THE REFORGED TRILOGY: BOOK 3 — HAMMER OF TIME
Chapter 38: Eight Days
“Do not weep for my death. I fly into the light while my enemies hide in the dark.”
– Suvaen Dammar (234 PA)
Logan selected the fastest starships that Vyron had hired for the flight. The Dailon was right — there were far more ships willing to ferry Arcadians for a drum of Xyn’s new phenno than fairies willing to die for the Alliance. Panna’s final count was nine hundred and twenty-seven volunteers, including all of Anthem’s knights, herself and the crew of the Blue Phoenix. Less than a quarter of Kaellisem.
Maeve argued with both Duke Ferris and Panna. Someone had to manage the city. More than three thousand Arcadians remained in Kaellisem. But both just shook their heads. Thanks to Panna’s planning, everyone should have food and water enough for the next month. She bribed the Gharib police extravagantly to check in from time to time with the understanding that there would be more color later if the fairies remained safe and well.
“I’m not sure where we’ll get the money,” Panna said with a wry smile. “But if we don’t stop Xartasia on Axis, it’s not like they’ll be sniffing around after their cenmarks. If Captain Janse even exists, Kaellisem won’t.”
“Captain?” Maeve asked.
“She got promoted while you were gone.”
An hour before dawn, twenty-eight ships lifted off from Gharib’s dusty landing crescent. They flew in a crooked diamond across the dim pewter moon and then were gone.
“They’re gone?” Kessa asked.
Vyron nodded. “They left this morning.”
“Did you get them a good deal on the ships?”
“Of course, Kes.”
Breakfast sat untouched on the kitchen table. In the corner of the kitchen, Baliend had found a spoon and merrily banged on one of his overturned pots. The baby boy burbled happily. Kessa looked at her son and husband.
“Without them, we wouldn’t have… any of this,” she told Vyron. “If Xartasia changes time and saves Arcadia, Maeve will never have come to Axis. She’ll still be in the White Kingdom. Logan won’t be fighting with her that day. I’ll be alone. The Sisterhood will catch me. They’ll kill me and Baliend.”
“I’ll still be with the Steelskins,” Vyron agreed quietly. “Probably dead in the next few years, if not already.”
Kessa took Vyron’s large, strong blue hands in hers. He raised his black eyes and closed his fingers around his wife’s. They leaned across the table until their foreheads touched. Long black hair fell down around Kessa’s shoulders and she took a deep breath. Baliend squealed in delight and hurled his spoon across the kitchen.
“Father of all life,” Kessa prayed aloud. “God of all the worlds. Please watch over our friends. They need your help. We all do.”
Hyra went to the glass forge early. The tent was long since gone, replaced by a wide, gently spiraling hall with windows that looked out across Kaellisem. The city glowed red and copper and gold with the first light of dawn. White-winged shapes stirred in windows and the smell of cooking bread and petrimeat drifted into the warming morning.
Hyra called out for Lorren, but the younger glass-smith did not answer. Hyra stumped down the glittering pink corridor, searching and twitching his single wing in irritation. Where was that girl? But Hyra found only a couple of confused apprentices in the drawing room and a startled pigeon in the central forge chamber. The gray and brown bird burst into the air with a flurry of tiny wings and vanished through one of the arched windows. Something small and white drifted down to the floor at Hyra’s feet. Not a loose feather, he realized, but a scrap of paper.
Hyra, the note read. I have gone with the queen. We have built such beauty here. I cannot stand by while Xartasia tears it all apart.
— Lorren
The little idiot…! Hyra had forbidden Lorren to attend Maeve’s speech. Lorren was three hundred years old, but still only half of the senior glass-singer’s age. Hyra did his best to watch out for the girl and was afraid that there would be more riots following whatever the Gray Queen had to say. But Lorren had gone anyway. Hyra read the note twice and then crumpled it in his hand.
“Fallo!” he called. “Anallia!”
The two apprentices landed a moment later, still scrubbing the sleep from their eyes. Anallia had cut her white-blonde hair short, Hyra noted with exasperation. Ever since Sir Ballad’s return, the style had grown in popularity. Hyra stabbed his wing at the younger Arcadians.
“We are down a voice,” he said. “You two will do Lorren’s work until she gets back from Axis.”
“Lorren went with the queen?” Fallo asked. “But they are saying she will not return…”
Hyra grabbed the apprentice’s pointed ear between his thumb and forefinger, making him screech.
