Page 62 of The Lure of Wolves and Whispers

He’s a tyrant.

And tyrants must be torn down.

The thought sends white-hot certainty coursing through my bones as the guard closest to Prince Cashel nods to the others. Her thick muscles tighten as she and two others reach for the High King in the pool of blood and hold his arms behind his back.

The High King doesn’t fight back. His heavy head drops, eyes fluttering closed, and he almost seems to relax into the iron grip of the gardai as they lead him out, leaving a trail of bloody footsteps in their wake.

A figure in a long crimson cloak follows them.

I don’t miss the way the High Queen watches it all.

Steel armors my pounding heart, certainty surging anew.

I can feel it in my very soul, stirring with fresh resolve.

Justice isn’t clean. It isn’t easy, and it isn’t kind. But that doesn’t make it any less necessary. This man will destroy our isle, and every last stubborn hope that lingers here, because he’s afraid of what we might be capable of with magic, if we ever had the chance.

That we might look to the Martyr and the mages—maybe even to ourselves—instead of him.

That if we aren’t desperate, he won’t be able to control us.

The High King has shown us for years who he is, even before the madness.

He can’t be redeemed.

If our isle is going to survive—if I want to even dream of bringing back the mages and the Martyr and magic to our people again—then the High King must die.

Eireann is worth saving.

Weare worth saving. Bright hope flares in my chest, a swell pressing so hard against my ribs that I nearly brace for a crack. The feeling is so strange, so utterly foreign, that for a second, I can’t breathe past it.

If I can pull this off, I can prove to the Whisperers that I can be an asset for their fight. And if they see me as useful, maybethey’ll help me escape by the time this is all over. When I’ve done what they want me to do.

Breath floods into my lungs as the courtiers around me clink their glasses and sip their wine over low whispers, as if nothing happened. For them, the High King’s monstrous cruelty is easy to turn away from because it isn’t their blood spattering the marble tiles—yet.

All my life, I’ve done whatever it takes to survive.

This will be no different.

I will kill the High King.

And not just because I made a bargain with Wolf.

But because Iwantto.

SIXTEEN

Talon leads me back to my room.

I don’t know how much of that is them realizing I don’t know the way, or knowing that even if I did, the last thing I want is to be alone in these shadowed halls.

Aoife follows us, painfully pale with blood shock. I see it in in her reddened eyes, in her pale cheeks. I felt it once too, that echoing weight of horror from witnessing slaughter.

I don’t know if I should be relieved or horrified that I can move on from it so quickly after all these years of living under the shadow of the Black Quay.

Her slippers are quiet on the stone as she moves to take a separate staircase winding in another direction from the one that leads to my room.

As much as I hate to admit it, part of me wants to go to her, offer her some comfort.