Page 43

“Too long,” I admit. “Council politics move at the pace of mountains shifting.”

The sithean stone on Amalia’s wrist pulses, drawing both our attention.

“He’s alive,” she says with conviction. “And he’s in there.”

Her certainty sparks something dangerous within me. Hope, that most perilous of emotions for a king who must always choose duty over desire.

“Yet we cannot reach him,” I say. “Not without breaching a centuries-old seal.”

Her eyes lock with mine, challenge rekindling in their depths. “Are you sure?”

Amalia squares her shoulders and steps away from me, her face hardening into lines of determination I’ve seen before in warriors preparing for battle. Her pointed chin lifts, and her lush lips flatten into a stubborn line.

“You cannot find Elionn.” The words strike as a challenge. “But isn’t this why you kidnapped me? To do what you cannot?”

I blink as my mind stumbles over her words. “What?”

“You brought me here to be your hound and hunt down Elionn, and I never quit a job halfway through.”

My thoughts race to catch up with her implication. “But you cannot⁠—”

Her snarl cuts me off. “Watch me.”

Before I can react, she strides toward the fissure. The dress she wears ripples around her legs, the opalescent light transforming the black silk into a thousand shades of possibility. Her hair flows loose down her back, catching in the breeze and blowing behind her in a wild banner of black waves.

Thalindor steps forward. “Your Majesty? Should I stop her?”

I hold up my hand as the surrounding air vibrates with magic older than any living court, a power that recognizes something in Amalia absent in me. My breath catches in my throat as she stops before the rift, her reflection fragmenting in the crystalline edges.

“No cage has held me since I was a child,” she says, steady despite the magic whirling around her. “Sithes are nothing but large cages, and this one will not hold me, either.”

She lays her palm flat on the barrier, the same one that burned my flesh moments ago. Instead of repelling her, the light surges forward, flowing up her arm.

For three heartbeats, nothing happens.

Then the seal ripples, the surface undulating, and a seam opens beneath her palm. It widens from a crack to a doorway in the space between breaths. Beyond lies darkness shot through with threads of color too brilliant to name, a landscape of crystal and shadow that pulls at something primal in my blood.

She turns back to me, ablaze with triumph and determination. The light from the open rift washes over her, transforming her into an ancient and terrible goddess reborn from the shards of a forgotten court.

“I will find Elionn,” she declares, her vow echoing with power that does not belong to her. “I will do what you cannot.”

The reality of her intentions turns my blood to ice. She means to enter alone. To cross a threshold no one has survived in centuries.

“Amalia, do not!” I shout her name, lunging forward.

Too late. She steps backward into the opening, and the light folds around her in a welcoming embrace. I reach the rift as the seal closes, my fingers passing through where her form was a heartbeat before.

The barrier solidifies beneath my touch, its burning cold searing my skin. I push harder, channeling every drop of power I possess into breaking through, but the seal holds firm, rejecting me as it did the first time.

“No!” The word tears from my throat, raw with desperation. “Amalia!”

My shout echoes across the ruined courtyard, but no answer comes from beyond the seal. The light dims to a steady pulse, giving no sign of anything extraordinary, no indication that a human witch has just walked where kings cannot tread.

Thalindor appears at my side, his posture rigid. “Your Majesty, we must return to the spire. If she has entered the Opal Court⁠—”

“She has,” I confirm, unable to tear myself away. “And she took our only connection to Elionn with her.”

“What will you do?” Thalindor asks, careful not to betray an opinion.