“Lorren is coming back,” Hyra said. “And you two are doing her work until she does.”
Malla ignored another catcall from the Gunju Prince’s crew. One day on the ship and she had already been in two minor brawls and fended off a Dailon who was far too curious about what a bird-back might be like in his bunk. Even if Malla wanted one last toss before she died, it would not have been with a huge, strange blue alien.
She pushed the door control with the side of one wing and went into the bunk she shared with Eranna and three other Arcadians. The room was designed for two.
Eranna sat on the edge of the upper bunk. Malla handed one of the trays to the other knight. Eranna took it with a small nod.
“Thanks,” she said.
Malla accidently stepped on someone’s wing as she climbed up to sit beside Eranna.
“Sorry,” she said.
There was a grunt from somewhere below. Eranna unwrapped a fork and began picking at the pink-brown mass of what appeared to be some sort of… sausage?
She made a face.
“If I had known that saving the galaxy would involve food like this,” Eranna said, “I might have stayed in Kaellisem.”
“As though we ate better there,” Malla answered with a snort. “Without dryads to do our farming, we rely on Cyrus and the other agriworlds just as much as the rest of the Alliance does.”
Eranna speared a crumbling cube of processed green vegetable. “We are knights. Even if Arcadians ever become farmers, it will not be you and I who take up spades.”
“Hannu talked about it sometimes, you know,” Malla said. She suddenly wasn’t very hungry anymore and handed her dinner tray down to one of the other fairies. “Even before we left Sunjarrah to follow Queen Maeve. There was so much open grassland there. It wouldn’t have taken much to fly out past where any of the Mirrans could find us and start a little farm. Just enough to feed a couple of us.”
“Your brother wanted to be a farmer?” Eranna asked when she had chewed and swallowed. “But he was a knight. It is the highest calling the gods can bestow.”
Malla looked down at her hands. Without her glass gauntlets, they looked small and fragile.
“Maybe. But Hannu and I didn’t become knights because the gods called us or even because Queen Maeve did. Hells, we tried to join Xartasia first, but she wouldn’t take us. We were too young. All we wanted was a home. A real home.”
“Why are you flying to Axis to die, then?” Eranna asked.
“Because my brother is dead,” Malla said. “Hannu died at the enassui with a piece of glass as long as my arm through his guts. Xia came, but it was too late and Hannu died. Without him, I don’t care about a home anymore. So I may as well die for someone else’s.”
Stars streaked past outside the O’Collin’s viewports. There were more of the elongated rainbow lights outside now, as the ship raced toward the galactic core. Four more days and the O’Collin would land on Axis with the Blue Phoenix and the rest of Queen Maeve’s tiny army.
Dellan held Gael’s hands gently. Gael’s eyes were closed and his lips moved silently. Even after all these months, the withdrawals were bad. Dellan had found Gael in Gharib twice, trying in broken Aver to buy more Deep from the suspicious coreworlders. Dellan had managed to get Gael back to Kaellisem before anything terrible happened, but his friend was always so quiet afterward.
Just like he was now. Dellan squeezed Gael’s hands firmly until the other Arcadian finally opened his eyes. The right one was still cloudy, despite Xia’s best efforts to repair the damage. She offered to send away for a cloned replacement, but Gael always refused.
“Where are your thoughts?” Dellan asked.
“Here,” Gael said.
“Why do you seem so sad? Are you afraid to die?”
Gael shook his head. “I have been waiting to die since our home fell, my friend. I do not fear the Nameless.”
“What is it, then?”
Gael touched his fingertips against Dellan’s cheek. They were cool and shook slightly.
“You,” Gael said.
“Me?”
“I worry for you,” Gael told him. “Why are you here? You loved Kaellisem, my friend.”
“Queen Maeve asked us to come. After all she has done for us, how could I stay behind?”
Gael’s pale lips turned up into a thin smile. “After what she did for me, you mean. She saved me, not you.”
“By so doing,” Dellan said, ducking his head, “our queen saved me, too.”
Gael leaned against Dellan and rested his head on the other man’s shoulder. “You are not really here for Queen Maeve. I know you better than that.”
Dellan didn’t answer. He wrapped his wing around Gael’s shoulder. The O’Collin was a Glawn ship. Glaw was a cold, dark world of tunnels and ice. It was probably too cool for Gael. The thin fairy smiled again.
