CHAPTER 17

SLADE

I look down at the woman at my feet.

Her body is hunched over, spine bent as her head tilts toward the ground in utter supplication. If I wasn't seeing this with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed this woman would bow to anyone.

"Queen Malina."

She picks her head up, and icy blue eyes lift to look at me. Her face is gaunt, skin so pale her blue veins are visible at her temples and neck. Pure white hair is matted and dirty. Clothes ripped and stained with smoke.

She looks nothing like the haughty queen I expected. Especially not with the haunted look in her eyes.

My beastly thirst for revenge rears its head, just as it did throughout my stops in Orea. I want to wrap my hand around her neck and rot her through. The bloodlust is strong enough that my fangs ache in my jaw.

"I should kill you."

She trembles at my dark tone, lips cracked, frost covering her cheekbones like rouge.

"I should kill you," I repeat, "for the way you treated Auren. For the way you fucking allowed your husband to treat her. For doing nothing ."

Rotted vines scourge the cobblestones at my feet. Ice slips from Malina's shaking hands, landing in small shards that break upon the road.

"Are you fae?" she asks, tone unnerved.

My brow cocks as I jut my chin to the ice magic pouring out of her. "Are you ? Or did you just make a treacherous bargain with one?"

She glances down and fists her hands, as if only just realizing the magic she's leaking out.

"Is it true?" I demand. "Did you somehow give your blood and fix the bridge of Lemuria?"

She swallows hard, pale throat bobbing. "Yes."

Her confession cracks, though she doesn't sway. Doesn't try to defend or make excuses.

"Orea will want to kill you for that," I tell her, my voice laced with threat.

"Yes," she confesses again.

I should kill her. For all the cruelty she doled out to Auren. For what she's done to Orea itself. She allowed the fae to surge in and destroy our land.

And yet…because of that, she also forged a way for me to get to Annwyn.

Her people watch us, tense and terrified, still shaking from the attack, while others mourn the ones who lie dead on the road. Malina's eyes go from me to them, and I see her desperation. Can sense her fear.

But I also sense a warning of magic. A split second after, shadows appear to my right.

I move before he can.

The man coalesces, but I have him by the throat before the shadow power even fully pulls away.

He gasps and tries to wrench out of my grip, but he's not going anywhere. I stare at the hooded man as he tries to claw at me, but rot is already soaking into his neck.

"King Ravinger!" Malina cries with desperation. "Wait, please!"

"You think to sneak up on me?" I seethe at him.

The people scream.

" Leave—her—alone ," the man sputters out, each word shoving past his constricted throat.

"Do you think I answer to you? Do you think you can stop me if I rot her bones and shrivel her cruel, selfish carcass?" I threaten darkly.

Rage flexes through him, dark eyes flashing with violence. His magic tries to gather but fails.

My voice drops low. "Your shadows can't hide you from me."

I'm tempted to continue on with my purge of punishment and my rite of retribution. Since this man seems important to her, I could kill him first and make her watch.

"King Ravinger, I'm begging you."

My head turns slowly toward her. Malina has her fingers threaded together in a plea, hands shaking even as the skin is iced over.

"No more death. Please . Not him. Not any of them. The only person who deserves it is me. Don't hurt him."

"Queenie—" the man chokes out.

She ignores him, her glacial eyes unblinking.

"Thank you," she whispers, surprising me. Her gaze flicks behind me to look at the Oreans. "Thank you for saving them when I couldn't. I owe you everything. Truly." Droplets of freeze seep from the corners of her desolate eyes. "I know you want to kill me, and I understand. But monarch to monarch, thank you for coming to our aid. This is all that's left of my people, and if I can die knowing they will live, then that is enough."

Her chin wobbles as I stare at her. I see the dark circles under her eyes that show up starkly against her pale skin.

"Are you truly Malina?" I taunt. "Because you look and act nothing like the haughty cold queen that everyone describes, save for that white hair."

Her icy eyes flinch and her confession whispers. "I'm not the Malina I was before."

This would be much easier if she was acting like a conceited snob. Instead, she looks broken and desperate.

I let out a growl and then roughly let go of the man, making him stagger on his feet. Malina rushes to him, and he wraps a protective arm around her, his shadows writhing around his black cloak.

He snarls at me like he wants to tear me apart.

