Grave Destiny

by Kalayna Price

  “Now I have to find a way to make amends. To soothe this wound you’ve caused,” she hissed. “I offered her you, and she said you were more trouble than you’re worth.”

  I said nothing, simply held my curtsy and my tongue. I could feel Falin’s tension building beside me despite the fact that he also hadn’t moved a muscle.

  “My sister’s was the only court in Faerie that did not send challengers to my throne during my . . . illness. Did you know that? She proved her loyalty and her love. And now I’ve repaid her poorly.”

  The queen was deluding herself. The only reason the Queen of Light hadn’t sent any challengers for the winter throne had been because she already had her ringer inside the court, orchestrating the whole fiasco and ready to step into the throne. Her son.

  “Ryese—” I started, but the queen took a step toward me, off the dais and her throne. Her icy blade materialized in her hand. She pointed it at me, and I swallowed any further words despite the fact that she was still several feet away.

  “Don’t you say his name. Your lips are not worthy of uttering his name.” The storm in her eyes had raged into a full-blown blizzard. There was madness in those icy depths, the sanity she usually tried to maintain washed away by her fury. “On top of everything else, I am told you are betrothed to the Prince of Shadows.” The queen gritted her teeth in a scowl. “I should have known. Look at you, covered in blood and wearing all black. Has this whole investigation been a sham? Are you a spy for shadow?”

  “No, Your Majesty. And I am no longer be—”

  She didn’t let me finish.

  “Here is what you didn’t consider, dear Lexi.” She ground out the nickname she’d given me as if it were a curse. “I’d rather see you dead than in the hands of an enemy court. And regardless of what you claim, or what you’ve convinced my knight, shadow is clearly my enemy. And so are you. Knight, execute the planeweaver.”

  Falin’s head snapped up. “My queen—”

  “I said kill her.”

  I jumped free of my curtsy, stumbling away from Falin. He rose slowly, moving as if he was fighting against every inch he gained. His eyes were wide with horror, but his daggers appeared in his hands.

  I didn’t wait to see if he could stall—even if he could, it wouldn’t last long. He was the Winter Knight. The queen’s will was his command. I had to get out of Faerie. And if the queen wanted me dead, out of any territory held by winter.

  I ran toward the doorway. I was only a few feet away from the threshold when the queen made a grand sweep of her arm and two ice golems woke from their recessed nooks by the door. They looked like they should have been lumbering and dull. They weren’t.

  The golems raced forward, intercepting me before I could switch direction. They grabbed me, each catching an arm. I struggled, twisting and pulling, but they were solid blocks of moving ice. The golems could have killed me then and there as I sagged between them, but instead they dragged me forward, toward Falin, who was making no effort to kill me with any efficiency. Maybe the blood would have been on the queen’s hands if her golems killed me. Or maybe the sadistic bitch just wanted Falin to have to do it.

  The golems dragged me in front of Falin, and then it didn’t matter that he wasn’t hurrying to chase me because we were both right there. They shoved me at him, and one of his daggers vanished as he grabbed my wrist.

  I screamed. Fury washed through me, chased hard by fear. I writhed. Twisted. He’ll let me go . . . I could slip past the golems before the queen realized . . .

  Falin couldn’t disobey the queen.

  His grip was as viselike as the golems’ had been. He jerked my wrist upward, so that I had to stand on my tiptoes. Then he grabbed and pinned my other wrist, both gripped in one strong hand. His lips parted like he was going to tell me something, but the queen spoke first.

  “I want her heart, Knight. No one will bring her back to use against me.”

  Falin growled in anger, frustration, anguish. It was all of it wrapped into one sound. I shook my head. I wasn’t going to beg—it wouldn’t help—but damn it, there had to be a way out of this.

  Falin lifted the dagger, and it hung in the air, hesitating before the deadly descent.

  “Your affection makes you soft,” the queen called from behind him. “Think of this as excising weakness.”

  Bitch.