“Thank you, Dellan,” Gael said, “for being here with me at the end of everything.”
“Always.”
Duke Ferris Verridian looked up at his reflection in the computer monitor, studying his hair. It was more gray than golden now. Ferris was younger than King Illain had been when he died, but looked far more ancient.
“New Hennor prison com system,” said a recorded voice with the distinctive Mirran burr. “Please clearly state the number of the prisoner you would like to contact.”
“One-three-seven-two-eight-eight-nine,” Ferris recited. He had the number written down, of course, but he didn’t need to look at it. The duke had memorized it long ago.
The Sunjarrah parliamentary crest remained on the screen, an emerald-green tree studded with silver stars. Ferris waited. Finally, the automated voice spoke again.
“The New Hennor penal system regrets to inform you that prisoner 137–288–9 is deceased,” it said. “Time of death was 11.28.234 PA, 02:52 local time. Please submit any further comments or questions concerning this inmate to Warden Junmorro. Would you like to be transferred to their office now?”
“No,” Ferris whispered. “Thank you.”
He pressed a glowing button and the com monitor flickered, then went dark.
Ferris cried for a long time. Il’mani had been a baby when the White Kingdom fell. He remembered cradling the infant girl to his chest as he flew. Ferris had clutched at Shae’s hand, too, but the Devourers pulled her away with black chains that sprouted hooks all along their lengths even as she screamed and bled into the grass. But his wife had not screamed in pain, only for Ferris to fly, to take their daughter and get away… She had been so brave.
Il’mani was too young to remember her mother or her homeworld. She would never see them now, not unless Xartasia managed to reforge time. Then Ferris would stand in Aes’ warm golden light again. With his family.
But… but the queen — the true queen, the Gray Queen — was right. The White Kingdom was dead and gone. Like his wife and his daughter. The All-Singer gave life and the Nameless took it away. Ferris loved his family and his kingdom, but they were lost to him. He could miss them — and would every day for the rest of his life — but he could never, ever hold them again.
Gripper sat in the corner of the darkened engine room. There were twenty-three Arcadians staying in the hold of the Blue Phoenix. Several of them had volunteered to care for Gripper’s garden. It was the least they could do, they said, in return for the honor of flying in the same ship as Queen Maeve. Gripper let them. He just didn’t feel like taking care of the plants anymore.
The young Arboran wrapped long arms around his knees and buried his face into his furry forearms. He didn’t realize that there was anyone else in the engine room until soft feathers brushed his skin. Gripper looked up as Maeve sat down beside him.
“Logan is worried about you,” she said. “He told me that you did not want to talk.”
Gripper wiped his nose on an oil-stained rag. “It’s not his fault. Hunter just doesn’t understand. He tried, though.”
Out of the corner of one eye, Gripper saw Maeve smile.
“I never thought that you and Logan would be friends. You two have nothing in common.”
“That’s not true. We both like you, Glass.”
“That is not the sole basis of your friendship.”
“No,” Gripper agreed. “I guess not.”
They sat together in silence for a long time. The Blue Phoenix’s engines — blissfully ignorant of everything wrong in the huge galaxy — churned and chugged loudly. The null-inertia field generator hummed like a huge insect, audible even through seven layers of shielding and insulation. Air rushed and rattled through ducting, through the lopsided old pyramid of the gas exchanger and then out again.
The water and waste systems were a level down from the engine room, through a hatch and then down a narrow ladder that Gripper seldom bothered with. But he heard them working, too. There was the high-pitched groan of the pump seal, the one that was always breaking. Gripper must have welded it shut again dozens of times since Tiberius first hired him.
“Those things I saw down on the surface of Arborus,” Gripper said slowly, “those really were Waygates. Prototypes, I guess. And that person I followed through one, to Kahl… Do you think that was Xartasia?”
“Yes,” Maeve said. “I can think of no one else who might have business on your world.”
“If the old sycona tree hadn’t been sick, if it hadn’t fallen, I never would have been there. I never would have followed her through the gate. I wouldn’t be here.”
Maeve chewed her lower lip and said nothing. Gripper’s vision blurred with tears again. They stung on his cheeks and splashed to the stained engine room floor.
