I am not just the girl who understands. I am the one who wants better.
The anger and pain unfurls inside me until it hurts worse than the toxin, until it’s bigger than my body and darker than the shadows. My shadow self brushes her fingertips over the charred edges of my heart and smiles. Too many years of silence. Too many years of pushing aside my own pain to take care of someone else.
This part of me is just as valid as the rest.
“Go,” I whisper, but my shadow self is immobile.
The legends of Mab accessing her shadow self from inside the iron room are false. At least, the way they’re understood is incorrect. Just like any other magic, the shadow needs power to escape this tomb. Needs power to move and do and be my servant.
Thanks to this toxin, my magic is gone. Muted almost completely. Almost.
Magic is life. And the queen can’t risk killing me.
There’s one thread left—enough to keep me breathing, enough to keep my heart beating. I use that thread to tap into my connection to Finn. I have to trust that he can handle this, that I can draw from him without taking too much.
My shadow self expands as his power fills her.
I become her.
Slowly, I step forward, moving through the iron of the coffin as if it were a summer breeze. I stretch and smile. Rooted in my shadow self, the darkened, bitter parts of me too long ignored.
I find the tubes pumping toxins into both sarcophagi and yank them free, cutting off the endless supply of poison to my body, to Sebastian’s. Then I head off to find the queen.
The halls of this fortress are quiet at night, but not empty. Arya has guards standing every few feet along the corridor leading to her bedroom. Light shines so brightly from every direction that her sentries have to wear face shields to protect their eyes.
Chuckling silently, my shadow self slithers along the bottom edge of the wall, undetectable to even the guards’ keen fae eyes. I creep toward her door, past the males who stand on either side and past the guards who stand just inside.
Anger pumps through me, feeding this unfamiliar form. I itch to take their knives from their scabbards and plunge them into their chests.
I whisper soothing promises to that angry, vengeful part of myself. I promise that if she’ll be patient, she can have the queen’s heart—and the queen is who she wants.
Deeper and deeper into her chambers, where I pass under another door and find myself in the room where Arya sleeps on a bed of light. She’s lying atop piles of fluffy white blankets, her beautiful blond hair fanned out around her. And there, right by her side, an iron and adamant dagger gripped in her palm.
I smile at the sight of it and slowly peel her fingers from the scabbard one by one. One. Two.
Three.
Her eyes fly open, and she yanks the blade back, driving it toward my heart. I laugh, disintegrate, and reappear on the other side of the bed, where I take advantage of her shock to snatch the blade from her hand. I plunge it into her chest, right into her blackened, bitter heart.
Her scream is so loud, my ears hurt, and I hear it all the way from in my tomb. My shadow self skitters, almost retreating, but I take a calming breath and tighten my leash on her. We’re not done here.
Alerted by her terrible scream, guards rush into the room. I stop one with a single hand to his neck, and his eyes go wide as he takes me in. I love to imagine what he sees—a female formed of shadow in this room full of light. I smile and saunter slowly toward another, swinging my hips to the silent beat of my vengeance.
He draws a sword from his waist, but I snatch it from him before he can strike. I drag it across his throat, all while smiling at the guard behind him.
I use my blade quickly. My shadow self wants to play in their blood, torment them for all the pain they’ve brought to the Unseelie Court. I rein her in and slaughter them one by one.
Maybe it’s because I’m already so weak, but for once I can almost pinpoint the tether between myself and Finn. I feel his power flowing through me—not in sips or gulps, but in this steady stream. I focus on that flow as my shadow self works her way back to our tombs.
She releases Sebastian first, using her knife to break the lock holding him inside, before turning to mine.
Like a whip cracking, my shadow’s gone, and I’m back in my own body. Light floods my prison as my tomb opens.
I stumble forward and fall to the ground. Next to me, Sebastian is weaving on his feet, squinting into the light that’s painfully bright after so many days of being locked inside that darkness.
My body is heavy with the queen’s poison, so I close my eyes and focus on that tether for two more breaths, letting Finn’s power rush through me.