“So you tell me I must kill the woman I’ve worshipped since childhood, and that isn’t even the real fight.” Nelay lifted her gaze. “You have to know there’s almost no chance I will survive any of this.”
Suka’s eyes took on an almost maniacal gleam. “You will. And afterward, you will kill all of the Clansmen.”
A bitter laugh left Nelay’s lips. “You tell me my soul will be burned from my body, and you think I’m going to care about the Clansmen?”
Suka tipped her head back in a show of superiority. “The Winter Goddess, Ilyenna, loved a man, and it caused her to remember who she was. To remember her people and become protective of them. As you will remember Idara and protect her.”
That was why Suka had forced Nelay to marry Zatal. “Rycus would have been enough.”
Suka’s jaw tightened. “A bond to the king would be a bond to Idara. Rycus was a Tribesman. I knew your thirst for power, so I thought you would welcome the marriage.”
Ironically Rycus was the king of Idara, but only because Nelay had made it so. “You’ve thought of everything,” she said in a soft voice.
“Yes,” Suka agreed.
“If I become the Goddess of Fire and as heartless as you say, you know I’ll burn you for it.”
Suka didn’t flinch. “I’ve always known.”
Nelay turned to Jezzel, whose face was tight. “Jez, what do I do?” Her voice broke.
She thought her friend would fight her, demand she leave now, but instead, Jezzel lifted a hand to Nelay’s shoulder. “We are all going to die today if you don’t, Nelay—you included. This is the only move left with any hope of survival. The only chance for any of us.”
Nelay closed her eyes. “We’ve watched so many people die. What if this only leads to more death?”
“You have to embrace the fear, Nelay. Stop fighting it.”
“I don’t . . .” she faltered.
Jezzel eyes softened. “Embrace the fact that you might die. Make your peace with the life you’ve lived. Then the fear will fade.”
Nelay closed her eyes, remembering her childhood, her parents. She had been a good child. As a priestess, she had worked hard. And when the time came to protect those she cared about, she had done always done what had needed to be done.
When she’d found love, she’d taken it. She had regrets, things she would have done differently, but she had always done her best. It was a life she was proud of. A calm washed over her. Death came to everyone. One way or another, it would come to her today. But she was no longer afraid. “Thank you,” she whispered.
Jezzel pulled her in for a hug.
“So, will you fight for your people?” Suka asked.
Nelay searched her heart. Strangely, it was Zatal’s words that came back to her. Something about things being broken before they can be rebuilt stronger than they were before.
She thought of her childhood, how she’d had to reveal her Sight in order to save her father. The revelation had broken her life, but she had rebuilt it better than before. The same had happened when the king came for her, breaking her hopes all around her.
Yet because of that, she had met Rycus. She had known real love. She had learned to be a true leader—to be selfless. Nelay took a deep breath and let it out. “Very well.”
The snake fairy’s tongue flicked out, tasting the air. “I will call her.” She lowered herself to the ground and closed her eyes as other fairies took up positions around her.
“Nelay,” Suka said from behind her, “send Jezzel away. All she can do is die here.”
Nelay hesitated. But Suka was right. There was nothing Jezzel could do. “Go. Defend Idara. Defend our people.”
Jezzel’s gaze went from gentle to determined in a heartbeat. “You will not face this alone.”
Nelay didn’t argue, glad she had a friend through this. And she thought she would change what Zatal had said. “To rise from the ashes, first you must burn.”
“Always giving speeches,” teased Jezzel, drawing her sword.
Tix touched Nelay’s shoulder. “Hide now.” Her wings were a blur of motion behind her. “All of you, hide.”
The cold air turned warm and slowly began to smell of rich, damp earth and growing things. The snow melted, turning to puddles. Nelay tensed, not daring to move lest she give away her position, her every sense attuned to her surroundings.
The wind stirred, hot and humid, pressing against her in short gusts—almost as if stirred by wings. “Siseth, what is it? Why have you called me?” The voice was warm and full, nothing like Nelay had imagined.