“I guess Arborus was in this galaxy,” Gripper said in a choked voice. “Maybe… maybe out on the rim somewhere. It would be a really long flight to get home, but we’ve been out to the Tower. Flying to Arborus probably wouldn’t be too hard compared to that. But there’s no point anymore, is there? Everyone is dead. Eaten. Just like Arcadia.”
“Yes.”
Gripper grabbed Maeve’s tiny shoulders. How could she stand it? Knowing that no matter what she did, how far or fast she flew, no matter how many things she fixed or charts she looked at, there was nothing to go home to? Here and now… that was all Maeve had left. It was all Gripper had, too.
“And… and we’re related to those monsters?” he asked. “I am?”
“Yes. But you are not alone,” Maeve answered. “Xia believes that the humans are close relatives to the Devourers, as well. Not direct descendants, as the Arborans are… were. But yes, life born of the same genetic seeds and shaped by similar forces. She calls it convergent evolution.”
“You mean that if species like the Axials and Mirrans and Prians keep evolving, they will end up like the Devourers?” Gripper asked, horrified.
“Perhaps,” Maeve said. “Xia says that the galaxy is not the same as it was when the Devourers ruled it. And the people are different. They may breed different traits.”
Maeve pointed to her own chest.
“The Arcadians, too, are made from the same genes, Xia tells me. That is why we look more or less human. To coreworlder eyes, at least. The Devourers designed us to look this way. We have probably evolved a little in the last few million years, but she suspects that we were quite recognizable to our creators. Just as they could not have failed to note the similarities between the Arborans and themselves.”
Gripper wiped his eyes and stared at Maeve. “You mean that when they ate Arcadians and Arborans, the Devourers know they’re eating their own creations and relatives?”
“Yes. On Prianus, too, when they faced the human police.”
“How can they do this?” Gripper asked desperately, shaking the little fairy woman. “How can they do this to us?”
“They are hungry. You have calculated the energy needs of their nanite swarms,” Maeve said. “Most life in the galaxy sprang from the seed they left behind. We all have it in ourselves to become just like the Devourers.”
Gripper cried. He didn’t care why anymore. Why the Devourers left the galaxy, why they came back just to kill and consume their own descendants. Arborus… Weh-Weh… was gone.
Gripper wished Maeve didn’t understand, that he could just cry all alone in the engine room. But she did understand. Gripper wept great hiccuping sobs into Maeve’s white wings and she held him awkwardly, but had no comfort to give.
Panna stood at the railing of the catwalk. Ballad was just behind her, his hands on her waist and his wings wrapped around them both. She could still see down into the cargo hold, but her peripheral vision was full of white feathers. Panna smelled the leather of Ballad’s jacket. The glass armor was an honor, he said, but too stiff and clunky to wear around the overcrowded Blue Phoenix. Panna felt Ballad’s warm breath on the back of her neck.
“Hard to believe that in four more days, none of this may exist anymore,” he said.
The Arcadians down below didn’t seem to notice them, or at least were too busy with their own thoughts and errands to pay the knight and the wingless girl any mind. Panna brushed the back of one hand against Ballad’s wing.
“We won’t be here to notice anything wrong,” she said, shaking her head. “Neither of us would have been born if the White Kingdom never fell.”
Ballad tightened his arms around Panna.
“Maybe there would be some variation,” he suggested. “Both of our parents are older than the part of history that Xartasia wants to chop out, yeah?”
“Yes, but would those people be us?” Panna wondered. “I would still have wings. You would never have been a knight.”
“How do you know?” Ballad asked. “I’m a damned good knight.”
“The best, if you ask me. But Avadain isn’t a noble name,” Panna said. “You don’t have any house colors. There’s no way you would be a knight.”
“I would still find you.”
Panna laughed and turned to face the Prian fairy. “One unimportant girl somewhere in a kingdom that spanned five planets?”
“Five planets?” Ballad asked. “Damn. I didn’t know Arcadia was so big.”
Panna smiled ruefully. “I don’t think your chances of finding me would be very good.”
“I could do it.”
“Even if you could, I wouldn’t be me,” Panna said. “If I was born at all, I wouldn’t be the same woman you know. If Xartasia does this, she’ll erase our whole existence. That’s the point.”
Ballad kissed her fiercely.
“Fine,” the young knight growled against her lips. “But I would try. Maybe I’d fail, but I’m not giving up without a fight. Let Xartasia ruin and reset the last century. I’ll fight her all over again.”
