“Cerberus!” I yell. The hound keeps jumping on snakes. They’re wriggly and crunchy, and he’s having the time of his life.
Galen saunters over, unhindered by man or beast, and pulls a dagger from his belt. Fear trips through me at the look of self-satisfied calculation in his eyes. I remember that look from when his family visited mine. I remember his cruel laughter, the flash of rubies and gold on soft fingers that never saw a day of labor, and the way he callously boasted whenever his father wasn’t around that he would soon become Alpha. I remember Galen, a young man at the time, disappearing into a bedchamber with my mother when I was hiding in a little-used hallway, and then Thanos explaining to me why.
The dagger flashes, catching the ray of sunlight spreading through the new floor-to-ceiling crack in the wall. My nails scrape over marble as I use my arms to drag myself away. My legs slowly start to regain feeling, and I dig in my heels, scooting back another foot. Nerve endings up and down my legs catch fire, and I clamp down on a cry.
My feeble attempt to flee puts a malicious smile on Galen’s face. He actually grins at me, revealing a healthy set of teeth.
“The Lost Princess.” His ruthless gaze sweeps over me with chilling interest. “Your mother had such high hopes. We made a deal, years ago. She was going to give me the Kingmaker once you were more grown up. The deal stood because neither of us ever believed you were dead. When the time came, I would have conquered the world.”
My jaw goes slack. Is that why Mother wants me to go home so badly? Because she bargained me away to Alpha Tarva?
I stare at him, horrified. “The leveled neighborhood in Kitros. You showed her what you can do. What you’re willing to do in your own backyard.”
Galen’s blue-green eyes gleam, like he’s pleased I have a quick mind.
There’s nothing but acid in my stomach, and even that curdles. Everything is suddenly so clear. He promised to leave Andromeda alone until a reasonable old age, and she promised to turn me over, willing or not. He threatened her, and she offered up the Kingmaker to secure her own safety. Galen couldn’t resist. With me under his control, he’d never be duped. He’d always know who was trying to cross him.
Truths slap me as if I were hearing them out loud, or through lies. Mother isn’t all-powerful. She can be bullied, cornered, and even scared. This also explains her infuriation over Griffin, and her obsessive need for me to return home, even though it would mean having a rival in her nest. Although not for long, I guess. My Kingmaker Magic never detected any lies in her words because she does want me back in Castle Fisa, and she’s always wanted to “teach” me to be a queen just like her, but she was going to ship me off to Galen Tarva before I lost myself entirely and turned against her in cold blood.
I swallow a sense of bone-deep betrayal, infuriated to even feel it. It’s not as though I thought Mother could turn over a new leaf—or ever would.
Oh Gods. Did she send Ianthe here as insurance that I’d eventually comply?
As much as I despise her, I’m not above using Mother to get us out of this. “Alpha Fisa wants me alive.”
Galen chuckles. It’s a dark sound. “Even Alpha Fisa doesn’t always get what she wants.”
And with me dead, all pacts—or binding promises—involving me are off.
“Here you finally are, in my castle, and I’ve decided I don’t need you after all.” Galen smirks. “A Power Bid came early, thanks to Beta Sinta, and I won’t wait any longer. My time has come.”
He doesn’t even know Beta—Alpha—Sinta is in the room. “And you’ll do what? Level everything?”
“That would be counterproductive to comfortable living.” Galen shrugs. “Fisa City and Sinta City should suffice.”
I gasp. That could mean hundreds of thousands dead. Even Mother never mass-murdered.
I stare at Galen, aware of Griffin clashing violently with the guards somewhere behind me and of his frantic shouting for me to get up. I wish I could. I swear to the Gods, I’d listen to him for once. But my legs just won’t work after getting hit with the throne, although they are twitching more. I was so sure something would come up, like it always does, and that somehow we’d win the day. Cerberus came, but the hound could have destroyed our enemies by now, and he hasn’t. I never imagined Galen’s strength, or the physical and magical cost of my own exhaustion.
Galen lowers his voice until there are hints of a growl. “I’m going to end you with a knife.”
