” Graves agreed.

He lifted the spear high and brought it down upon the braided threads securing Kierse and Lorcan’s hands.

The strands snapped into pieces as if they’d never been reinforced with god magic and filled with the power of the Oak Throne.

The pieces fluttered to the ground, shining like tinsel against the moss.

The magic disappeared around them, and Kierse took her first real breath since the ceremony had started. She ripped herself backward away from Lorcan. Her wrists were raw and red from the ceremony, a visceral reminder of what had just occurred.

“You’ve gone too far,” Graves told him. “You’ve fucking earned this.”

Graves lifted the spear in his hand, prepared to thrust it through Lorcan’s chest. Lorcan raised his hands, shining with magic. The same gold-and-blue magic that had suffused them moments ago came to him like a snap of his fingers.

Graves faltered at that.

“You’re too late,” Lorcan told Graves. “The ceremony is complete.”

Graves’s gaze shifted to Kierse in horror. “Do you have your magic?”

She reached for it. This vengeance was her own. She could tap into their sacred tree the way that Ethan and Gen had. She’d join their triskel, and she would exact revenge upon him for ever thinking he could do this to her.

But when she touched her magic, there was…nothing.

Her hand went to her chest. She could feel the thrum of her connection with Lorcan, no longer a thread but a wide open, live cable, a completed bridge. Like she could walk straight across it into his heart and soul.

Deeper into the well, there was emptiness.

A long, vast stretch of desolation where her magic had once lived.

She could sense that her powers were on —her absorption was definitely there, in a neutral on position.

But she could no more switch it off and on than she could before the spell had been broken.

She reached for her slow motion and found a complete block.

There was no magic she could access to turn the dial on her time manipulation.

She held her hand out for the tree, her sacred tree, and still nothing happened.

Her hand went to her ears. They were pointed.

Her glamour had been stripped from her at some point, and now she was fully on display. It was just gone.

“What have you done?” she whispered in horror.

“I’m protecting you,” Lorcan said.

“And who is protecting her from you?” Graves asked, low and deadly.

“You fucked with her mind.”

Graves looked unimpressed. “Are you actually trying to justify forcibly binding her against her will and seizing control of her magic?”

Kierse clung to her white dress as panic set in.

She hadn’t wanted this binding, but this was so much worse than she had ever imagined.

Just when she had begun to come into her own with her powers.

When she was pushing herself to her limits and coming out on the other side.

Now it was like she’d never entered this world at all.

“I can’t glamour,” she said. “I can’t hide my ears.”

“You don’t have to hide who you are with me,” Lorcan told her.

Graves snorted. “There’s no fucking way she’s staying here with you.”

He lunged for Lorcan. Lorcan was stronger on the solstice, his powers amplified by the longest day of the year, and he had unfettered access to her magic. But Graves had the spear and his rage, and Kierse didn’t know who would win this time.

“Stop,” she whispered as another wave of panic struck her in the heart.

She should have been able to get between them.

To make them see reason. But there was no reason here.

Her knees buckled, and she fell back to the moss-covered ground, shaking.

She fought the binding. She fought with everything she had.

Reached for the sacred tree, the Oak Throne, anything that would listen to her, but all she heard in her mind was tortured silence.

And then a voice.

Fighting me won’t work , Lorcan told her.

She jolted in horror at the sound of him bridging their connection to speak directly into her mind. All that bullshit about Graves fucking with her head, and now he was speaking into her mind , and he didn’t see the hypocrisy of it all.

Get out of my head! she screamed back down the line.

Lorcan flinched. In that moment, Graves sliced through the magic he was building and buried the spear into Lorcan’s shoulder.

Lorcan tumbled backward onto the ground.

Graves wrenched the spear free and raised it overhead.

He was ready to finish it all, finally. She should have let him that night he’d said he was going to fix his mistake with Emilie.

She should have let the showdown happen, but she’d thought she was saving him.

She’d never thought Lorcan would resort to this. That was her mistake.

“If you kill me, it kills her,” Lorcan told him.

Graves halted. He visibly strained at the threat. “It didn’t kill you when Saoirse died.”

“Our magic was connected, not entangled. Right now, I’m holding her magic, and if you sever it, she dies,” Lorcan told him. “I’ll come back after the solstice. We’re connected that way. She won’t.”

For a moment, Kierse thought that Graves would do it anyway.

That he was so mad at Lorcan and the fucking audacity of the situation—the horrible ordeal he was now going through a second time—that she thought he might just kill him and get it over with.

Even if the Oak and Holly cycle would keep bringing them back, continuously.

But then Graves whirled the spear and buried it into the ground between Lorcan’s legs.

It was then that the solstice roared through Graves, the Holly King coming fully into his own. His arms spread wide as the surge of magic rushed up from him and blasted forward into Lorcan, reducing him from the height of his power to his weakest.

Graves fell to one knee at the end of it, drained to the bone. The Holly King had returned to his reign. A chill ran through the room. A promise of winter to come.

At the head of it all, Niamh sat down on the Oak Throne.