Nelay didn’t hesitate, for those who hesitated in battle died. She pivoted around the tree, taking in the scene before her in a glance. The woman with flaring wings like some kind of huge leaves, her charcoal skin, her close-cropped head. Nelay threw her knives, one right after another. The woman pivoted, her eyes wide with shock, three knives sticking out of her. She lifted her hand, and Nelay could see the fire building in her palm.
Nelay sprinted that last step, her blades swinging from low to high. The woman was still pivoting, still lifting her flaming hand. Nelay felt the warmth and humidity turn to ash, the heat searing her skin. Knowing she was seconds away from being obliterated, she sliced across the woman’s middle.
And then the Goddess of Fire fell. Nelay stood over her, watching her convulsing, watching her wings go smaller. Ruby-red blood fanned out, curling patterns spreading across the puddles around her.
Nelay stared at the goddess she had worshipped since she was a child. Worshipped, and now killed.
The fire in the woman’s hand slowly died, choking out as her black eyes landed on Nelay. She gave a bitter laugh. “They killed me because I was not cruel enough. They would rather have a murderer replace me.”
Guilt and horror warred within Nelay, but her anger was stronger. “No. I killed you because you are a traitor.”
The warm glow of the woman’s skin was being stolen away. “You will learn. It is never as simple as that.” Leto took a final breath, and when she let it out, her eyes became unfocused and she went unnaturally still, so still Nelay knew the heart no longer beat in her chest.
Nelay looked up as Siseth flew toward her, looking impassively at the body that seemed so much smaller. The fairy lifted her gaze to Nelay. “I claim you for the light side of the Balance, and make you Summer Queen.”
With the speed of a striking snake, she darted forward. Nelay stumbled back, expecting to feel her bite, but there was only a brief pressure on her lips.
And then the world exploded. Colors bright and sharp enough to cut. She could see air currents, wrong and twisted, feel the black auras of death and suffering around the plants and animals.
Nos came forward, a crown of moss and twigs on her head, her hair the washed-out color of the morning sky. Her kiss was like a coal pressed to Nelay’s lips.
Nelay shied back, but the fire was already spreading through her face, stabbing into her head like a lightning bolt, and running through her veins like liquid fire. She collapsed into a heap on her side, her head in her hands. Fire burned through her muscles, piercing her skin, and then flashed out, scouring her and burning away her soul.
A third touch, this time by Tix, and the agony grew distant, far enough away that Nelay knew death was close. She welcomed it, stepping away from the torture and toward the darkness. But before she could, Orawil delivered a final kiss, so terrible against the agony of Nelay’s lips. That touch also spread, leaving a warm healing in its wake. Slowly, she uncurled herself, testing for pain as she did.
She found it. A too-hot spot in a line along her spine. She arched her back, groaning with the ache to stretch. With a whoosh, Nelay felt something break free, and the last of the suffering was over.
She opened her eyes to stare at the beautiful wings on her back, golden flames that danced and shifted behind her like a thousand molten ribbons.
“Nelay?” a feminine voice said.
She shifted her gaze to a woman
kneeling before her, one arm held up to shield her from the heat. “Nelay? Is that my name?”
The woman’s eyes widened. She stood and stumbled away. “There—there’s fire in your eyes.”
Nelay staggered to her feet and tipped her head back. She felt the power of summer within her, growth and light and heat. And then she looked around with her new sight and saw how wrong everything was. Nature had been wrenched out of balance. The flows of summer were distorted. Cold where heat should be. The urge to right it swelled deep inside her. But there was more. Nelay sensed something—a smudge of bitter winter. Her enemy! She stretched her wings, preparing to take flight, to defend what was hers.
“No,” Siseth said, and Nelay felt the heat of anger gathering in her chest.
Siseth shifted slowly from side to side. “My queen, your enemy is near. It will not take her long to learn you have killed her friend. She will come.”
Nelay’s wing’s flashed yellow. “Winter dares trespass on the lands of summer?”
“The Winter Queen’s name is Ilyenna,” Orawil said.
“And I am the Summer Queen.” Nelay was glad to have a name for what she was.
