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I smiled back and trailed a finger down his cheek, marveling at the shape of such a beautiful specimen who was all mine.

“Good.”

Then the weight of all my new magic and everything that had just happened pulled me beneath the wave of a dreamless, starless void.

CHAPTER

62

COEN

Each of my footsteps thunked heavily against the throne room floor.

I strode toward Queen Mydusia on her dais of pure rose quartz, a burlap sack slung over my shoulder. The thing inside it jolted against my back with every step, drumming my tattoo to the beat of ruthless victory.

My victory, but I could pretend it was Mydusia’s. Rayna and I had played this game so well that we’d eliminated a contender.

We could keep on playing until the other one was eliminated, too.

Mydusia watched me approach through her veil, her spine as straight as the spears each of her faerie guards clutched as I passed through them. When I’d made it to the dais, I unslung the burlap sack and let it thud to the floor at her feet.

“As you commanded,” I said, utterly emotionless. “Your sister’s head.”

A pause crackled in the air. Mydusia leaned forward just a hair’s breadth before snapping her fingers at the nearest guard.

“You. Take it out. Bring it to me.”

The guard scrambled forward to pick up the sack and rifle through it. His expression twitched with the barest trace of disgust beneath his three-horned helmet as he pulled out the decapitated head and held it aloft.

For the first time in five hundred years, Mydusia looked at her sister. I waited for a sign of regret or sorrow, a chin tremble beneath her veil, a shake of her fingers resting on the arms of her throne, a sharper-than-normal inhale.

Nothing. It was as if she’d been presented with a rock that neither pleased nor disappointed her. After a few more seconds, she angled her head back to me.

“What about my original Good Council?”

“We have retrieved four of them,” I said carefully. The Sorronian faeries had managed to find the ancient Mind Manipulator, Object Summoner, Shape Shifter, and Element Wielder in rusted cells deep beneath the prison, all of them sailing this way now. Whether any of the original Good Council actually wanted to return to Mydusia was another story. “Unfortunately, Agathea Temberlein is gone.”

“Gone? What do you mean gone?”

“She seems to have escaped the prison sometime before we invaded,” I intoned. It was a half-truth. The other half of the truth was that Agathea had all but disappeared immediately after I’d ripped off Dyonisia’s head, fleeing into the night before she could be dragged back to the queen whose lips pursed before me.

“Very well. We shall find a way to locate dear old Aggie. I can imagine anyone would have wanted to escape my sister.” Mydusia sniffed. What about all the branded citizens under her rule?”

“Dead.”

The word rang out, echoing against the painted ceiling arched high above our heads. Before Rayna had fallen unconscious, I’d told her the oath was fulfilled.

I’d been wrong. After I’d made sure she was safe in bed, surrounded by the people I trusted to watch over her, my tattoo had yanked me toward a few remaining elites and citizens in various villages that hadn’t bought Dazmine and Terrin’s campaign for a new king. If I’d had my way, I would have left them alone.

But my sword had flashed. More blood had spurted. More people had dropped dead at my feet. More of me had sharpened into the weapon Mydusia wanted to forge me into and wield against the world.

Now, her shoulders shifted forward slightly, an eagerness in the tilt of them.

“And Rayna Drey Reeve?”

This was the part I’d been dreading. Out of all the powers Mydusia had stolen and hoarded over her lifetime, I could sense one of them wafting out, probing for any lies that came out of my mouth. But not only had Rayna and I both truly perished in that temple only to rise as one, our bond formed a seal around any other magic that might try to attack it.

So I said without stuttering, “Dead.”