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The word cuts off as Kelaros moves with lightning speed. He slams into Elionn from behind, sending him stumbling into the crystal cocoon. Before I can react, Kelaros seizes my arm in an iron grip, his other hand shoving me forward.

“What are you doing?” I struggle within his hold, but he’s stronger than his lean frame suggests.

“Completing my objective.”

Elionn pushes himself up, blood trickling from a cut on his forehead where he hit the crystal. “Kelaros, don’t⁠—”

“The court needs an anchor,” Kelaros interrupts, shoving me toward the mirror. “And you are not yet fully formed.”

“No!” I fight his hold, reaching for my princeling.

Elionn lunges forward, but tendrils of crystal whip out, wrapping around his torso and yanking him back.

“Amalia!” Elionn gasps, struggling to break free as the court reclaims what was once its own.

Cold, liquid silver touches my back as Kelaros forces me through, and the silver pathway engulfs me.

The last thing I see is Elionn’s face, contorted with fury and fear, his hand reaching for mine as the mirror drags us away from my princeling.

24

ANCHOR & KEY

THERON

The Dark King’s fingers tap a rhythm on the arm of his obsidian throne, each impact sending tiny vibrations across the black marble floor beneath my boots.

I count the beats, letting his impatience feed my calm. The mirrored walls of his meeting hall reflect our figures a hundred times over until they fill every corner of the shadowed chamber.

“Your proposal lacks substance, Silver King.” Nyctarian leans forward, his dark eyes catching what little light exists in this twilit space. “You offer trinkets where I require guarantees.”

I allow no emotion to show. “I offer fair exchange. A mirrorwright for a share in the food the Earthen Court will assist you in growing.”

“I have my own people to feed.” He inclines his head toward his diminished court. “You should have made better use of the meeting I arranged with the Jade Sithe.”

I grit my teeth. “You knew what their response would be before they ever arrived.”

One black eyebrow wings upward. “I would never presume to know the mind of another King.”

“No, but the outcome came as no surprise,” I murmur.

Courtiers line the walls, their faces blank, though I note how their hands never stray far from concealed weapons. Back home, we at least pretend civility. Here, the threat remains visible at all times.

“The Silver’s stance on wildlings has long been a bone of contention with the Amber Sithe, and others of the Earthen Court follow,” Nyctarian says.

He lifts a finger to beckon over a wildling with soft white fur on her face and shards of broken glass woven into her speckled hair. She fills his glass with a pitcher she carries before scampering away again.

Nyctarian’s attention returns to me. “Perhaps if you had waved around your little wildling more profusely, they would have bent in their opinion of you.”

The Amber Sithe, who hold dominion over all manner of animals and often spend time in that form, have a more lax opinion about the more depraved acts some fae resort to for their carnal urges. “It is not wildlings I object to, but how they come to be. Welcoming the offspring is as good as sanctioning the action of creation.”

“Punishing the offspring is why your kingdom will starve. You should, instead, adopt my philosophy.” Nyctarian takes a sip of his wine, then offers me a blood-stained smile. “Make an example of the perpetrator in the most painful way possible, and take the innocent children to bulk up the numbers in your sithe. There’s no reason to grow the Lord of the Wild’s kingdom any greater.”

“That, at least, we can agree on.”

The Oberyn holds far too much power as it is. While the other courts, Tidal, Earthen, and Celestial, are divided into smaller sithes, the Wild Court has no such checks and balances. The Oberyn holds all the power of his court, and it makes him dangerous.

It was one of Elionn’s concerns before he left on his last hunt. The pure fae struggle to procreate with each other, and while we are a long-lived race, our deaths far outnumber our births. Over the centuries, our halls grow empty, and our realms suffer.