And last, I emerged, the wings. MacQuinn the Steadfast.
We rode close together, the queen as the point of an arrow, Cartier and I at her flanks, our horses galloping in perfect stride. The fog continued to burn away as we claimed the field piece by piece, the grass glittering with frost, the earth pounding with the song of our redemption.
This was the same field that had witnessed the massacre, the defeat twenty-five years ago. And yet we took it as if it was ours, as if it had always been ours, even when the royal castle loomed in the distance with the green and yellow banners of Lannon, even when I saw that the king was waiting for us with a horde of soldiers lining his back as an impenetrable wall of steel and black armor.
He would know that we would come for him. He would know because he would have been woken just before dawn to find the Queen’s Canon had fallen upon Lyonesse as snow. He would know because Lord Allenach—I imagined—had stormed to the royal hall after discovering I had fled from his lands, along with Jourdain’s people.
There would be no doubt in Lannon’s narrow mind, not when he saw the three forbidden banners billowing at our shoulders.
We were coming to wage war.
Yseult eased her horse to a canter . . . to a trot. Cartier and I mirrored her, reining our horses slower, slower, as the distance between us and Lannon closed. My heart was throbbing as our horses came to an elegant halt, a stone’s throw from where the king sat upon his stead, flanked by the captain of his guard and Lord Allenach.
Oh, his eyes fell upon me as poison, as a blade to my heart. I met my father’s gaze, MacQuinn’s banner gracing my shoulder, and watched the hatred set upon his handsome face.
I had to look away before the grief cleaved me.
“Gilroy Lannon,” Yseult called, her voice sharp and rich in the air. “You are an imposter to this throne. We have come to claim it from your unrighteous hands. You can either abdicate now, peacefully, on this field. Or we will take it forcefully, by blood and steel.”
Lannon chuckled, a twisted sound. “Ah, little Isolde Kavanagh. However did you escape my blade twenty-fire years ago? You know that I drove my sword into your sister’s heart on this very field. And I can easily do it to yours. Kneel before me, deny this folly, and I will bring you and your disgraced House back into my fold.”
Yseult didn’t so much as flinch, as he was hoping she would. She didn’t let her emotions visibly gather, even though I could feel them, like a storm was brewing overhead.
“I do not kneel to a king,” she declared. “I do not kneel to tyranny and cruelty. You, sire, are a disgrace to this country. You are a dark blemish, and one that I am about to purge. I will give you one final chance to surrender before I rend you in two.”
He laughed, the sound taking to the air as crows, dark and cawing. I felt Allenach staring at me; he had not taken his eyes from me, not even to look at Yseult.
“Then I fear that we have come to an impasse, little Isolde,” Lannon said, the crown on his head snaring the sunlight. “I will give you a count of fifteen to ride back across the field and ready yourselves for battle. One . . . two . . . three . . .”
Yseult whirled her horse about. Cartier and I remained on either side of her, her buffers and her support, as our horses began to gallop the way we had come. I could see the line of our people as they strode over the grass, their shields locked and ready, to meet us in the middle and wage the battle we predicted would unfold.
I should have been counting. I should have kept track of the fifteen seconds. But time in that moment went shallow and thin, brittle. We were almost rejoined to our group when I heard the whizzing, as if the wind were trying to catch us.
I never turned about, not even as the arrows began to sink into the ground before us. There was a shout from one of our people—it sounded like Jourdain. He was screaming orders, and I watched as the wall of shields opened in the center, ready to swallow the three of us as we tore across the field.
I didn’t even realize I had been hit, not until I saw the blood begin to pour down my arm, red, eager. I glanced at it like I was looking at a stranger’s arm, saw the tip of an arrow protruding from my bicep, and the pain quivered deep in my bones, up to my teeth, stealing my breath.
You can make it, I told myself, even as the stars began to speckle the edges of my vision, even as I watched as Yseult and Cartier pulled ahead of me.
You can make it.
But my body was melting like butter in a hot skillet. And it wasn’t just the sharp pain of the arrow. I realized too late what was happening. . . . The pressure clenched around me, popping my ears, scraping my lungs.
No, no, no . . .
My hands went numb. MacQuinn’s banner slipped from my fingers just as the sky above me blackened with a storm, just as my body began to fall from the saddle.
I hit the ground as Tristan Allenach.
THIRTY-ONE
A CLASH OF STEEL
Tristan eased up from the ground, the arrow lodged in his left thigh. As the rain poured, forming bloody puddles on the dirt around him, he broke the fletching and shoved the arrowhead cleanly through his leg, clenching his jaw to contain his scream. The sky was black, the clouds swirling as the eye of a terrible storm, limned with an eerie green light.
He had broken from the line of his warriors, broken from the orders to remain waiting a mile from battle. Because of such, he had been shot; he was now vulnerable, exposed, alone.
But he had to get to the queen, before she sundered the land to pieces.
His horse cantered away, ears back in terror as a boom shuddered from the sky to the earth. His ears were ringing as he limped up the hill, scrambling to find Norah, the quiver of arrows at his back rattling, his bow bent from his fall. He screamed for her as he wove through the dead bodies of the Hilds, their limbs broken in unnatural pieces, gnawed to the bone by some magical creature of the queen’s creation, their faces split in two with the skin peeled back.
He reached the crest of the hill, gazing down at the land that stretched before him, once so beautiful and verdant. It was now scorched, the ashes blowing as will-o’-the-wisps. And there was Norah, her long black hair flowing like a midnight banner as she ran, bearing sword and shield, blue woad blazing on her face.
“Norah!” he shouted, his wounded leg keeping him from pursuing her.
She somehow heard him despite the thunder and rain. The princess whirled among the ashes and corpses and saw Tristan. He stumbled across the distance to reach her, and before he could stop himself, he grasped her arms and shook her.
“You must get the stone, Norah. Now. Before your mother’s magic consumes us all.”