The woman from before stepped toward Nelay. She wore weapons at her side, and Nelay’s wings flared with streaks of red. The woman lifted her hands, palms out. “Nelay, don’t you know me?”
Nelay looked her up and down, the desire to burn her for daring to speak making her hands tingle with beautiful heat. “Why would I know you?”
“I’m Jezzel—I’m your friend.”
“I have no memory of you,” Nelay scoffed.
The woman asked, “Then do you remember Rycus?”
At that name, Nelay felt a stirring in her breast. Her soul was gone, burned to ash, but there was a kernel, a seed of remembrance. That seed was Rycus.
She closed her eyes and felt an echo of something she longed to hold onto. Tipping her head to the side, she nudged the knowledge to grow. Memories bloomed slowly within her, revealing themselves one petal at a time.
But Nelay was no longer the girl who had become a queen. The girl who loved a boy with midnight-sand eyes. Now she was a goddess to mankind and a queen to her fairies. And the fate of the man she had loved wasn’t nearly as important as confronting the fool who dared invade her lands.
Fury flashed through Nelay. Her wings turned white hot, and women and fairies alike staggered back against the heat. With a burst, Nelay took to the skies, her wings leaving a melted circle in their wake. She felt her connection to the summer fairies, as numerous as the creatures all around her. She called for them, called them to arms. Called for them to fight.
No mercy. No hesitation.
Her rage bled over to them, until she felt them coming by the thousands. She pumped her massive wings, pushing back the cold, burning up the clouds.
Colors appeared against the velvet grays of the clouds. A poisonous green that shifted to purple and then pink. “Leto, what are you doing?” came a disembodied voice as cold as death.
Then the Winter Queen appeared. She was like a thousand glittering diamonds, her feet bare, her hair tangled and wild, her skin blue and silver. Her eyes took in Nelay, and her already marble-pale face lost any remaining color until she looked like death itself. “No.”
“These are my lands.” Nelay let the heat unfurl from where it rested inside her—the hottest desert wind blasting against the Winter Goddess.
More memories surfaced, more wrongs at the hands of this cold woman. “You have upset the Balance,” Nelay said. “And you will pay for it.”
“You killed her.” Ilyenna’s icy voice keened like the wind through a mountain pass, as if she hadn’t heard Nelay’s threats at all. “She was kind and good. And she was my friend. My only friend.”
Nelay pressed forward, forcing the Winter Queen back. “She was a traitor and a coward.”
Ilyenna’s gaze shifted down to the city below. Nelay followed her gaze and saw the clanlands’ armies, saw them streaming through the palace wall, breaking down the doors. These men did not belong here anymore than the Winter Queen did. With a sweep of Nelay’s hand, the city was burning, the fire as white-hot as her wings.
“No!” Ilyenna roared. She held her hands out, ice and snow streaming from her palms. The clouds behind her gained strength, turning black and churning forward.
Nelay cut off the blast of snow with a ball of fire. Furious, she let out a battle cry and dove forward, her fairies at her back.
Something glittering and translucent shot toward her. Only the battle instincts from her past life saved her as she veered to the side. As she dodged another ice dart, Nelay realized she needed something of her own to throw.
“Call for a branch.”
Nelay twisted around to see Siseth, her mouth opened unnaturally wide, showing her black gums against her white fangs. Siseth wrapped her arms and legs around a winter fairy and chomped down on her shoulder. The fairy’s purple body shattered into a thousand shards of snow.
Siseth’s tongue flicked out, tasting the air as she came to land on Nelay’s shoulder. “You may have more experience in combat, but Ilyenna has had two decades to refine her powers.”
One of the ice darts pierced Nelay’s arm just above her elbow. She felt a flash of cold pain and watched as her blood spilled into the open air.
“Call for the branches—command them to grow.”
Nelay wasn’t sure what Siseth meant, but she tried it anyway. And suddenly a slim, green branch appeared in her hand. She darted above the clouds, caught sight of Ilyenna, and launched branches at her, one after another.
