Page 263 of Of Masks and Fury

“This is for daring to touch her,” I said quietly. “For every plan you made to cage or break her or turn her into a decoration for your collection of conquered things.”

Through our bond, I felt Isi watching. Her approval and fierce satisfaction seared across my soul.

Alfred smiled up at me. Blood stained his teeth, but his expression held no fear. Only a chilling, broken triumph.

“You’re too late, Your Majesty,” he whispered. “I always win.”

I barely saw the movement. His hand flashed toward his sleeve, drawing a tiny stiletto that gleamed with the same poisoned sheen that had coated the blade Lord Crestin had tried to kill Isi with on the bridge.

He twisted, his body pivoting toward Fenmark. If he was going to die, he’d complete Coralee’s ritual. He’d take my cousin with him, stealing the happiness Addie and Fenmark deserved after surviving so much.

The blade flashed toward Fenmark’s exposed throat.

I roared and moved, my sword sweeping down, but I was a half-second too slow. The angle was wrong. I couldn’t block the strike without hitting Fenmark myself.

Addie moved fast. She’d been forged in fire and pain. She’d survived the lord’s torture in the tower and refused to be broken.

As the lord lunged past her toward Fenmark, Addie’s hand shot out in a brutal upward thrust. Her blade sank to the hilt under his ribs, angling up toward his heart.

He froze mid-lunge, his mouth gaping. The knife fell from his fingers, and he stumbled backward, grasping at the wound, feeling the blade buried deep in his chest.

He looked from me to Addie, his eyes widening as he took in the petite, dark-haired woman standing not far away. Her face held no triumph or satisfaction. Just a chilling, empty calm that spoke of someone who’d already seen the worst the world could offer and knew there was nothing left to fear.

“You…” He gurgled, blood spilling from his mouth.

She gripped the blade, twisting it hard.

Alfred gasped, his legs giving out. He collapsed to the ground, his life spilling out of the hole in his chest. The magic that had sustained him flickered and died as his heart stopped beating.

Addie stood over his body. She reached down and pulled the blade free with a wet slurp, dropping it. It thudded on the ground beside him.

“Addie,” Isi breathed, rushing forward to catch her sister as her legs gave way.

I helped support Addie as she sagged between us.

“I had to do it,” she whispered. “He was going to kill Fenmark. I couldn’t let him. Not after everything.”

Fenmark staggered over to us, his face pale but his eyes blazing with pride as he looked at Addie, the black and silver wyvern tattoo he’d gotten for her standing out starkly against his pale skin.

“My warrior,” he said hoarsely, stroking a strand of hair from her face. “My fierce, brave warrior.”

Tears fell from Addie’s eyes, streaming down her face as she wrapped her arms around him.

The battlefield echoed with silence. Lexie leaned heavily on Derren, the poison in her arm already being drawn out by her companion’s magic, her thigh wound dark with dried blood but holding. Kira pushed herself to her feet, cradling her blade arm, her death adder coiled around her wrist. Kerralyn limped over, her face streaked with blood but her eyes bright with triumph.

We’d won.

The veil had been sealed. The Skathes had been banished to their own realm.

The woman who’d killed our family and planned to turn herself into a god was dead.

And Lord Alfred lay broken at our feet, killed by the sister he thought he’d conquered.

CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

ISI

The flight back to Syllavar felt anticlimactic. Exhaustion hung on us like armor made of stone, and the wasteland still stretched below, clek after clek of corrupted earth taking lives and stealing hope.