A hot rush of feeling sweeps down my legs. I turn my grimace into bared teeth. “Short and lethal. My favorite.”
He chuckles again, his mirth grating and harsh, and yet disturbingly genuine. “Little Talia, how you’ve grown.”
“Yeah? You’re still old.”
His mouth turns down. “It was Eleni I wanted. Beautiful. Much more biddable. But you had…special talents.”
“Eleni would have eaten you alive.”
He steps closer, eyeing his sister Appoline with impatience. She’s hovering off to one side. Humming?
Bone crunches not far behind me. There’s a masculine howl. It’s not Griffin’s.
A true megalomaniac, Galen keeps talking like he has all the time in the world. “In the neck, right? Isn’t that how you do it?”
A vision of Thaddeus punches me behind the eyes. My knife in his throat. His blood on my hands.
Of course Galen knows about that. All the royal families keep tabs on each other.
Galen pounces like the predator he is, and no last-minute magic erupts to save my life. I throw my upper body to the side. Griffin’s horrified yell rings in my ears. There’s the sickening thud of steel sinking into flesh, and I cringe—but feel nothing at all.
I twist back around in time to see Galen pull his blade from Appoline’s chest. He glares at her, shock and anger in his eyes.
Appoline staggers and then falls on top of me. My arms come around her slim body, and I somehow sit us both up to face her brother. She’s shaking, and I try to work her behind me. Appoline is slight, smaller than I am, but whatever strength she has left makes it impossible for me to move her.
“What are you doing?” I try to shield her. She feels so fragile, like a child in my arms.
Her heart thumps hard under my wrist. “Protect you.”
I don’t understand. “Why?”
His eyes as cold and hard as chips of ice, Galen raises his bloody knife again. Griffin rams into him from the side, sending both men flying. Over by the wall, Bellanca lets out an enraged shout and runs toward them. Sparks snap like wildfire between her fingertips. Flames lick over her hands and up her arms.
Still locked together and grappling fiercely, the men rise to their feet. I shout a warning to Griffin, but Bellanca slams into her brother’s back, not Griffin’s. She wraps her now furiously burning hands around Galen’s thick neck.
Galen roars in pain and tries to wrench out of Bellanca’s hold. A mighty twist pulls him free of Griffin’s hands and hauls Bellanca right off her feet. She squeezes with all her might. There’s no way she’s letting go. She looks out of control. Demented. Impressive.
I cradle Appoline against my chest, wondering where this family came from, and if they’re the ones I should have been terrified of all along.
“You don’t have to do this,” Griffin calls to Bellanca over the snap and snarl of her raging fire. “I can do it for you.”
My heart catapults up my throat. He made that offer to a woman he doesn’t even know because of me, because of how killing Thaddeus left a black mark on my soul and nightmares in my life. But this is different. This is like with Otis. This is revenge, not self-preservation.
Bellanca looks at Griffin, seeming to hear what he said, but then grips her brother even harder. She screams, sounding unbalanced in a familiar way. Her magic races over her shoulders and then surges higher to frame her face. Her long, thick mass of red hai
r swirls and mixes with the flames. Blue-green eyes glint like jewels in the heart of a volcano, and then the firestorm leaps from her and engulfs Galen.
His shouts grow deafening and then stop abruptly. He falls, his substantial weight finally dragging him from Bellanca’s fiery grip. At her feet, Galen Tarva burns until there’s nothing but smoldering bone on the shattered marble.
Bellanca slowly closes her fists. Her hands shake as the fire still coiling around her head and arms disappears back into her body.
“That’s one way to do it,” Carver murmurs next to me, a hint of wary admiration in his voice.
I nod, then glance to my sides. Everyone is here, and apart from Flynn and Griffin, who look like they’ve just gone three rounds with a Centaur, I see no damage they didn’t already have when we arrived.
Movement against the wall draws my attention. Lystra helps an unsteady but conscious Ianthe stand, and my heart sings with joy as the two girls stumble over.
Apparently done playing with snakes, Cerberus finally decides to be helpful again and turns on a cornered Acantha. It only takes two mouths to rip her in half while his third head bays in gory triumph.