With a powerful thrust of her wings, Ilyenna shot out of range, but some of her fairies weren’t fast enough. The branches imbedded in them and grew fatter, leaves sprouting from the fairies’ mouths, and they wailed in agony before shattering into puffs of fur, snow, or ice.
Ilyenna let out a howl of rage. Hail and ice shot toward Nelay, but she sent out a wave of heat, melting them. Ilyenna called up a maelstrom of snow.
Nelay stirred her hand, creating a whirlwind of sand, which she flung at Ilyenna and her fairies. The two tornados met, both spinning off and sending out gales of wind. But Siseth was right. Here, Nelay was stronger.
Ilyenna’s mouth tightened as she looked again at the burning city. She tucked her wings and dove. Nelay hesitated before tucking her own wings and giving chase. But despite how natural her wings felt, she was no match for Ilyenna’s experience. The Winter Queen cut through the city, shooting ice on every fire, calling for the Clansmen to retreat. They stumbled through the city, their clothes and skin stained with soot, and spilled beyond the palace walls. Nelay let them go, concentrating on solely on Ilyenna as she darted and turned, making herself impossible to hit.
Still, Nelay kept shooting branches at her, calling up the sand to blind her. The woman’s cold shriveled up before Nelay’s heat, and still Ilyenna did not stop.
The Clansmen mounted their horses, what was left of them, and fled from the city. Ilyenna was helping them escape.
Nelay’s nostrils flared in fury. These served the Winter Queen, and therefore they were invaders just as the winter fairies were. An invasion they would pay for.
With a thought, Nelay sent her sand-storm fairies, with wings of shifting sand, after them, commanding them to flay the flesh from the men’s bones.
Determined to catch the Winter Queen, she flew faster, harder, and with every beat of her wings she came closer to Ilyenna—so close she could almost reach out and touch her wing tips. And then the Winter Goddess turned abruptly. Nelay shot past but flared her wings and rolled her body forward to stop. She reversed and charged back toward the alley at full speed, but then rounded a corner and slammed into a solid wall of ice. She crumpled, dazed, her fire wings going out and leaving nothing but a silhouette of charred earth. She blinked up through fire and dust to see fairies fighting above her.
If Nelay stayed here, she would die. She hauled herself to her feet, noting her wings
had burned a perfect outline on the flagstones. She let the flash of heat along her spine unfurl once more.
More cautious this time, she flew above the city, her eyes searching. But it was not her eyes that told her where the Winter Queen was. Nelay could feel a pocket of cold radiating from her left, toward the palace. Sensing this was some kind of trap, she hid the light of her wings, forcing the white hot to fade to a deep red.
She saw a building roaring with fire. Growling low in her throat, she settled down in the midst of it, knowing it would hide her, that it wouldn’t hurt her. Instead, the flames danced along her skin, feeling like a thousand strands of blowing silk.
She waved them aside and they parted like a curtain, giving her full view of the palace gates. Ilyenna was crouched there, clearly exhausted, her magnificent wings puddling around her.
Nelay gripped the handles of her swords, preparing to launch forward and end this once and for all. But just as she took her first step, she heard a soft sound. It brought with it an image of the wind howling through the crevasses of a blue glacier, something Nelay had never seen.
She took another step forward and saw crystal tears falling from Ilyenna’s cheeks to land on the dirty, crumpled body of a man she held in her arms. Ilyenna hadn’t collapsed in exhaustion—she’d collapsed in grief. But instead of a raging inferno of anger and pain, her grief was like a sharp point, cold and hard and poisonous.
Nelay called for her wings and rose enough to see the man’s face. Bratton—the high chief of the Clansmen. He was dead. Nelay should go forward, kill Ilyenna. But she hesitated, not out of sympathy as much as curiosity. What power was so strong it had felled a Winter Queen?
A fairy suddenly appeared at Ilyenna’s side. Feeling no connection to her, Nelay knew she was a winter fairy. She was obviously weak, her face flushed and wilted. Her wings were white and furry. “My queen, we must go,” she urged Ilyenna. “We cannot win, not so deep in her territory.”