Chapter Sixty-One

"A what?"

"A will-o-the-wisp," Lorcan told her. He looked like he was going to bow his head and swear his allegiance. "The last of your kind."

Kierse's eyes flicked back to Graves. "A wisp? Like a little ball of light? Like in the stories?"

"Not a ball of light. That is just all the stories remember—that wisps lure people into the dark. But real wisps are of the Fae."

"Fae? Like a fairy?"

Her fingers went to her ears, and she gasped. They were no longer completely round. The tips were pointed at the ends. But not just that... everything felt different. Like all of her limbs were stretched and smoothed over. The glow had remained on her skin as if she could now see exactly where her absorption-magic levels were at rather than just feel them.

Graves nodded. "They were very powerful magic users who came over from their world millennia ago. They were aligned with the Druids for centuries until their kind disappeared."

"They were slaughtered," Lorcan growled. "Hunted down and massacred. One by one until there was nothing and no one left." Lorcan took a step forward as if he needed to touch her to make sure that she was real. "But now, you are here. You are a miracle."

Kierse stepped back at his sudden change of heart. One minute, ready to kill her; the next, admiration mingled with devotion. She couldn't handle that. She couldn't handle any of it.

She was a wisp. And wisps were Fae. And... she was the last wisp.

Then something else filled her heart. A revelation she hadn't considered. Graves had known, and he hadn't told her. This wasn't a secret about his history or his past. This was a secret from her.

She whirled on him. "How long have you known?" She could see the machinations working in his mind. See him trying to find a way to get out of this conversation. "How long, Graves?"

"I have suspected since we saw Mafi that night you absorbed magic."

Kierse took it like a blow. "You knew that night. You said that you had heard of someone like this. Did you mean a wisp then?" He clenched his jaw. All the answer she needed. "Wisps absorb magic. And yet, you never shared your suspicions with me. Why?"

"I suspected, but the wisps never had your limitations."

"But you could have used the sword," she pointed out.

"I didn't know you were bound. Or that your magic and your self were tied up by whoever did this to you."

"You mean you didn't trust me to know about the sword."

"That's exactly what he means," Lorcan said.

"I broke what was there and revealed the truth under the lie," Graves said. "I always planned to do it tonight."

Bound. He had broken her binding. Now she was truly a wisp in more than just name. Still... she couldn't dissolve the anger. The real Kierse, the one who had been left on the streets and abused by Jason—that one was still furious. She didn't know whether he had actually planned to tell her the truth or not tonight. Only that he had purposefully withheld this.

"But you suspected that I was a wisp," she said, lethally calm.

"He didn't tell you for a reason," Lorcan said. "He knew you would go looking for what you were capable of."

"Why?" Kierse demanded, whirling on Lorcan for the answers Graves refused to give. "What would I find?"

"Wisps can kill warlocks," Lorcan told her.

Kierse's eyes widened in horror. "You thought... I was a threat."

"No," Graves said automatically, pain in his voice at that accusation. "Never."

Kierse took another step back. A step away from them both.

How had she gotten here? To this moment when the man she had finally taken her guard down for, who she cared for, who she had confided her secrets in, would truly believe this about her. Would hide the one thing she wished to know from her out of fear.

"I don't care about your petty history or the reasons you two have been trying to kill each other. I don't even care if you're actually the Oak and Holly Kings," she said, holding the spear aloft between them.

It spoke into her veins, humming into her magic, telling her how powerful she was and all the things that they could do together.

You are of my line, too.

If what the spear said was true, that the Fae were of the magical line just as Lorcan and Graves were, then she had every right to this spear.

"You both lied to me," she accused. "If I am a wisp and of the Fae, then this spear is mine. I claim it by my birthright as a Fae, and neither of you will take it from me."

"As it should be," Lorcan agreed without pause.

Fire shot through Graves's eyes. For a split second, she thought that Graves would regret what he'd done when he realized he had lost the sword, but he was too absorbed in his feud with Lorcan to see that he'd shattered her trust along with the binding on her true identity.

"This is over," Kierse declared.

"It's not over," Graves barked, his gaze still settled on Lorcan. "He broke our arrangement. He had your friends kidnapped. He doesn't get the right to walk out of this room."

"You think that you can stop me?" Lorcan asked.

Graves narrowed his eyes. "It's time to finally settle this."

"I should have killed you for what you did to Emilie," Lorcan said. "My sister deserved better."

"This has nothing to do with Emilie."

"It has everything to do with Emilie, and we both know it!" Lorcan yelled. He raised the gun and gestured to Kierse. "I was wrong. You'll use her and discard her like all the others. You're the same as you've always been."

Something snapped in Graves's carefully calm veneer. He lunged for Lorcan. The gun was still aimed lazily in Kierse's direction, and Graves knocked it out of Lorcan's hand with a swing of the sword. It went off with a crack. Gen and Ethan screamed. Kierse ducked, but the shot had gone wide, barely missing Kierse and embedding in a bookshelf beyond. A cat's shriek came up from nearby, and Anne darted across the library in a hurry.

With the gun out of play, Lorcan jerked out of Graves's path and grasped the handle of the black sword he had at his side. With a swing that said he had been training for centuries, he lifted the sword and met Graves with a clash.

An ancient battle had begun.

Spring and fall.

Summer and winter.

Light and dark.

This was just the new catalyst to this age-old tale. The Oak and the Holly Kings raged against each other to either bring back the light and spring or keep the world in perpetual darkness. And on this night, the tides felt as if they could go either way.

As they were entrenched in the battle, Kierse took her chance. She shifted into slow motion and came at the Druids holding her friends. She could feel the ease with which she shifted in and out of her powers. The way it moved through her like liquid. Never before had it felt this seamless. In fact, it was so easy that she overshot her exit and came out past her friends.