  Falin’s eyes met mine, and I saw the sorrow there. He had to do what she commanded. There was no other choice. But there was something else in his eyes. Something I didn’t expect.

  Resignation.

  That didn’t ring true. And I realized a second before he changed his grip what he planned to do.

  The only way he didn’t have to obey her, was if he was dead.

  His dagger turned inward, heading toward his own heart.

  “No!” That wasn’t any more acceptable than him killing me.

  I dropped my shields. All of them.

  The planes slid into focus around me. My locket burst open, and realities not meant to touch Faerie flowed outward. Falin was touching me where he still held my hands aloft. My magic washed over him like a wave, tying all the planes together around him as well.

  The shock of it was enough to make him hesitate. His grip loosened, just slightly, and I jerked one arm free.

  I turned my focus to the dagger, planning to push it into the land of the dead. But my eyes caught something else.

  With my shields wide open and Falin enveloped in my magic, I could see the bonds tying him to the queen. They pulsed like thick icy cords wrapped tight around his throat.

  What I could see, I could break.

  “Kill her now, Knight,” the queen yelled.

  Horror spread over Falin’s face. The now limited his options.

  I didn’t try to pull away this time. I flung myself forward, pressing myself into him, and grabbed at the bond at his throat. My fingers sank into the magical bond and I pulled with every ounce of will, magic, and strength I possessed.

  Fire exploded in my back as Falin’s blade pierced my flesh.

  I yanked the magical bond. It peeled free, dissolving in my fingers as soon as it lost contact with his skin.

  The dagger stopped, not yet piercing anything vital. Then the dagger clattered to the ground. Falin stared at me, his eyes wide. Unbelieving.

  I was alive. He was alive.

  “What? Knight, I said kill her.” The queen stepped forward, her icy gaze narrowed.

  Falin wrapped his arms around me, pulling me close and locking his mouth on mine. His lips tasted of amazement and joy. With my shields open, I could almost see the emotions in the air around him. But as he clutched me tight, pain blossomed across my back. My shirt was hot and wet with blood. I could feel it soaking into my pants. I must have winced because Falin pulled back, concern written in his face.

  “You need a healer.”

  I did, but . . . “I think we have bigger things to worry about.”

  “Obey me, Knight,” the queen screeched.

  Falin twisted around to face her, deftly moving me behind him as he did.

  “Never again.” His words were cold. Unmovable.

  Her mouth opened and closed twice, her shock making her look like a broken doll.

  “Then you will both die,” she yelled. She threw out her hands.

  I saw the glamour forming. I’d never seen glamour taking shape before. But now, with my blood spilling onto the floor in this patch of reality I’d made mine, I saw it. A dozen ice spears that would spring up from the ground to impale us both.

  And I denied them.

  This was my reality. I didn’t let her glamour change it.

  Her eyes widened in shock. Falin scooped up his dagger in one smooth movement as the queen formed an ice spear in her hands. She hurled it at us. Two yards in front of us, it hit the edge of my magic a
nd dissolved into nothing, unable to cross into the reality that was mine.

  Falin threw his dagger. It flashed through the air, hurtling straight at the queen.

  She formed an ice shield, but after the last two failed glamours, she must have doubted herself because she also threw herself to the side. The shield was too far away for me to do anything about it. Falin’s dagger embedded itself deep in the glamoured ice. The queen hit the ground, unharmed, but her panic had made her sloppy. It cost her time.

  Time Falin used.

  He dashed across the room, sword in one hand, his second dagger in the other. The queen scrambled back to her feet a breath before Falin reached her, getting her sword up at the last moment. She blocked his swing. Blocked a second. Attacked. He blocked with his sword and swung out to score a glancing blow with his dagger.

  She hissed in pain, jumping back as red blood spilled down her silver gown. Then she charged forward.

  They both moved in a blur of attacks and blocks. A gash opened on Falin’s cheek. Blood trickled from two wounds on the queen’s arm.

