“And she will be once I call her to me—because I’ve found you.”
I mulled that idea for a moment, thinking of all the ways the fey king could be duping me. But there was still the possibility that he wasn’t lying—that he really did want her dead as much as I did. That tracked with everything I’d believed about him until he’d appeared with my mother, shocking the shit out of us all. Maybe that was the ruse. Maybe he was playing her, not me.
Then again, maybe he wasn’t.
The entire plan hung on the word of a manipulative sociopath who’d tried to kill me at least once. Not a stellar foundation by any stretch.
“If I wanted you dead, Piper, I’d have made my move already,” he said, and I internally cursed my lack of a poker face. “I would not have risked coming here without Larken.”
His logic made sense, but I still couldn’t shake my unease.
“So, how do we do this?” I asked. “I need logistics.”
“I will summon her to me, hold her mind for a moment, and you will take her out.”
“And if I can’t kill her fast enough?”
His smug expression fell. “Then we have a problem, but I am confident in your skills. I have seen some and heard of others. I am certain that, if you channel your hatred, you’ll be able to do what needs to be done quickly enough.”
That made one of us.
“So, what was that bullshit at Central Park?” Knox asked, looking at his new pack lined up in the distance.
“Appearances,” Phineas replied. “Why do you think I convinced Larken to use your wolves against you?” Our lack of response prompted him to continue. “I knew she would appreciate the irony of it, and would also buy into the idea that I wanted to punish you in the process. But I knew they could only do so much damage before you would figure a way out. In fact, I all but ensured your escape with that move. You should really be thanking me, not questioning my motives.”
I stepped closer, my eyes searching his cruelly beautiful face. “I’ll consider it—after my mother is dead.”
He closed the distance between us and reached for my face. “Then let it be done.”
“Kill her!” a shrill voice screamed from somewhere in the distance.
I slapped his hand away and blasted him with wind, putting distance between us in a flash. Ice-blue magic ripped through the air and crashed into his back, blowing a hole through his coat and his flesh. Kingston stormed toward the fey king, anger twisting his expression.
“It was a trap,” he snapped, blasting the king again before he could regain his footing.
The New York pack moved to protect Phineas but was met by a wall of enforcers all too keen to take them out. And all the while, my mother called for her husband to do what he’d obviously promised he would, to keep up his end of the deal—to deliver my head to her.
“No!” he yelled as he shot a wall of ice at Kingston, shards of it splintering off like blades of shrapnel. I melted them with a single blast of fire, and he turned his angry eyes to me as magic blossomed in his hands. With his focus solely on me, he didn’t notice when Merc ghosted up behind him, fangs descended like the predator he was. They tore through the fey king’s flesh as his vise-like grip held him in place with a little help from my winds. Merc’s eyes glowed like silver ice as he sucked the fairy dry.
The witches and warlocks fanned out and held the perimeter with a wall of magic that kept the king’s army of wolves hemmed in. But as Phineas grew weaker, his thrall over the pack broke. They stood motionless and watched as their de facto leader fell to his knees when Merc released him, blood trickling down his chin.
Phineas struggled to stand, but Merc clamped those massive hands around his face and held him still. “You tried to take her from me once,” he rumbled. “You will not have the chance ever again.”
The fey king’s eyes went wide just before Merc tore his head from his body and threw it into the brush behind us. The witches burned it immediately and made quick work of the rest of his corpse, reducing it to ash. With a hard exhale from me, the winds I called carried those ashes off into the woods, scattering them so far and wide that no magic could ever reunite them.
One royal down. One to go.
I looked up to see the queen step out of the tree line, expecting her to make her move now that one problem was out of the way, but she didn’t move. She didn’t attack. She didn’t even look my way, as though there were no threat before her. Instead, she just stared in annoyance at where his body had been as she waited for God only knew what.
Etherian did the same.
Then slowly, like a faintly burning coal, a shimmer of magic wafted up from the ground and danced in the air. It hovered for a moment, as though hesitating—as though it were a sentient being. It spun in a slow circle before stopping. Then, in a flash, it shot across the yard and slammed into Knox. He stumbled back into Foust, gasping for breath.
“What the fuck was that?” Knox wheezed as he clutched his chest, eyes blazing yellow with power.
Larken let loose a scream that shook our combined realms. “NOOO! It should have been mine!”
“What’s happening?” I asked anyone who might have had an answer.
Etherian turned his deadly, beautiful face to me, rage sharpening his features. “Knox is the heir to the fey king’s power,” he said calmly—too calmly. “It has chosen him.” His anger at this revelation could not have been more apparent. Before that moment, the reigning royals and I had been the only obstacles in his quest for the throne. But he’d once again been denied what he wanted—the very thing I’d promised him—and I looked on as his rage began to boil over. “You lied,” he seethed, calling forth whatever magic he possessed that I had yet to see. It was bad enough when he’d had no vessel to channel it. I wasn’t betting that having one would tone it down. “You lied!”
I steeled myself against his anger, just as a ruler of Faerie would. “You said it yourself: the fey lie.”
A roar of anguish escaped him just before stony javelins shot up from the ground into the air and hurtled toward our army at a speed that my mind could barely comprehend. By the time I shot my hands out to thwart his attack, he’d speared two warlocks and a witch and narrowly missed the vampires nearby, thanks to their superior reflexes.
Larken’s unstable laughter rang out over the din, and her troops lined the woods, prepared to strike once she grew tired of the show. “What a pleasant surprise he is,” my mother said with a laugh. “Looks like he knows who the losing side in this war will be and is keen to ally with the winner. Something you will never be…” I caught a glimpse of her satisfied smile as she advanced toward us, slow and confident, like she had all the time in the world. Like nothing could stop her now. “There is no escaping the inevitable, Piper. This war will only end one way. My plan was set in motion long ago. Neither you, nor the fey king’s heir, nor the vampire king, nor your pathetic army can stop me.” She clenched her fist and I felt the air around us compress, making it almost impossible to breathe. Unable to speak, I mentally called to the elements around me, a silent scream for aid. The air shuddered, as though caught in a tug of war—which it was, I supposed. The question was: whose pull was stronger?