I screamed for them to take cover as I whipped a storm of gravel and debris her way, but not quickly enough. Lightning shot from her hand, headed right for them, and all I could do was look on in that split second that felt like an hour and watch as it struck.
When the smoke cleared, I couldn’t see them anywhere.
I turned to find my mother smiling at me, the joy at what she’d done apparent on her face.
“You fucking bitch!” I screamed. Fire blasted from my fingertips as I charged her. I couldn’t hear the battle around me; couldn’t see the mounting carnage. All I saw was the twinkle in her eyes and challenge in her stance as I ran toward her, rage and sorrow fueling me.
She pointed her longsword at me, and I saw the glint of magic shining off the tip, but rational thought was gone at that point, so I charged on.
“No!” a voice shouted, cutting through the haze of vengeance clouding my mind.
Then my mother disappeared, and I was standing in the field where my friends had just died.
Except they weren’t there.
“Jase and Dean got them out just in time,” Merc said, his dark eyes staring back at me from only inches away. “They are alive, Piper, and they will want you to be at the end of this, too.” He grabbed my chin and turned my face toward the battle in the yard. “They need you to be smart. They need you to win, and you cannot do that if you let your mother manipulate you. She knows you can beat her, Piper. That’s why she’s doing this. You have to think like her. You have to be the princess of Faerie right now.”
His words rang through my mind like a gunshot, drowning out everything else. It was the mental slap I needed.
He smiled at me, the act grounding me as it always had.
Then his face disappeared as he flew across the yard, ghosting at the last second before he crashed into the fray. My mother burst through a portal, blade first. It nearly sliced my face off, but I threw my arms up just in time for it to bite deep into my forearm, hitting bone but not severing it. I cried out in pain as I wrenched it free, doing more damage in the process. I barely had time to summon my healing energy before I was ducking and dodging her elegant flurry of blows as she advanced.
Instead of using magic alone, she seemed to want to savor my death, taking me piece by piece.
“Blow her back,” I growled at the wind. Seconds later, I felt it rush past me, hurtling toward her, but a quick flick of her wrist erected an iridescent shield to block it. Always one step ahead, she was, and if I wasn’t careful, it would be the death of me.
I dared a look over my shoulder to see the melee—the mix of magic and supernaturals and fey embroiled in a battle I could end, if only I could kill my mother. If motivation alone were enough, she’d have been stone-cold dead a long time ago. Sadly, it wasn’t so easy.
“As soon as Etherian succeeds, there will be no stopping me,” she said, grinning as she blew fairy dust at me in a twinkling cloud of magic meant to put me to sleep.
“Stop it!” I shouted, and the winds I’d called rushed past once again, sending the dust off into the woods where it would have no effect. In that breath, my mother lunged again, the tip of her blade grazing my throat in a deadly move. I fell backward and rolled over my shoulder to a crouch, my hands splayed in the grass. With a surge of anger and a single thought, the ground underneath me shot straight up in the air, taking me with it, out of her path. The dark amusement in her eyes as she looked up at me looked dangerously like pride, but I knew better than that. At best, it was a small acknowledgment of my magic.
Then she disappeared through a portal in a flash, and my panic surged.
Without looking, I jumped off the grassy pedestal, my winds easing me to the ground, and ran toward where Knox and Etherian squared off, their battle as well-matched as my own. Both were bloodied and exhausted. Both knew what was at stake for them if they failed. Knox, all raw power and with no knowledge of how to use it, was at a disadvantage against the power-obsessed fey equipped with powers all his own and likely some bestowed upon him by my mother. Any time one of his wolves or an enforcer moved to aid Knox, a fey would portal out of nowhere and attack. The disadvantage was ours all around.
Until Liam intervened.
He appeared behind the jilted fey and sacked him to the ground before he could lob whatever magic he possessed at the alpha again. Knox kneed Etherian in the face so hard that, even with a war raging around us, I heard his bones break. Liam pinned Etherian’s hands behind his back and hauled him to his feet as Knox stood waiting. I’d almost reached them when the queen jumped through a portal behind Liam, weapons magically charged and ready to strike.
I slashed my arm through the air as though I could knock her away, but I couldn’t. Instead, her blades shot toward the king’s former minion and dug into his skin just as vines the thickness of arms wrapped around the queen and hauled her into the woods. Liam winced in pain but held his position as Knox grabbed Etherian by the hair and yanked his head back, his wicked claws extended and ready to strike.
“You’ll never rule,” the alpha growled before he lopped off his enemy’s head in one clean swipe. It hit the ground, and the queen’s scream rent the air. Liam grabbed us both and dragged us through a portal just as my mother, looking wild and unhinged, freed herself from her earthen bindings and darted from the woods, teeth bared and magic ready. We reappeared next to Merc and my father in the thick of the fight.
“She will not attack you here,” Liam said, breathing hard as blood ran down his back. “She will not risk being in the middle of the fray.”
I placed my hands on him and Knox both and healed their injuries before joining the others. As I wielded my magic in the fight, I tried to see where my mother had gone—where my friends were. Where Grizz was. But all I could see were bodies and blood and magic and blades in the moonlight.
“My mother’s plan to get Phineas’ powers failed,” I shouted over the din, “so what will she do now?”
“Try with someone else,” Knox replied.
“Or draw you out,” my father added as he blasted a wall of water at a fey prepared to skewer Merc with a blade.
“Even without the fey king’s power, she could win, now that she has the amulet,” Liam said.
“And we aren’t exactly destroying her troops at the moment,” Knox added with a growl before going after another one of those troops.
Anger built within me, and I looked back at Merc, who dared a glance my way as though he felt my eyes on him. An eternity passed in those seconds, as though time itself had stopped to allow us that moment together—that moment to silently say all that could be said in the midst of a battle. That I loved him. That I couldn’t imagine my life without him. That I had to go, and to please understand. And what he said back to me was ‘I know’ and “I love you too’.
“We have to get her,” I yelled at Knox, and he never hesitated for even a second. “Liam, take us into the woods.”
With a brisk nod and the help of my father’s magic to cover us, he ripped us through a portal that opened near the rickety bridge.
“What now?” he asked.
“Now you go back and help the others,” I replied, “while we play Red Rover with my fucking mother.”
He hesitated for only a moment. “Fight well,” he said before ducking back through the portal and disappearing from sight.