"Try it," I dare. "And I'll change my mind about letting you both live."

Malina presses her hand to his chest and murmurs something in his ear that seems to make him stand down.

My cool gaze casts back to her face. "You're wrong, by the way."

Her white brows furrow. "Wrong?"

"These people here aren't the only survivors." I jerk my head in the direction of the castle. "Some people are being held there."

Shock pulls lines of stress around her eyes as she glances at Highbell. " What ? Truly?"

I don't answer her. Instead, I walk back to Argo. The survivors are watching him warily, giving a wide berth.

"Wait!" Malina starts to hurry after me, and the shadow man curses beneath his breath. The shattered ice queen shoves her way in front of me, seemingly not caring about the timberwing growling at her back. "What do you mean my people are in the castle? How do you know?"

"I flew overhead. There are golden sheets flung out the windows. The word HELP smeared across them in white paint."

I step around her, but she does the unthinkable. Her hand lashes out, gripping my forearm, narrowly missing my spikes.

My head turns slowly, and a threatening growl rises from my throat, but she holds her ground. "Please take me to them. Help me save them." Her words are a distressed bid uttered with guttural grief.

I'm heartless enough to refuse her. To walk away. I don't owe this woman anything. She had no mercy for Auren. No mercy for her people or even Orea for that matter.

The shadows around the man flicker with fragments of coiling light, his body tensing like he's a second away from trying to fight me. But Malina's eyes go behind me. To the huddled Oreans against the broken buildings and rot-stained street. My gaze follows hers, and I see them. Mourning their dead, shivering in the cold and fear and grief, their bodies thin and weak and dirty.

"Release me," I command.

Malina wrenches back her hand, letting it drop to her side. I can see the hope dropping too. She fears me, and yet, she has the courage to beg.

A moment of tense silence passes between us until I finally break it in half. "Fine," I say, and I hear her breath catch. "I'll help your people, Queen Malina. Only because Auren would want me to."

She seems to nearly collapse in relief, her blue eyes filling. " Thank you ."

"Don't thank me. Thank her ."

She nods warily, like she knows I'm still fighting back my instinct to end her.

"Can you use your magic to get the fae out of the castle? Can you get all the survivors within its walls where they can be safe?" she asks.

My gaze casts toward the mountain. To the gleaming castle teeming with fae. "I can kill the fae and get you inside."

She lets out a shaky breath, and I hear the people murmur and cry. Who knows what they've been through, what they've had to survive.

Turning, I go to Argo and mount his back, my hands gripping the reins. "I can clear out the castle, and I can even cut off their route up the mountain so no more of the fae army floods in. But safe ?" I glance at the pillaged, burnt city. "Look around, Cold Queen. Orea isn't safe for any of you."

With a snap of the reins, Argo lifts me into the air, making Malina flinch back.

"I'll come back when it's done," I tell her, and then Argo shoots upward with a powerful push of his wings.

As we lift higher, my eyes cast to the right, outside the city, where pristine snow spreads out like a sheet. To where the fae army horde marches toward Fifth Kingdom.

I was heading for them first when I saw the sprays of magic on this broken street and happened upon a few dozen Oreans about to be massacred.

I wasn't expecting to find the bitch of a queen who somehow seems to have grown a heart.

The skies continue to pump full of smoke from the forest, mixing with the cloud coverage. My gaze scans the ground, following the direction the army is marching, the landmarks, the way the land pours into the horizon.

"There," I tell Argo with a tap of my knuckles against the side of his neck. "Get me right there."

He snaps his attention to exactly where I want to go, at the narrowest point where the army weaves around the land's snowy dune. We fly within the haze of the smoke-stained clouds, like an arrow speeding through the cover of night. All while magic builds within me. Churning. Boiling.

With piercing precision, Argo drops down through the sky toward our mark and lands with a roar and a spray of snow, right in the midst of the invading army.

Right in the middle of the marching fae.

After being stuck in this land for so long and only being around Oreans, the sight of so many pointed ears and sharp fangs is surreal.

The fae nearest me are startled for several seconds. Stopping in their tracks, they take in my appearance, obviously noting I'm fae. They hesitate, because they don't know my relation to the army or if I'm one of them.

I'm not.

The closest ones are smart enough to pull the swords from their scabbards. To feel the building threat.

