ARWEN

CHAOS ERUPTED IN THE PRETTY parlor.

Kane didn’t give the first two guards a fighting chance. He flung

his arms out, surely expecting his obsidian lighte to obliterate them as I did

—

And nothing happened.

Without thinking, Kane drew his sword with otherworldly swiftness. I fished for my own power, but knew it wouldn’t come. Memories rushed into my mind like water over a cliffside.

Maddox and a cackling Octavia…the lighte leaving my body. Feeling limp and weak and powerless. The uncanny ache and dizzying lethargy. Being held down, being drained—

No, no, no—

My hands had gone to my veins. I squeezed and tried to breathe. But my mouth was bone-dry and my jaw was wound so tight it was shaking, and my heart was racing, and I couldn’t breathe—

“Liquid lilium,” I managed to say, as Kane pushed me back behind him, stumbling us both into the pastel wallpaper. “In the tea.”

Kane grimaced, but said nothing of the sickening sensation of lighte dwindling from his body. My only indication of his fury was his white knuckles, clenched into fists around his dagger and sword.

One overzealous guard lurched toward us and Kane’s steel soared through his gut. Another parried twice before taking one of Kane’s blades through the neck. Blood gurgled out onto the rug, soaking the soft threads.

“Why do you want me?” I begged the queen, drawing my own blade and hearing it sing against a shield embedded with the Quartz of Rose crest.

The queen had backed into a corner, surrounded by enough guards that I could hardly make out her shiny hair or glittering teal eyes. But I could hear her.

Hear her laughing.

The clatter of silverware and shattering of porcelain cut my eyes across the room as six guards took Griffin down and the tea table along with him. They’d known he was strong by his size and his title, and had clearly put the most manpower toward him.

I tried to quiet my panicked mind—we knew something the queen did not.

We had a witch.

Mari could mangle the entire room with any number of spells. She’d trained with Briar all the weeks I’d been gone.

My eyes cut to her over the fray. Her eyes were closed as static raised her curled hair around her head like a corona of fire. A guard hauled Mari away by the middle, shouting something I couldn’t hear, his face a mask of horror. She continued to mutter her spell, undeterred.

I smelled the magic before I saw it—that earthy wind, like ancient moss and rain drying on primeval stone. When Mari’s eyes opened, the room, already teeming with guards and swords and screaming handmaidens, had crowded with a dozen more bodies.

No, not bodies—shadows.

Human forms, made entirely of poisonous black silhouettes. Not like Kane’s pitch-black power, which shot out of him like wisps of curling, violent smoke. These magic-fueled soldiers were the absence of light altogether. Muscle and sinew hewn from pitch-darkness. Ghoulish, eyeless faces born of night.

They attacked like a tempest, twisting violently through the room. Slashing Rose soldiers’ necks with whatever weapon fit the fight—a baton to club one man, which became a phantom axe for the next. Cutting men down two, three, four at a time with little effort.

Ethera screamed and I maneuvered past the soldier before me to see if she’d been gobbled up by one of the apparitions. Victory should have rung in my ears. Success—our way out.

But it was too…vehement. Too unnatural. The phantom soldiers were mindless. They didn’t seem like they killed for Mari. These shadow soldiers killed to kill.

And then it was Mari who screamed.

I craned my neck to find her and my blood chilled.

Mari’s red hair was swallowed in a blur of gloomy black. They’d converged on their own witch. On Kane, on Griffin. On all of us. The specters saw no creed or color, only warm bodies. I knew it wasn’t a soldier that held me back as I lunged for her. As I shrieked—

It was Kane’s hand that coiled like a manacle around my wrist, yanking my shoulder nearly from its socket as he battled Rose men and spectres, halting me from throwing myself between her and those ghastly things.

The dark phantom drew his weapon. Raised it high—a ghoulish cleaver carved of pure, starless night. Ready to slash Mari in half as she scuttled helplessly back across the floor on her hands. Before I could scream her name again, or watch Mari sliced to bits, the phantom sword landed on a thick, edged dagger.

Griffin’s.

Griffin, who’d somehow broken free of at least ten soldiers despite being poisoned and without any of his Fae strength. Griffin, who parried the demon like a mythical hero and a fabled beast.

Kane’s and my relieved sighs were short-lived, though. More phantoms headed in their direction, finished with the husks of Rose men that littered the parlor floor, looking for their next kill. Griffin wouldn’t be able to hold them off for too much longer.

Kane was already straining to get there—to maneuver past Rose soldiers and aid his commander.

And Mari—Mari was screaming. Lunging for Griffin, the pleats of her warm-colored dress tearing as two Rose guards fought to subdue her, though she thrashed and bit and sobbed.

And those phantoms, those shadows, converging on him—

Griffin barely cut down one apparition only to be throttled by the next. They’d kill him.