  “You are the Winter Knight,” she said amid attacks. “Your oaths belong to me.”

  “You own nothing of me, and never will again,” he said between gritted teeth as he dodged her attack.

  “Is that a challenge?”

  “Yes,” he said, swinging hard.

  She dodged and laughed, though it was a thin, slightly panicked sound. “You will always belong to me. I hold your oaths, Knight.”

  Blue wisps of magic stirred between them, as if the bond woke at her words, looking to attach itself.

  No.

  I rushed forward, but what could I do? If I tried to get close enough to grab the forming bond, I’d distract him and she’d cut him down. If I did nothing, she’d ensnare him and he’d be unable to move against her.

  Falin faltered.

  I’m too late.

  The queen struck outward, her sword arcing for a death blow. “You will always be mi—”

  She froze. In slow motion, she looked down. A dagger protruded from her middle.

  Her sword clattered to the ice floor. Falin had taken part of her strike to his shoulder, and the wound bled freely, but it had allowed him to get under her defense.

  She stumbled back. “No,” she whispered. “You are mine. Winter is mine.”

  “You have been doomed to lose winter for a long time,” Falin said.

  She fell to her knees, her head shaking in disbelief. Blood soaked the front of her dress, trailing down to the icy floor.

  “You loved me once. You were such an awestruck youth who looked at me with such adoration. Can you find that loving youth inside you still?” Her voice was barely a whisper, all the rage and fury suddenly gone. She sounded scared, delicate, and she gazed up at him, her beautiful features pleading.

  But I could feel the glamour she was weaving. Something dark. Deadly.

  She was within my merged realities, but I didn’t feel as connected as I had when I’d denied her glamour earlier. A moment of doubt that I could do it again flashed through me, and as glamour was belief magic, my own doubt was enough to make me powerless against it. I opened my mouth to yell a warning to Falin, but he was already moving.

  He swung outward. His sword slid through her neck so smoothly that her head didn’t move. She blinked, her blue eyes wide in shock. The glamour dissolved.

  “You are the one who made that youth ruthless,” he said.

  Then her body fell.

  Her head rolled, lips moving in words that would never be heard. Through my contact with the planes, I felt the moment the land of the dead recognized her death.

  And Faerie shook.

  The floor jumped, the walls rumbled. Falin and I both fell to our knees.

  Faerie shook again. A great rumbling quake. I fell to all fours.

  The ground continued to shake. Discordant notes originating nowhere and everywhere pierced the air.

  “What’s happening?”

  Falin drove his sword into the ground to help lever himself up despite the disconcerting way the floor lurched. “The queen is dead.”

  “Well, obviously, but I wasn’t expecting the winter court to implode!”

  The ground continued to shake. My shields were still wide open, and now that the queen was dead, the grave essence in her body called to me. Without shields, I couldn’t stop my grave magic from rising. It had already started slipping out of me. Too late to call it back. The best I could do was direct it. Well, the Mender wanted souls. Here was another one for him.

  I sent my grave magic spiraling into the headless corpse. The queen’s soul popped free of her body in a brilliant silver flash. I didn’t give the ghost time to adjust. Imagining my magic rolling back in like the tide returning to the ocean, I pulled back the planes. The realities separated effortlessly, Faerie happily releasing the points where I’d forced it to brush against other planes. The land of the dead and the collectors’ reality curled, compressing. The queen’s ghost was swept up with it before she even realized she was out of her corpse. As my magic withdrew, it restored all the planes to where they should be, leaving no holes or patches.

  The locket closed.

  I threw my shields up, erecting them quickly. Then I huddled low, waiting out Faerie’s wrath.

  Eventually the court stopped shaking. The air turned sweet. The melody of Faerie began again, similar but different from before.

  Then Falin screamed.

  He released the sword and doubled over, holding his head, the heels of his hands pressed to his eyes. I scrambled to my feet as the door to the room burst open. Maeve and Lyell ran inside. They screamed something when they saw the queen’s body, but I wasn’t listening. I ran to Falin.

