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What should a king do when a mortal woman walks into myth to save his brother? When the fate of his realm may rest on her success or failure?

My answer comes not from the demands of my crown, but from a place deeper and softer than I’ve allowed myself to acknowledge in centuries.

“Wait,” I say, the word made bitter with helplessness. “And prepare.”

For what, I cannot say. For their return, if the stars are kind. For the collapse of everything I’ve built, if they are not.

In the distance, a bell tolls from the Dark Spire, summoning courtiers to some new spectacle. Nyctarian will not tolerate our absence for long before sending guards after us.

Political games continue while my world shatters.

For the first time in centuries, I pray to powers older than my crown, older than even the Opal Court.

Bring them back, I beg silently. Bring them both back.

Only silence answers.

13

THE BROKEN COURT

AMALIA

The rift spits me out on the other side as if it can’t stomach me, and I land hard on both knees. My body folds to take the shock in my thighs, but it still rattles my teeth.

The ground beneath me is half-solid, half-liquid, and it pulses beneath my palms, steady as a heartbeat. Cold, almost sweet air floods my lungs, and for a second, a pins-and-needles sensation crawls through my veins.

I stand, bones aching, every joint complaining about the trip through the rift. The silk dress sticks to my skin, black fabric laced now with threads of opal light that weren’t there before. Above me, what passes for a sky ripples like liquid crystal, its colors shifting through shades I have no names for.

“What the hell?”

The exclamation doesn’t echo as the thick, wrong air eats the words.

Trees crowd around me, trunks twisting up in impossible curves. Their bark shifts, one second midnight blue, then a violent red, and the branches swing from lush to winter bare and back again with every breath. Flowers explode open, die, and regrow too fast to keep up.

A crack sounds overhead, and instinct sends me diving to the side as a crystal shard as long as my arm and thin as a blade falls from the sky. It shatters where I stood a heartbeat before, spraying prismatic dust. This sound carries on past reason, as if the whole place is a bell that’s just been rung.

I pick myself up again and raise my arm.

The sithean stone throbs, silver light pulsing faster and faster. I turn my arm in a slow circle, and it tugs harder in one direction, like a compass that can’t wait to show me north. The blood magic in my palm burns as it awakens.

I turn my hand to find the sigils glowing again, shifting under my skin as if trying to rearrange themselves.

Shuddering at the view, I flick my wrist to grasp the stone. “Take me to Elionn.”

The stone kicks once, hard enough to rattle my bones, then settles into a steady pull, pointing deeper into the court. As I step forward, the ground ripples, circles spreading out from my boots as though I walk on water.

In front of me, the trees bend their trunks to open a path, and the hair on my neck stands on end.

The crystal leaves rustle behind me, and I spin, knife leaping to my hand and body poised for a fight.

Nothing.

“If you’re going to come for me, then come,” I snarl at the emptiness. “I’m not here to play.”

The court answers with the same pulsing under my feet, the beat matching my own heart now. It crawls up my legs and burrows beneath my skin.

I turn, memorizing my surroundings.