I tried to summon a vine from the frozen earth to wrap around Moria, but the plants were trapped beneath the ice. Moria gripped her throat, her eyes bulging as she struggled to breathe.
“Torin,” I screamed through gritted teeth, “the ice!”
His eyes flashed with understanding. Pale blue magic skimmed across the landscape, and the ground began to rumble. Holding his bleeding throat, Torin split the ice, and a great crevasse opened in the earth, revealing the dead grass four feet below.
Clutching her throat, Moria tumbled into the hold and onto the frozen grass. I stepped to the edge of the ice and peered down at her. She was still gasping for breath.
“Demon,” she croaked.
My thoughts went silent, my mind a haunted, quiet midnight, until a single incandescent thought lit up the darkness: kill the queen.
Moria tried to lift herself from the chasm, the Sword of Whispers gleaming at her hip. Time seemed to slow as an ancient power skimmed over my body, one that smelled of the forest and fresh grass. My body vibrated with life, and my skin buzzed. And when my chest had filled with a golden light, I arched my back and flung my magic at the queen.
A spiked, thorny vine raced from the grass, impaling her through her ribs. I exhaled a long, shaky breath, staring at my work.
Moria’s body hung suspended in the air above the ravine, her blood dripping over the frosty grass.
Shadows whispered through me. Mab hadn’t wanted to release me until I was strong enough to kill the monsters. And now?
I was a monster.
I whirled, my pulse roaring at the sight of Torin’s lacerated throat. He’d sat up in the snow for a moment, but he was losing blood. He slumped to the ground, and I knelt beside him, clamping my hand over his throat to stanch the flow.
Torin had taken a sword to the heart for me, and I could risk freezing at his touch.
“Torin,” I shouted, holding his throat, “you’re safe from her. Moria is dead. Use your magic to heal yourself.”
He met my gaze for a moment, and electricity passed between us. His cold power skimmed over me, but it didn’t freeze me. I kept my hand on his throat, feeling the cool thrum of his magic pulsing along my skin.
As he healed himself, Torin’s jaw sagged with the realization that we were touching. He replaced my hand with his. “You touched me. Ava,” he said sharply, “you shouldn’t even be here. I told you not to come.”
I swallowed hard. “The curse is gone, Torin.”
He stared at me. “How could you possibly know that?”
“Because Queen Mab told me what she wanted. It took me a little while to put it all together, but it all makes sense now.”
The earth trembled again, and shadows seemed to lengthen around us, growing thicker. Above us, the iron-gray sky seethed and writhed, churning with storm clouds.
A roar rumbled over the horizon, and from the clouds of white snow, a dark figure stalked closer, a shadow against a landscape the color of bleached bones. Her cloak swept around her lanky body like dark smoke, and her hood obscured her face. She swept closer to the tree line, disappearing into the forest, but I could feel her malign power from here.
Modron was hunting us. “What did you think would happen?” she shrieked. Her voice sounded dissonant and layered, like ten agonized people screaming at once. “What did you think I’d do when the Seelie exiled me? When King Finvarra had enough of the truth? Did you think I would go quietly?”
Torin stood. His throat was healed now, a dark red line all that remained of his wound. He staggered over the snow to Moria’s corpse and took his sword. Whispers echoed through the air, a haunting sound, like a chorus of the dead.
Torin gripped the hilt of his sword. We stood here, separated from Modron by the crevasse.
Unease crept up my spine at the sound of a deep rumbling beneath the earth, like a volcano erupting.
“You should get out of here,” Torin called out. “Fly.”
“Not a chance. But I’m going to see what’s happening.”
My bruised wings pounded the snowy air, and I lifted into the skies for a better view. As I carried myself up higher above the tree line, fear spread through my chest .
From the east, where the Avon River flowed, a tsunami was coming for us, roaring over the snow and consuming the forest. The wave was seventy or eighty feet high, a tower of murky water that would kill everyone in its path.
I couldn’t breathe. That monstrous wave would drown us all. It would sweep through the villages, flood the castle. It would carry away every house and farm in the kingdom.
My mind flickered, electrified with panic as I tried to figure out how to stop it.