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They did not deserve to burn for it. Not when the true evil resided in those people who had lit the match and kept it aflame.

Erik tilted his head, considering me with a hair-raising intensity. “You dwelled in Ansora for ample time. Have you not encountered even one Wielder who has wished their power away?”

I tried not to wince at the thought of Zeke. But Erik must’ve read my answer anyway, because he gave a victorious little smile.

He’d always enjoyed poetic punishments, and this was one of them: ripping the specters from Wielders, thereby morbidly fulfilling their wishes.

“Do you know,” he asked quietly, “how often my soldiers have targeted those creatures only to find them defenseless, restrained by their own foolish hand?” I felt the blood rush from my face, because I hadn’t considered that cruel reality, even after learning that Wielders self-administered dullroot. “If you understood the self-loathing that exists among them, the repulsive weakness as they beg me to end their pathetic lives—”

I lurched forward, wanting to tear the words from his throat, to shred them to pieces.

But I gasped when the stitches pulled across my abdomen, renewing my pain.

“Be angry if you wish,” Erik said as the dark spots cleared from my vision. “But believe me: I would be doing them a kindness.”

“And what about everything you’ve done to me?” I asked through heavy breathing. “Is that your idea of kindness, too?”

His eyes narrowed, cool anger seeping through. “What have I done to you, Alissa, other than put the world in your hands and ask you to hold on to it? Have I not offered you my understanding and companionship? Have I not protected you from harm? I have treated you as my queen.”

A huff choked up my throat. “This is how you treat your queen?” Already, my body trembled in this strained position, and my arms were growing numb. He could’ve chained me as he had last time. He could’ve locked me behind bars.

But he had strung me up like this for the express purpose of making it hurt.

He didn’t do me the disservice of denying it, at least. He just held my gaze as he said, “You did this to yourself. I told you once before: If you won’t learn when to yield, I must teach you through demonstration. As long as I am your king—”

“You’re not,” I said, firmly enough that his sentence broke off. I dragged my gaze all the way down him, then met his stare once more. My voice was thorn-sharp as I said, “You are no king.”

Erik’s eyes narrowed just slightly.

The sympathizer he’d tortured at the Opal had said those words to him, too. They were the words that had snapped Erik’s restraint, I realized now. The words that had drawn on his lips the cruelest smile I’d ever seen.

Because the words were true. Erik was a bastard, just like me.

Which meant he was not the rightful king of Daradon.

He reached into his pocket, and sudden grief overwhelmed my brief flare of satisfaction. Because, just as he’d once promised, the compass was in his hands again.

“You understand now why I stole it on the night of my coronation.” He spoke softly, thumb grazing the case. “I couldn’t leave it with the Capewells, knowing how closely they would be working with their new monarch.”

Because if they ever opened the compass in his presence, the Hunters would’ve slaughtered him outright. And so fifteen-year-old Erik had killed Wray Capewell, the compass’s former keeper. The poor man was so stunned that he didn’t even try to fight me, Erik had once said.

But Wray hadn’t been stunned by the attack itself. He’d been stunned by Erik’s method of attack . . . A specter.

Erik stepped around me, and goose bumps rose on my arms. Trapped in this awkward suspension, I was forced to wait in dread as a scraping sound echoed against the stones.

He returned to stand before me, and my stomach dropped.

Because Erik was clutching the hilt of a magnificent sword.

Its short, translucent blade reflected the lantern light, yet I didn’t need the sunlight to know that it was dayglass—now as sleek and colorless as an ice shard in this windowless room. Tiny opals studded the hilt, strikingly iridescent, and intricately placed to curve in and around the ring-shaped pommel.

Even if I hadn’t known its purpose, I would have felt the importance of this weapon simply from its breathtaking beauty.

This was the Unbreakable Blade. The Spellmade object which, when paired with the compass, could do the impossible: separate a Wielder from their specter.

My ragged breaths filled the silence as the compass’s lid clicked open, Erik’s power undoing the latch. The needle stirred, the compass grounding itself in the hands of a Wielder.

Then, as before, my specter rushed painfully to its call, my entire body leaning forward from the strain. My eyes stung, the breaths whistling frantically through my teeth. But this time, paired as it should be with the sword, the compass’s purpose wasn’t to identify.