Yes. At my command, the powder in the cannon explodes. Green fire snakes its way into every crack and crevice of the tower. I leave it to do its work and circle back to the rest of the realm. The Grace District is soaked in the acrid scent of terror. Men with axes and blades and even pitchforks crowd the streets, swinging their weapons at me like they could possibly make a difference. Women watch from the windows, mouths hanging open. I want to taste the salt of their tears. Rend the plump satin of their Grace-gifted skin.
I find Lavender House first. Every moment I spent inside, chained to spill my blood in the name of jealousy, swirls in my mind. Every snide comment. Every cruel prank. In seconds, I’ve called the fire in the lanterns. Casings burst. Flame canters through the garden and climbs the walls of the house. The Grace pennants are cinders. Windowpanes shatter onto the snow-blanketed hedges. There’s a chorus of screams as my fire plugs doorways and broken windows, ensuring that there is no way out—not for any of them. The same way they’d trapped me for twenty years.
A new cry splits the air, and I look up to find a speck on the horizon. No. Not a speck. A shape I know very well. But one I never thought to see above the rooftops of the Grace District.
My heart swells. “Callow!”
She soars toward me in the steely sky, her black eyes fierce and vicious. A warrior’s.
“How did you get here? Where have you been?”
The kestrel lands on my shoulder. Nudges her head against my cheek in greeting. Callow. Come to fight beside me. Our wings were clipped, but we’re flying anyway, two birds freed from our cages. Untethered.
“Come,” I tell her. “Let’s show them what we can do.”
Callow needs no encouragement. She swoops and dives, talons slicing the faces of our enemies. Pecks at fingers and hair and arms. Before long, the Grace District is nothing but smoldering green fire and the sweet, addictive scent of blood. Already, ships are beginning to leave the harbor, frightened passengers falling over themselves to get below decks. I find the wooden magic of the masts and break them in half. Set the rest aflame, dragon figureheads charring black.
We wing back to the palace. The fires I set are growing steadily. Tendrils of black and green smoke curl in the air. But the windows of the king’s war room are yet untouched. Another familiar figure looms behind them, staff pulsing gold. Endlewild.
Fresh rage boils in my belly. The Fae ambassador regards me with cool detachment, as if he doesn’t care that I’ve wrecked half the realm. As if I’m still something he can crush under the heel of his boot.
Show him who we are, Mortania urges.
With a feral yell, I send my magic into the famed windows of the war room. For glass that is said to be able to withstand dragon’s fire, it carries a flimsy heart indeed. It cracks almost instantly, a long fissure spiking up the center and webbing outward. And then, with a last push of my power, the glass implodes.
Endlewild doesn’t flinch. Not even as the storm of glittery shards whooshes into the room and cyclones around him.
Callow settles on my shoulder as I tread the air current.
“I see you have ignored my warnings once again,” Endlewild says, indifferent as ever. “Your anger will be your undoing.”
Callow shrieks at him, her talons digging into my flesh.
“It will also be yours, Lord Ambassador.”
“Wicked creature. This is not over. You will have all of Etheria upon you. Kingdoms from beyond the Carthegean Sea. It will mean a war.” He raises his staff. A gilded aura shimmers around the orb, where his own heart of magic dwells. “We will bring you down.”
But for once, that staff doesn’t make me wince. He can’t hurt me anymore.
The Etherian snarls. The magic in his staff crackles. He draws it back, lips moving in words I can’t hear.
I close the distance between us in a single wingbeat and give in to the beastly instinct coursing through my blood.
Endlewild’s eyes widen at my charge, as round as the golden plates at the king’s dinner. Within their reflection, I glimpse my own. Wild-haired and ravenous. Claws stained with blood. Tail poised to strike. The Fae lord throws his arm forward. An arc of his Fae power erupts from the orb like a shower of stars. It slams into my shields and sizzles away.
And then there is only the sound of flesh tearing and the splatter of gold among the glass on the war-room floor. The staff falls from Endlewild’s grasp and cartwheels end-over-end toward Briar. The Fae lord’s blood is smeared over my face. It tastes like the fizzy wine from Aurora’s parties. I want more of it.