She nodded sharply, crossing her arms. I wondered if she’d said good-bye to Varian.
Cassian clapped Rhys on the shoulder. “On your command, I’ll get the Illyrians into the skies. We advance on your signal after that.”
Rhys nodded distantly, attention still fixed on that overwhelming army.
Cassian took a step away, but looked back at Nesta. Her face was hard as granite. He opened his mouth, but seemed to decide against whatever he was about to say. My sister said nothing as Cassian shot into the sky with a powerful thrust of his wings. Yet she tracked his flight until he was hardly more than a dark speck.
“I can fight on foot,” Azriel said to Rhys.
“No.” There was no arguing with that tone.
Azriel seemed like he was debating it, but Amren shook her head in warning and he backed down, shadows coiling at his fingers.
In silence, we watched our army settle into neat, solid lines. Watched the Illyrians lift into the skies at whatever silent command Rhys sent to Cassian, forming mirror lines above. Siphons glinted with color, and shields locked into place, both magical and metal. The ground itself shook with each step toward that demarcation line.
Rhys said into my mind, If Hybern has a lock on my power, he will sense me sneaking across the battlefield.
I knew what he was implying. You’re needed here. If we both disappear, he’ll know.
A pause. Are you afraid?
Are you?
His violet eyes caught mine. So few stars now shone within them. “Yes,” he breathed. Not for myself. For all of you.
Tarquin barked an order far ahead, and our unified army came to a halt, like some mighty beast pausing. Summer, Winter, Day, Dawn, and Night—each court’s forces clearly marked by the alterations in color and armor. In the faeries who fought alongside the High Fae, ethereal and deadly. A legion of Thesan’s Peregryns flapped into rank beside the Illyrians, their golden armor gleaming against the solid black of our own.
No sign of Beron or Eris—not a whisper of Autumn coming to assist us. Or Tamlin.
But Hybern’s army did not advance. They might as well have been statues. The stillness, I knew, was more to unnerve us.
“Magic first,” Amren was explaining to Nesta. “Both sides will try to bring down the shields around the armies.”
As if in answer, they did. My magic writhed in response to the High Lords unleashing their might—all but Rhysand.
He was saving his power for once the shields came down. I had no doubt Hybern himself was doing the same across the plain.
Shields faltered on either side. Some died. Not many, but a few. Magic against magic, the earth shuddering, the grass between the armies withering and turning to ash.
“I forgot how boring this part is,” Amren muttered.
Rhys shot her a dry look. But he prowled to the edge of our little outlook, as if sensing the stalemate was soon to break. He’d deliver a mighty, devastating blow to the army the moment their shield buckled. A veritable tidal wave of night-kissed power. His fingers curled at his sides.
To my left, Azriel’s Siphons glowed—readying to unleash blasts to echo Rhysand’s. He might not be able to fight, but he would wield his power from here.
I came to Rhys’s side. Ahead, both shields were wobbling at last.
“I never got you a mating present,” I said.
Rhys monitored the battle ahead. His power rumbled beneath us, surging from the shadowy heart of the world.
Soon. A matter of moments. My heart thundered, sweat beading my brow—not just from the summer heat now thick across the field.
“I’ve been thinking and thinking,” I went on, “about what to get you.”
Slowly, so slowly, Rhys’s eyes slid to mine. Only a chasm of power lay within them—blotting out those stars.
I smiled at him, bathing in that power, and sent an image into his mind.
Of the column of my spine, now inked from my base to my nape with four phases of the moon. And a small star in the middle of them.
“But, I’ll admit,” I said as his eyes flared, “this mating gift is probably for both of us.”
Hybern’s shield came crashing down. My magic snapped from me, cleaving through the world. Revealing the glamour I’d had in place for hours.
Before our front line … A cloud of darkness appeared, writhing and whirling on itself.
“Mother above,” Azriel breathed. Right as a male figure appeared beside that swirling ebony smoke.
Both armies seemed to pause with surprise.
“You retrieved the Ouroboros,” Rhys whispered.
For standing before Hybern were the Bone Carver and the living nest of shadows that was Bryaxis, the former contained and freed in a Fae body by myself last night. Both bound to obey by the simple bargain now inked onto my spine. “I did.”
He scanned me from head to toe, the wind stirring his blue-black hair as he asked softly, “What did you see?”
Hybern was stirring, frantically assessing what and who now stood before them. The Carver had chosen the form of an Illyrian soldier in his prime. Bryaxis remained within the darkness roiling around it, the living tapestry it would use to reveal the nightmares of its victims.
“Myself,” I said at last. “I saw myself.”
It was, perhaps, the one thing I would never show him. Anyone. How I had cowered and raged and wept. How I had vomited, and screamed, and clawed at the mirror. Slammed my fists into it. And then curled up, trembling at every horrific and cruel and selfish thing I’d beheld within that monster—within me. But I had kept watching. I did not turn from it.
And when my shaking stopped, I studied it. All of those wretched things. The pride and the hypocrisy and the shame. The rage and the cowardice and the hurt.
Then I began to see other things. More important things—more vital.
“And what I saw,” I said quietly to him as the Carver raised a hand. “I think—I think I loved it. Forgave it—me. All of it.” It was only in that moment when I knew—I’d understood what the Suriel had meant. Only I could allow the bad to break me. Only I could own it, embrace it. And when I’d learned that … the Ouroboros had yielded to me.
Rhys arched a brow, even as awe crept across his face. “You loved all of it—the good and the bad?”
I smiled a bit. “Especially the bad.” The two figures seemed to take a breath—a mighty inhale that had Bryaxis’s dark cloud contracting. Readying to spring. I inclined my head to my mate. “Here’s to a long, happy mating, Rhys.”