The Druid holding Ethan barked out a shout at her swift movement. Kierse leveraged the spear the way she had been training and directed the instrument toward the woman. She balked at the sheer ferocity of Kierse's actions, dropping the knife that held Ethan. Kierse kicked out, sending the woman sailing back a few feet, and she landed in a heap by the coffee table and chairs.

"Aisling!" the second Druid cried.

"Get her, Niall," Aisling groaned.

As soon as he was free, Ethan turned and jumped at Niall, who was holding Gen. Kierse was there a second later, popping out of slow motion to bash Niall in the head. She didn't know what new fighting styles she could achieve, how much faster she could go, or what other consequences came with this. Only that she had to get her friends out of here alive.

Niall landed hard on the ground. Blood welled on his temple from the force of the strike, and for a moment, she feared that she had killed the guy. That hadn't been her intention. When he groaned and tried to roll over, she released a sigh of relief. She didn't know her own strength.

"Look out!" Gen cried.

Aisling had gotten back up and held a gun level with them.

"Get down!" Kierse shouted.

But Niall threw himself between Kierse and Aisling just as she pulled the trigger. Niall gasped, choking on his pain. Kierse's eyes flared wide. He'd just saved her.

"Not the... wisp," Niall said to Aisling.

Aisling gasped in horror, dropping her weapon and holding her hands up. "I didn't think..." Then she fell to her knees. "Niall."

But Niall was already gone.

The sounds of swords clashing brought them back to reality. She couldn't do anything about the Druid who had died for her. Not while her friends were still in danger.

"We need to get out of here," Kierse said.

"The window," Ethan suggested, glancing backward.

"It's too far of a drop for you two. You'd break something," she said, knowing full well that she had been prepared for the same thing only weeks earlier. But Ethan and Gen weren't even as strong as her. "We need to get past them to the stairs."

The historic fight raged before her, and all that mattered in her world was escaping.

Kierse squeezed Gen's fingers, and Ethan took Gen's other hand. A trio. A unit. As they always had been.

"Together," Ethan said.

"Together," Gen repeated.

Kierse knew the library like the back of her hand. She had spent countless hours between training sessions reading in the privacy of its shelves. And the fastest exit was straight through the battle. The worst exit was the window with its impossible drop. They needed another out.

"This way," she said and then dragged them from the sword fight. The two beings were no longer cognizant of the world around them.

She maneuvered through the stacks. In the process, she found Anne cowering in a corner.

"You too, kitty," Gen said, then scooped the cat up in her arms.

Kierse gaped at her. Of course Anne Boleyn loved Gen.

They hustled around the next bend of shelves and came out on the other side of the fight. But the battle raged nearby with no end in sight. It wouldn't be easy to get past them, not for her friends, but there wasn't another option. Not a real one.

She had to get the doors open and then get the fuck out of there with her two friends and a tempestuous black cat. Fuck.

"Once I get the doors open, you run faster than you ever have in your entire life," she told them. "Let me deal with Graves and Lorcan if they come near. Understand?"

Her friends nodded, terror on their faces.

Then she pushed herself to max speed. Her limbs barely processed what was happening as she raced for the door. Everything slowed, and for a moment she could almost see the finer points of the battle. Graves and Lorcan were so much more tonight. With the solstice and the full moon and the approaching witching hour, the stars were aligning for this fight.

It was strange to see them haloed in the golden glow of their magic. The Oak King and the Holly King. A summer god facing off with a winter god. Dark facing Light.

Though she had no idea which was which. There was no good guy in all of this. Graves had said that from the start. There were only the consequences of their actions. It didn't matter their intentions when the outcome was the same.

Both liars and monsters and murderers.

Both capable of love and laughter and life.

No heroes.

No villains.

Just people blessed and cursed with magic.

As she was.

But there had to be a winner.

And the second before she pulled out of slow motion, she saw the tide shift. She wrenched the library door open the same moment that Lorcan moved. He pushed aside the tip of the Sword of Truth and pierced the black sword into Graves's shoulder.

Kierse gasped as the weapon clattered out of Graves's fighting hand. It hit the library floor with an otherworldly loudness as Graves was forced onto his back. Lorcan bent down and picked up his prize. He held aloft in his hand the sword that made him the self-proclaimed winner. The Oak King. The bringer of light. He claimed his victory as he always had at the end of the fight on the winter solstice.

Graves wasn't focused on his opponent any longer. Lorcan had disappeared for him when he met Kierse's gaze. She was furious with him. He had lied and schemed and hidden the truth from her. And yet, in that look, she knew that he hadn't faked his affection. That at the end of this battle, his eyes were only for her. A depthless longing and affection lay in those storm-cloud irises.

"Kierse," Ethan cried, reaching for her. "Come on."

"We have to go," Gen said as she clutched a terrified cat to her chest.

But as Lorcan raised the second sword toward Graves, Kierse knew she couldn't let it end like this. She simply couldn't imagine a world, her world, without Graves in it. No matter what he'd done or what he'd withheld from her. No matter what she felt right now.

Kierse moved faster than she had ever moved in her life. One moment, she was by the doors, and the next, she raised the spear over her head, placing herself between two primordial beings.

She met the bone-jarring clang of the sword as Lorcan brought it down to end the fight. It clashed against her spear, but the full force of the ending wasn't in the magical artifacts. It was the power of the Oak King in his victory.

Magic pulsed out of him in an explosion of white light that pierced Kierse straight through the heart. She gasped as the magic enveloped her senses before blasting out of her and reverberating through the brownstone and out into the world beyond.

What was left of Kierse exploded with it.