One of them raises his weapon at eye level. "Who are you?"

Who am I?

I jump off Argo's back, and the second my boots touch the snow, my magic surges out.

The fae have a moment to gasp, to curse, to shout, but then I let my rot free. Let it reign .

And it rules with pure tyranny, showing them exactly who I am.

Argo and I stand at the eye of the storm while rot floods out. It pours into the ground, like spreading fractals burnt through wood. Black lines stain the snow, the reaching veins bursting beneath the soldiers' feet.

Fae start to drop.

It's a ripple effect while the erratic lines reach and stretch and grow, poisoning all in their path. The soldiers, their clothing, their supply carts, their fucking leather boots. The brown-tinged snow and the frozen soil beneath it. It all succumbs to death. It all succumbs to me .

Because this is what I am.

I am hostile darkness and festering death, and with my forms now fixed, with my essence now bonded and my heart healed, my unrestrained power is stronger than ever.

For once, I don't have to hold onto control, to hold my magic back. It's like being bound with ropes and then cutting through every cord, letting the shackles fall. Letting the monster loose.

And loose it does.

Some fae try to use magic against me, try to defend themselves. Balls of fire get thrown my way. Bursts of unnatural light too. Shields. Wind. A swarm of locusts probably ready to strip the flesh from my bones. But I drop them all before they can drop me.

My rot devastates the ground, making it start to sink. Soldiers fall, looking like their corpses have been left for weeks in the sun, while the rest try to run. But there's no running from this. No running from me.

Their magic sputters out uselessly as their festering bodies split open. My rot floods further than I can see, so many bodies being swept away. Hundreds. Thousands.

Still, my power pours.

My skin feels charged, like I've brushed against a bolt of lightning, and I revel in it.

And then, I call up the dragon and wrench it free.

The splintered form of the creature pours out of my body. It takes root beside me, sprouting from the vapor that streams from my silhouette. Its smoke is thicker even than what chugs out of the forest, until it forms a shadow beast that's blacker than night.

This time, the dragon is far bigger than it was in the bog.

It coalesces beside me, standing twenty feet tall, black scaled body rippling with strength. Its spikes are hooked and deadly, stretching down its spine and legs and looking sharp enough to stab someone through. Its tail sweeps over the snow, but it does not move a single flake, just like its feet don't leave prints on the ground.

Even so, the world seems to tremble at its incorporeal presence. The fae still alive all scream out in fear when they see it.

I turn and swing up on Argo's back, and we take to the sky.

There's a perfect empty circle of untouched snow where we were standing, the rotted lines spread out from around it like the black, toxic rays of a sun. The dragon's form takes flight beside me in a wraith-like presence, black wings spreading out to their full length for the first time.

Below, I see just how far my magic has already traveled, just how many soldiers I've killed. Now, it's time to ruin their path. To stop them from their relentless pour into the rest of Orea.

Letting go of Argo's reins, I give in to my power completely. I feel it stretch like an invisible band that goes from me to the splintered manifestation as we cut across the sky. Power builds and spreads between us, swelling throughout my body, until it reaches a crescendo.

And then the dragon opens its mouth and spews out death.

Instead of fire like the tales of old, flames of rot pour from its maw, lethal vines of rotted roots expelling from its throat. It gushes into the land below, and the ground buckles.

I watch as the sweep of pure power creates a rift of rot that utterly devastates the snowy landscape. Magic pours from me, from the dragon, and the contaminated ground disintegrates, taking every nearby soldier with it.

When the dragon finally swallows down its outpour, when its maw snaps shut, the land below is ruined. Path split, gaping open, making the way across impossible. The snow is curdled at the edges, foaming with clumps and singed brown.

Thousands of soldiers lie dead.

Unless another fae comes along with enough power and skill to repair what I've ruptured, then their brutal onslaught has been cut off.

For now.

With the dragon still flying beside us, I pull on Argo's reins and head for the gilded jewel that's clasped in the snowy mountain's grip. But all I see when I look at Highbell's gleaming castle walls…is Auren.

I've given Orea a chance, and it's time to give Highbell one too. Because it's what she would want. I'm no longer on a rampage of revenge. No longer fed by only torment and reckoning.

I told her I'd be the villain for her, and I was.

Now, I need to also be the hero she would want me to be.