Relief flooded through me, despite the queen’s growing rage, but something nagged at my senses. I tried to chalk it up to the drug, or my exhaustion, or maybe the impending hypothermia, but it persisted, drawing my eye back toward the body even as the queen stomped through the mounds of ice and snow, straight toward me.
Ryese wore a flamboyant court outfit, similar to how he’d dressed at the ball when I’d first met him. The shirt with its frilled collar and sleeves was soaked in blood all across the chest and up over the shoulder, but the flowy sleeve closest to me was hardly touched. Despite that, blood coated his palm.
Blood that hadn’t been there when I’d last seen him.
It was possible that he’d touched his own blood as he died, but Falin had said seeing Ryese’s bloody hands would likely be the only way the queen would believe he could be behind the plot against her. She’d killed him before I even presented what I’d learned. Something had changed her mind.
I peeled back my shield, gazing across layers of reality.
The body changed. A soul glowed from within, but the form was no longer Ryese. The form slimmed and curved into feminine lines. The hair darkened to a chestnut brown, twined with bits of mistletoe.
Maeve.
I saw both images overlapping. The glamour that wrapped the dead fae kept trying to push forward, make itself true. I’d seen fae disguised with glamour inside Faerie before. While Faerie tended to accept strong glamour and make it part of its reality, it couldn’t change a sentient being from one thing or person to another, but this one was trying to in a way glamour never should have done.
Which I guessed meant Ryese had finally given the queen enough Glitter that her fears were taking form. She stalked forward, clearly unaware that she’d slaughtered her council member by mistake.
But if the butchered form in the middle of the courtroom wasn’t Ryese, he was still in the court. Still waiting to spring his trap.
Someone in the huddled mass of fae straightened, and Faerie buckled, a new gash tearing open in reality. It felt like something cut straight through the magic of Faerie, draining it away in the areas it touched. And I could think of only one thing that would do that.
Iron.
The queen was still striding toward me, sword pointed at my heart. Falin had edged forward, not quite putting himself between us, but trying to draw her attention. The wound in Faerie grew.
I had no special fear of iron. It hurt when touched, and I knew it was dangerous, but I wasn’t afraid of it. Which meant, this wasn’t likely my drug-addled imagination.
It was Ryese’s trap.
A hooded figure lifted a small blowpipe loaded with what had to be an iron dart. My first instinct was to yell to Falin. But even as the warning rose in my throat, I realized what Ryese had meant when he’d said I was Falin’s weakness: it wasn’t that I was the key to defeating Falin, but that Falin would defend me. He stood now, in front of half the court, between the queen and me. Everyone was watching them, watching him lift his blades to a defensive position to fend off her sword.
And when Ryese’s iron dart took the queen in the chest, all would assume Falin had turned on the queen. In one blow, Ryese would take out both queen and knight.
My scream of warning still only just beginning to bubble out of my throat, I dove forward, tackling the queen like a demented linebacker. The move was sloppy, but she wasn’t expecting it, and I knocked her off her feet, taking her to the ground.
Heat exploded across my back as I felt Faerie rip apart in the space we’d occupied. The queen hit a snowdrift with a loud ooaf, her sword dropping beside her. I landed on top of her, and tried to roll away, but dizziness exploded in my head, filling my vision with dancing black dots.
“What is the meaning of this, planeweaver?” the queen bellowed, but she wasn’t doing much better at regaining her feet than I had.
I couldn’t catch my breath, couldn’t even get close. “Ryese,” I managed to get out between wheezes. “Iron.”
“Impossible. I killed my nephew with my own hands.”
I shook my head. “Glitter,” I said, not sure she’d understand. But Falin would. Then I turned, trying to touch the burning line radiating across my shoulder blades. My gloves came away with a thin band of blood. My blood.
The dart had grazed me, nothing more, but the pain clawed at my back, the burn much more than was warranted by the grazing cut.
A cut made by an iron dart.
Shit.
Iron disrupted Faerie’s magic. It could kill a fae exposed to it for too long. In the mortal realm, touching it cut off a fae’s connection to Faerie, and drained the life-sustaining magic from their body. What happened to an already fading fae?
I had the feeling I already knew. I was so exhausted. So cold. I hurt, and not just my back. As if the iron had poisoned my very blood, the pain traveled through me like daggers dragged against my skin. And the two Deaths kept yelling at me. Or were there three now? Yes, a new one had appeared, telling me it was time for him to take my soul. At least he didn’t scream.