Cowering on the dais, Galen’s two sons don’t say a word. They look catatonic with fear. Auntie Bella just showed them a thing or two; their father has ceased to exist; and the three-headed guardian hound of the Underworld is chewing on Aunt Acantha’s bones. What a day.
Ignoring everything and everyone else, Bellanca drops to her knees next to Appoline. Her red hair still sparks, and she smells faintly of wood smoke and burning leaves. With quick flicks, Bellanca’s sharp gaze takes in the way I’m holding her sister. Then her eyes turn glassy and fill with tears. “Appie?”
Appoline’s chest shudders under my hand.
“Someone get a healer,” I say. “It’s not too late.”
Bellanca leaps up, but Griffin catches her around the middle, stopping her.
“I’m sorry,” he says gravely, “but I can’t let you leave this room.”
Fire crackles all over Bellanca again as she struggles against Griffin’s hold. Fueled by fear and fury, she burns holes in his bloodstained clothing and then howls in frustration when her magic doesn’t work on him.
“Lystra!” she yells. “Run!”
Lystra abandons a still-swaying Ianthe and sprints for the double doors, only to run into the stone wall that is Flynn. He’s so covered in the guards’ blood that she hits him with a wet smack and then squeals in disgust. Flynn shackles her wrist, and she immediately starts beating on his chest with her other hand until he grabs that one, too, and forces it down.
Not a spark of magic nips the air around her. Poor girl.
“Don’t hurt her!” Bellanca screams, her whole body raging with fire again. She kicks back at Griffin’s legs and then slams her head toward his jaw. His shins take a beating, but he angles his face away just in time.
“It’s…all right, Bella.” Appoline looks up at me with the weirdest smile. “I knew it would be like this.”
“No!” Bellanca looks even wilder now, truly terrified.
“Griffin!” I cry. “There’s still time. We can heal her!”
Appoline keeps smiling at me. She’s older than I am, but I feel oddly maternal and protective of her as she leans on me and grips my hands. Harsh prickles stab at my eyes. I plead with Griffin again, my voice raw and rough, but he shakes his head. My heart hollows at his denial, and I feel like the epicenter of an earthquake, not sure if I’ve wrought ruin on the innocent, or leveled a terrible construct.
“But she saved me!” Appoline sacrificed herself for me, just like Eleni, and I don’t even know why.
“If I let one of these women out of the room and she doesn’t come back, she will always be a threat to us. All of this will be for nothing,” he says fiercely.
“No.” I shake my head. “She’ll come back for her sister.”
His expression remains firm, grim as well, and his eyes tell me two things. Maybe I’m right, or maybe I’m transferring onto other people my own guilt and regret for not going back for Ianthe. Either way, he won’t budge, and I realize something about Griffin; he’ll make decisions I never could.
I swallow. “Ianthe, then.” I turn to my sister. “She’ll bring the healer here.”
Griffin hesitates, considering. I’ll never know if he would have agreed because Appoline stops us all.
“I have my coin.” Appoline pats my hand. Her increasingly unfocused gaze slides over me from below. “I saw this was my time.”
I blink in shock. “You’re a seer?” How did I not know that? No wonder she looks so lost. Her eyes are turned to the inside!
“I sent our healer to the hunting lodge this morning. She’s across the grounds.” Her voice comes out wheezing and wet, but Appoline still sounds like she thinks that was a fantastic idea.
Bellanca goes limp, the fight and the fire draining from her. Her eyes fill with tears again. “But why?”
“So you’d know you couldn’t reach her in time. So you wouldn’t get hurt trying.” Appoline smiles again. “So you wouldn’t blame the Alpha and the Origin for my death.”
I gasp, and my stomach does something truly acrobatic that leaves me short of breath. My eyes fly to Griffin’s. He looks just as stunned.
Bellanca shakes her head, quietly crying. Lystra sobs loudly, and Ianthe goes to her.
“Let them go!” I order sharply.
I’m almost surprised when Griffin and Flynn comply. They look more than ready to grab them again, but the two Tarvan women don’t try to run.