“Mari, stop the spell!”

But fear had swallowed her whole. I’d never seen her so stunned. So frozen.

“You can send them back,” I called to her, grunting as I conceded another step to a snarling guard without meaning to.

But she wasn’t listening, or couldn’t hear, her panic taking hold— “Somebody help him,” Mari croaked, though a shadow had already slain

the Rose guard who held her to get its thick hands around her neck and— I just had to get to her.

Griffin’s sudden, pained groan was gut-churning.

I knew from the sound—even before I’d seen all the blood—how bad it was.

But Mari’s silence, the horror in her eyes as she watched the gleaming phantom slide his broadsword deeper into the groaning commander’s rib cage— Somehow, what she saw in that moment—it was enough.

The whirl of magic stung the air even as we continued to fight. Fallen book pages fluttered, the hairs on my arms stood on end— And then the phantoms were gone.

My gaze clawed across the turmoil. Griffin gnashing his teeth against the floor, bright red blood seeping through his Onyx armor and into the fallen cakes and biscuits. Rose soldiers still swarming us all, more and more and more guards. Drawn to the chaos, to their queen—

Far too many for us to get through.

Kane’s brow dripped sweat as his blade sailed through six men at a time.

Fighting to get to his wounded commander.

But more soldiers were coming, hauling Mari back despite her pleas.

More and more and more… And it was futile.

This was all…futile.

“We need to run,” I said to Kane under my breath.

“How?” Kane grunted, blocking an elbow to his face and sinking his sword into a man’s thigh. The guard groaned in agony and crumpled to the floor.

My eyes found the wide glass bow window. “We need—” I cut myself off, dodging a fist. But the next one connected with my temple and I flew backward into the solid gold trunk of the mighty sculpted tree.

Leather-bound tomes toppled and smacked me and my assailant both. Metal fasteners at the base of the sculpture creaked and snapped. Delicate golden branches thudded to the carpeted floor.

Kane’s quicksilver eyes locked on mine. We’d had the idea simultaneously.

He gave me a single steadfast nod. “I’ll cover you.”

Despite the lilium still sagging my limbs and clouding my mind, I threw myself into the trunk of the behemoth sculpture. Two guards lunged for me, catching on. I dodged, faster than them even as my entire body felt as if it were wading through a thick bog.

I flung myself into the teetering gold elm tree once more. Pain sang in my shoulder, my side, my teeth, but I only slammed the gilded trunk again. Then again. All the while Kane blocked each shrieking blow and lunging strike that sailed toward me.

Until a mighty, near-deafening creaking sounded—

An earsplitting crack as the towering work of art teetered, groaned, and…came crashing down across the parlor and through that massive bow window.

I covered my head as glass and pages and gilded petals rained down upon us all.

A barrage of colorful leather-bound books and branches of fine metal. Ethera screamed so loudly I wondered if her fragile, antique lungs would

collapse.

I could only hope.

Cold winter air scented with hydrangea and freshly cut grass whipped at my face. The window was gone, and in its place, an escape route through the palace garden.

“Go,” I yelled past Kane to Mari and Griffin. Even in his bloodied state, the commander still sliced his sword through any guard that even breathed near them. Mari shot a single agonized look in my direction as she ran, and then they leapt together from the second-story room.

“Arwen.” Kane sounded like he was chewing through cast iron.

When I turned, I saw that I hadn’t been far off. The blades near his throat were dangerously close to making irreversible contact. I lunged with my sword.

The soldier gurgled, steel clattering.

And Kane and I leapt over the body to sprint for the gaping hole where the parlor windows had once been. But I knew from his labored pants—and my own heavy breathing—we’d never make it. Not when I could see the energy draining from Kane’s eyes, his wrath only flickering as his body grew weak and tired. Being drained was grueling—we wouldn’t have the fight in us much longer. And all the Rose men—they only wanted me. Ethera had called for them to seize me.

And I thought I’d screamed it, but maybe I’d only whispered the words, “Keep going,” before taking off in the opposite direction of the whipping wind and that broken window, and instead toward the interior doors of the parlor.

“Stop her!” Ethera wailed.

And as I’d hoped, the guards who were still standing—not crushed under the metal trunk of that sculpture, nor wasted by Mari’s spell—did just that. They followed after me as I hurtled over the floral couch and dodged pillars, out the painted parlor doors and through the gilded, rosy hallway, lush peonies and bronze harps painted onto the walls.

I’d only seen two or three men go after Kane. Child’s play for him, Griffin, and Mari. With or without their powers.

And even as my jaw careened into the floor—the crushing weight on my back telling me multiple guards now held me there—and pain bloomed in my spine and shoulder and lilium coursed through my system…it was relief that flooded me.

They’d gotten out.