Page 134 of The Faceless Queen

I nodded, almost hopeful.

“But no one can come out either. Especially you.” He grabbed his cloak, and retrieved his knife from the ground, and resheathed it. Then he turned on his heel, and opened the door. A moment later he was gone, leaving me with the healer, Abigail, and a distraught Queen Noemay, who was desperate to see that her daughter was okay.

I burst into tears. And for once, I didn’t have to hide them as I was bathed, tended to, and examined. Until finally, finally, I collapsed into my bed. Alone. Rain pelted against the windowpanes, thunder roared, and after enough time, enough hours of waiting for him to knock on my door, to tell me he didn’t hate me, to tell me he still loved me, that I hadn’t fucking ruined everything, I fell asleep.

Iwas running through the woods, frantic and terrified, a chimera growling. It was an adult. And it was coming closer. It was going to kill me.

Another approached nearby. Someone was screaming in pain, in need of help. A woman. She had long, golden-blonde hair and ice-blue eyes. She was a queen.

One I recognized, and knew, and loved. My heart swelled.

But she was fuzzy. Her features reminded me of my mother. The same look, the same regal way she held herself. But as I got closer, and closer, I realized it wasn’t her, not exactly. The features were similar. But they weren’t her features, nor were they my aunt’s. No, they were … they were … Gods. They were mine. My face, my body. My original birth form. I was running toward myself. Toward Princess Shamhira. I only knew one thing.

She would die if I didn’t reach her.

I ran faster, needing to get to my body, to save myself. To fight off the threat. But instead of shifting fingers to claws, or transforming my arm to a blade, I reached for a sword, sheathed in a scabbard at my waist, and I gripped the hilt firmly in my hand.

No, no, this was wrong. I never reached for a sword. I became the sword.

And yet as I looked down, checking my grip, I realized that my hand wasn’t mine. Not one I ever possessed as Shamhira, Alyra, Samara, or Olivay. Because the hand I had was a man’s, with a man’s golden sigil ring, a moonstag etched across it, and silver steel cuffs covering my wrists. The steel of a knight. Brennan’s steel. Brennan’s sigil ring. But why?

Why would I have shifted into him? And why, when there was a chimera near, wasn’t I shifting into the thing that could kill it?

But there was no time to think about it. The chimera was drawing closer and closer to the girl—to Princess Shamhira. To me. It breathed fire, though I didn’t see it. Only the result. By some miracle it had missed her, and two trees on either side erupted in flames, the reaching branches were full of fire and smoke, appearing almost like wings. She looked at me, her ice-blue eyes widening with absolute terror before she screamed, “Brennan!”

Another chimera came, racing out of the woods with a growl, ember ashes flaring in both sets of nostrils.

It stopped in front of me, two sets of jaws snapping. Both heads were wolves.

“What do you want?” I asked, my voice deep and masculine. Male. Brennan’s.

“We’ve already given our warning,” the chimera spoke, both mouths moving. Its black snake tail shot out, snapping its jaws and revealing its fangs. “We said more would come,” it rasped. “And we’ve given our demands.”

“Which are what?” I snarled, lifting the blade in my hands, feeling deep layers of muscle that I’d never grown or experienced before wrap around my arms. “Tell me!”

“We want the prince.”

I stepped back, my heart thundering. Some flash of memory moved like a gust of wind through my mind. Something I couldn’t hold, couldn’t grasp,

“Why?” I asked.

“Because it’s what he wants,” the chimera said, and then stepped aside, revealing a dark shadow in the woods.

A man, no, a God. He stepped forward into the sunlight, two horns protruding from his head—and black, steel armor covering his entire body.

Armor I knew well.

“We meet again,” the God said to me.

Batrir.

Iwoke with a start, my body covered in sweat, the images of the dream racing through my head. They felt distant and strange, all at once, almost like the dream wasn’t mine, like there was a glass wall between it and my memory of the images I’d seen, and yet, I had seen it, experienced it, felt it. Felt my hands on the sword, my heart pounding. My fear awakening as I saw Batrir.

By the Gods, Batrir. I’d dreamt of fucking Batrir himself, in all of his glory. And more than that, he was wearing Jaron’s armor. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen that. In every image across Eskalon and even Azeal, he was always depicted in the shadows, in the dark. Appearing like that in the fairy tale books, in the temple paintings, even in the art that Geoffrey had kept.

But it wasn’t shadows that darkened his steel. It was the steel itself. His armor was black. Which meant—either King Tirian didn’t know the truth, or he’d lied to me. The armor passed down through the royal line of House Lafir, the armor he’d called witch armor, was ancient, and it was forged long before the Doom. I knew all of my suspicions were correct. I had felt a sense of familiarity I didn’t understand the first time I saw it. But I understood now. The steel had come from the realm of the witches themselves. The land of my ancestors before they migrated to Azeal. It was armor that had been forged before the Doom.

But it was more than that. It was the armor that belonged to Batrir himself.