“Listen to me,” the seer tells her sisters, something steely veining her fading voice. “I believe in the Alpha and the Origin. No harm must come to Princess Eleni. You must protect her with your lives.”
The blood drains from my face so fast I see spots. When it comes roaring back, it thunders like a storm in my ears. Just for a moment—a crazy, irrational moment—I thought maybe it wasn’t real. That I was wrong. Otis. The knife. My sister’s blood. But I know better. She is gone. It was real. I saw her in the Underworld.
“You can’t save her.” I can barely push the words past the burning thickness of unshed tears in my throat. I try to blink the sting from my eyes but end up seeing her long blonde hair spread out like a sunset, gold streaked with red. “Eleni’s dead.”
Appoline looks so peaceful, but the blood on her lips turns the saliva in my mouth to ash. “Eleni is dark like the night.” She lets go of my hands, and her fingers brush the end of my sable braid. My heart starts beating too fast. I know whose hair is darker than mine. “And bright like the day.” Appoline’s small hand stops over my heart. “She joins everything.” Her hand doesn’t move again, but she’s still smiling, like she accomplished some great feat, or this day ended exactly how she meant it to. Her eyes, blessed—and cursed—with the sight, don’t close. They stay open and haunting.
She joins everything. Night. Day. North. South. Magoi. Hoi Polloi.
Me. Griffin.
An anguished sound leaks from me that mixes with Bellanca’s and Lystra’s broken sobs. The spark of life low in my belly is suddenly so obvious I can feel it pulsing with every thump of blood through my veins. My heart hammers. I can hardly breathe. Only panic jumps up and down my throat. I fought the living dead, braved the Ice Plains, nearly drowned, got mauled by the Hydra, competed in the Agon Games, and confronted the Tarvan royals…all with a baby inside me?
I slowly turn my head, and my wide eyes collide with Griffin’s steady gray gaze. He looks appallingly unsurprised.
I can’t believe him! All those times he ordered me to be careful, to not take a hit to the middle, his paying closer attention than usual to what I eat. That must be how they grow such big men in southern Sinta. Stuff pregnant women with meat.
I see joy in his eyes. And worry. Over my reaction? He shoul
d be worried. “You knew, and you didn’t tell me!”
Griffin looks taken aback. “No. But I thought maybe… I hoped…”
“I’ve risked my life over and over!” I explode.
He crouches next to me, the line between his eyebrows deepening into a harsh groove. “And over and over, I asked you to stop taking unnecessary risks.”
I snort loudly. “What I consider an unnecessary risk completely changed about thirty seconds ago!”
He takes a deep breath and then swipes his hand through his hair, shoving it back. “I didn’t want you worrying about one more thing when I could have been wrong. There are plenty of reasons for you to be tired and emotional.”
“Tired and emotional!” Oh Gods, I have been tired and emotional. “So this was another ‘wait and see’? How is that ever a good idea?”
“If I’d put ideas into your head, ideas that might not even have been true, you would have fought differently, overthought things. You don’t change technique in the middle of a battle, Cat. That’s how you lose your sword.”
I get what he’s saying. I’m not sure I agree. And he doesn’t know that powerful Magoi, if they’re paying attention, can feel the new life force inside them almost immediately. “Well, I might have hesitated once in a while!”
“Exactly. Hesitating is what gets a person like you killed.”
“A person like me?” My voice turns strident.
Griffin doesn’t say anything. Wisely.
I’m angry, but some part of me knows I’m not being fair. He was just guessing, probably based on some fairly obvious clues, when I should have known. I should have felt her. I should have wondered why fatigue and tears were coming so easily. I should have realized my stomach wasn’t acting up because I was overwrought, and I definitely should have realized I hadn’t had my monthly courses in ages, but there’s been so much going on.
While I’m still too bowled over to move, Flynn lifts Appoline from my lap and carries her to an undestroyed part of the throne room. Bellanca and Lystra follow, still holding their dead sister’s hands. Watching them, sympathy overwhelms me. I know what they’re feeling. I know they’ll feel it for years.
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