Page 125 of The Blood Witch

“Why?” Fey asked. “I just told you this isn’t me.”

“I believe you,” Alice said, meeting her eyes. “Truly, Fey, I do. But you have to understand how this looks. Someone has been threatening the council, and now they’re killing them. And it’s your face on those posters, babe. The council is already scared of how much power you have, but if you just let them talk to you… question you…”

Fey curled her lip in a sneer. Alastair placed a comforting hand on her shoulder.

“Please, Fey,” Alice said, her voice breaking. “They’ll need to hear it from you. And you… you can help with this. If there’s a Blood Witch out there, someone going after us?” Alice swallowed. “Fey, imagine something strong enough to take down two Blades in their prime. Something strong enough to take down the Fallen King. I can’t take someone like that on my own. You know I can’t.”

Fey suddenly understood what Alice was really asking.

“You want me there, with the council, in case she strikes again?” she asked, voice cautious.

Alice nodded. “We need to stop her now. Whoever she is, we need to stop her before she goes any further. Before she…” Alice blinked, a new realization hitting her. Her face twisted in horror. “Fey, what if she goes after our families? What if she goes after Joy?”

Joy. Something rolled through Fey, strong enough to push her anger aside. A sour, sickening emotion. Fear.

What if she goes after Joy?But it wasn’t Joy’s face Fey saw. It was Willow’s. Willow’s face, her mouth open in shock, her throat slit open while Fey watched, unable to do anything but scream.

Willow. Who she should have been able to protect.

Never again.

“When is the council meeting next?” Fey heard herself ask as Alastair’s grip tightened on her shoulder, grounding her.

“Tomorrow night,” Alice answered.

Fey nodded. Under Alastair’s bed, kept in a decorative wooden box, her Queen’s Blades sat, waiting for a moment like this. Maybe it was time to get them out again.

“I’ll be there,” Fey promised.

Chapter 56

ALICE

Joy had been furious.

“Our own sister, Alice?” she’d said, disgust and anger swirling in her beautiful blue eyes. The air in the apartment had turned so cold it had stung Alice’s skin. And she’d endured it without complaint. “You accused our own sister of this? Of hiding it from us?”

It did nothing to eclipse the shame she already felt inside. Nothing to eclipse the disgust she felt in herself.

But she’d had no choice, had she?

“I had to be sure,” Alice told her, trying to hide the pain in her voice. Joy had turned her back on her, then, and gone to the bedroom alone, slamming the door behind her. She didn’t bother saying goodbye to her when Alice left for the council meeting that evening.

We can spend our whole lives fighting for balance, fighting for stability, but eventually everything falls to chaos, no matter how hard you try to stop it.

Was Kallista right? Was Fey—wasJoy—just another thing she might lose to that chaos?

It felt like the tighter she tried to hold on to the things around her,the tighter she gripped the stable things in her life, the quicker they vanished.

Alice tried to shake those thoughts away.

There was no time for thoughts like that.

It was time for the council to convene again.

Fey wasthe last to arrive.

To Alice’s surprise, the other members of the council were already there and waiting by the time she’d entered the throne room. All of them, despite the danger, despite the morbid specter of Linh’s death hanging over them all, had shown up. Even Sana, pale-faced and trembling, sat in her usual seat, straight backed and looking determined.

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