“You may be the most stubborn man I’ve ever met,” Panna said.
Ballad grinned and she yanked him down the corridor toward the bunks. He elbowed the door controls and pulled her into the room. Panna grabbed him with her own stubborn ferocity.
“Whatever else happens,” she whispered, “I’m glad I met you, Ballad Avadain.”
Duaal sat in the cockpit. One of his legs hung over the arm of the pilot’s chair. He scanned idly over the instrumentation, but everything was running smoothly. After their long flight to the Tower, the jump to Axis seemed almost… routine. How many times had he and Tiberius made this same flight? Duaal ran his hand over the worn armrest of the pilot’s chair and missed the grumpy old Prian.
There was a soft knock at the cockpit door. Duaal didn’t look up.
“Three days,” he said. “We’ll be landing in three more days.”
Duaal announced their updated arrival time every morning and evening, but it didn’t stop the curious Arcadians from asking. They were all counting down their remaining hours, Duaal supposed.
Imminent death or incarceration had an odd effect on people.
“I know,” Xia said from the door. “I heard you this morning.”
Duaal looked up. “Sorry. I thought you were one of the fairies.”
“Can I come in?”
“Sure.”
Xia sat down in the copilot’s chair. It was strange to see anyone there besides Logan. Duaal giggled to himself. It was even stranger to think of being used to Logan Coldhand. But the truth was that Duaal liked having the Prian hunter on his ship. And not just because of the view when Logan left the showers.
“What’s so funny?” Xia asked.
“Nothing,” Duaal said with a wave of his hand. “Just thinking about boys. Since Maeve is back in the bunk with Logan, you don’t think that Anthem would be interested, do you?”
“Anthem?” Xia repeated, blinking her colorful compound eyes. “Anthem Calloren? He doesn’t seem like your type.”
“Why not?”
“Anthem’s a good man. He’s gentle and polite. You don’t usually go for that type.”
Duaal laughed again, a little louder this time.
“I suppose not. But you changed my taste more than a bit,” he said and then gave Xia a more serious look. “Thanks for that.”
The Ixthian smiled and curled her short antennae. “It was my pleasure.”
“I hope you mean that.”
Xia nodded and then paused before speaking again.
“Three more days?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“Are the other ships keeping up?”
“The O’Collin had some kind of pump failure, but they’re back on schedule,” Duaal answered. “The Zhan and the Starfire are both claiming fuel issues. But I bet my nonexistent pay that they’re just trying for some more money. The Xol-tan is having computer problems and they’re running about an hour behind.”
“I wonder if that hour will get them killed or save their lives,” Xia said.
Her eyes were a deep, dark blue that Duaal did not often see. He put a hand on her knee.
“You don’t need to do this,” Duaal said. “You could have stayed in Kaellisem. Hells, they probably could have used your help. You’re the only doctor in the whole city.”
“If Xartasia pulls this off, Kaellisem will never have existed. I might not, either. There are billions of people living now that–”
“But you don’t need to do this,” Duaal said. “One Ixthian medic isn’t exactly going to get CWAAF riled up and out into the field. You know that.”
“I do,” Xia answered. She sat back in Duaal’s old seat and stared out at the rainbow stars. “I thought about staying. Kessa offered me their spare room. I almost accepted.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Xia turned to look at Duaal. “You’re not leaving after the Arcadians get off the Blue Phoenix, are you? You’re going with them to face the Alliance and fight Xartasia.”
“Of course.”
“Why?”
Duaal opened his mouth to answer, but couldn’t find the words. How could he not fight? It wasn’t just his own life that would be unwoven like cheap cloth, but the lives of billions. No matter how petty and selfish Duaal was at times, what kind of man would he be if he just… let that happen?
Xia was still watching him. She put her feet against the bottom of the console and wrapped her arms around her knees.
“I know,” she said. “Me, too. I don’t know what the future may hold, but…”
Duaal nodded “But we’re not about to let Xartasia take away our right to that future.”
“Even if that means prison or death?”
“Well, you know me,” Duaal said. He picked an imaginary speck of dust from his red velvet sleeve. “I don’t do anything halfway. If the world’s going to end, I don’t just want front-row seats. I want to be up on stage.”
Logan stroked Maeve’s hair. There were more white strands in the black now, forming silvery streaks at both her temples. Far more eloquent marks of her queenship, Logan thought, than her glass crown had ever been. Maeve’s gray eyes fluttered open.