  He’d stopped screaming, but he was still clutching his head. His shoulder was in bad shape, the blood running thickly down his arm and torso. He had other less severe wounds here and there, but whatever was wrong with his face, I couldn’t see for his hands.

  I knelt in front of him. More fae spilled into the room. Droves of them, likely coming to find out what had shaken Faerie. I didn’t know what would happen. We’d killed the queen. That was probably not good. If we needed to fight our way out of here . . . Well, that wouldn’t be easy. Especially if Falin was badly injured. Would Faerie blind him for his crimes? What was wrong with his eyes?

  I reached out, putting a hand on his good shoulder and the other on one of his wrists. I made small soothing sounds, trying to get him to let me see what was wrong. Falin dropped his hands. His eyes blazed a brilliant blue, brighter than I’d ever seen them before. And ringing his forehead, made of intricately woven ice, sat a crown.

  Lyell’s voice cut through the roar of whispers in the room. “All hail the Winter King.”

  Chapter 24

  I sat in my favorite of the castle’s gardens, PC asleep in my lap and a book open in my hands, but I wasn’t reading it. It had been three weeks since I’d fled from Faerie, the ground still trembling, and Falin’s urgings that it wasn’t safe for me in my ears. All the doors to the winter court had closed after I stumbled into the Bloom. No fae could cross in or out of the independent winter territories either. Faerie had completely sealed off winter while the court adjusted to its new king.

  Things had been pretty quiet since. No visits from Shadow Princes in the middle of the night. No more lessons from the Mender—though I had been practicing what he’d taught me. I wouldn’t want to be accused of reneging on our bargain. There had also been no reemergence of my basmoarte, so Ryese’s cure had worked.

  These were good things. I wasn’t dying anymore. The Winter Queen was no longer trying to ensnare me. And while I hadn’t located any other planeweavers, I had found an unlikely mentor in the Mender, so I could now access at least some of my planeweaving abilities without maiming myself.

 
But I was anxious. I checked on the door in the Bloom every day. I’d tried to get the door to the folded space holding my castle to take me to the winter court, but it refused. I’d even tried summoning Dugan by whispering into shadows, hoping I could bargain with him and his planebender for a door into winter. No luck.

  Who would have guessed that after spending all this time avoiding Faerie, I’d put so much effort into trying to get back inside?

  I sighed and set the book down on the grass beside me—I wasn’t even sure of the name of the main character and I’d been on the same page for at least twenty minutes.

  “Not a recommended read?” a voice asked behind me.

  I jumped to my feet, startling poor PC as he dropped from my lap, and then I whirled around. Falin stood by the garden wall, his thumbs hooked into the pockets of his jeans and his white button-up shirt loose at the collar. His long hair was down, blowing lightly in the wind, but that didn’t hide the thin ice circlet on his brow.

  “Nice headband,” I said, forcing myself to walk—not run—toward him.

  He gave me a lopsided smile. “Yeah, I can make it bigger.” He lifted his hand and the circlet grew to an elaborate crown with shimmering ice jewels. “Or smaller.” It shrank back down to the thin circlet again. “But I can’t take the damn thing off.”

  “Guess Faerie wants everyone to know a king when they see one.” I shrugged. Why was this weird and awkward? He was free of the Winter Queen; shouldn’t that have made things easier?

  Yeah, except now he’s king.

  “Faerie has a lot of opinions on what everyone should know,” he said. “You’ve been added to the official history of the winter court. Not my doing, by the way. But you now appear carved in ice for all to see on the pillar leading to the court. Actually, you’re in several sections, most notably at my side, blazing with power, as I behead the former queen. I’ve heard rumor that you are in the shadow court’s mural as well, depicted in moving shadows and pulling sickness from Nandin. I haven’t seen it myself. The fae are calling you a kingmaker.”