“How long?” she asked.
“Twenty-seven hours until we reach the edge of Axial space,” Logan answered. “Three hours more until we get to the planet.”
Maeve brushed her fingers against Logan’s stubble-roughened cheek.
“One more day,” she said. “Only one more.”
Logan caught Maeve’s hand and kissed it. “I would rather have one day with you than my whole life without you.”
Maeve smiled, but the queen’s gray eyes shone with tears. The only light was the shifting, multi-hued radiance of the stars racing by outside the Blue Phoenix. Spots of color played across Maeve’s graceful, naked body like dancing butterflies.
“Is this truly the only way?” Maeve asked. It wasn’t the first time and Logan wished he could give her a different answer.
“We can face Xartasia directly,” he told her. “But she’s got better numbers and we’re barely armed. The Devourers will massacre your people, dove. And that doesn’t even take into account any of her own people that are in fighting shape. We know she has some. Remember Calathan.”
“I do.” Maeve sighed and pulled herself into Logan’s lap. Neither of them wore anything but starlight. “I do not fear death, enarri.”
“I know, dove.” Logan kissed her and traced her delicate spine with one hand. “You’re afraid for the Arcadians we’re bringing with us. This shouldn’t be their fight.”
“But it is.” Maeve bowed her head and placed her small hands over the twisted scar in the center of his chest. “It is your fight and ours. It is the entire galaxy’s fight. We must convince the Alliance of that, even if it costs us our lives.”
Logan kissed Maeve again. He didn’t want to die, not when life felt like this — his heart racing in his chest, his whole body aflame with desire, when it tasted like Maeve’s lips against his. A year ago, he would not have given death a second thought. When life meant nothing, neither did death.
But now life was full of tears and longing, fears and joys. Now that Logan didn’t want to die, he probably would. Maeve may not have feared death… But Logan Coldhand finally did.
“I don’t ever want to leave you again,” he told Maeve. “Never. I love you.”
“And I love you, my hunter,” she said. “I will never give you up again. I will give my life, but never you.”
Anthem Calloren knelt alone in the darkness. Tomorrow, the Blue Phoenix would reach Axis. And so would Xartasia.
Titania, my love.
My enarri.
My enemy.
A single lock of black hair lay curled in his hands.
Smoke rose up from the White City. Queen Titania Cavainna pointed a single pale finger at the black plumes. The knights closest to the throne flinched visibly. Their glass armor was smeared in ash and darkening red blood.
“How have they breached the imperial city?” Queen Titania asked in a ringing voice. “Have you lost control of the Waygates?”
“No, my queen,” Sir Syle said. “But the dryads know the land better than our knights. They march even now on the city’s heart.”
“What of the west shore?”
“The nyads are massing in the river,” Syle told her. “We cannot fight them at that depth.”
The fairy queen rose suddenly from her birchwood throne. Her red-trimmed golden armor glowed like flame. Aes’ bright light smoldered in her glass crown and violet eyes.
“Cavain’s empire has endured for ten thousand years,” she declared. “The dryads and nyads will not tear down our towers! They will die on our spears and blades. I will finish what divine Cavain began. These sons of stone and daughters of water will join the pyrads in death. The White Kingdom will belong to the aerads alone! We are the only Arcadians. This is our world and we will not give it up!”
Syle rose with a shout and banged his spear against the white flagstones. A hundred thousand knights echoed his drumbeat, filling Illisem with thunder. Titania seized her spear, trimmed all along its length with red ribbons that made the weapon look like it was dripping with blood. She raised the spear over her head. A hot, smoky wind lashed her long hair into twisting streamers just like the smoke. The dryads had numbers and knew the land, but only Arcadians had armor and weapons stronger than wood. The nyads could not hide in their rivers and lakes forever. When they emerged, they would find the Arcadians waiting with sharp glass.
Tears burned like acid in Titania’s eyes. Anthem Calloren’s rebellion would follow him into death. The queen of Arcadia had already killed her enarri’s new lover and her brother, slain Maeve and Caith with her own hands. Thieves and rebels and traitors all… Now Titania would finish the job. They would die. She would reduce the White Kingdom to ashes, if she had to, but those ashes would be hers.
Queen Titania spread her wings and leapt up into the air, leading her people to war.
