"No," I said, though I could feel the shape of it, written in her pain, hinted so many times in the edges of the things she'd said to me. Sarcaryn was the god of Stag Court, and the woman with the knife to my throat was his Queen. I remembered something she'd said to the people who had tried to kill me and Dain—there is no force that drives a creature to madness like vengeance. He'd taken her dreams of children and shattered them, then given her the child she longed for with rape and violence, handing her over to pacify the god she'd defied.

Three thousand years of devotion, answered with betrayal. How can you pay back that kind of pain?

"Then let me tell you," she said. She shifted her grip on the knife, the edge dragging painfully along my skin, and reset it against my jugular. "Eighty-two years ago, I tried to give Stag Court to Raven Court, but I underestimated my son. Four days before Midwinter, under the light of the full moon, he slaughtered a city, refusing to allow his soldiers to suffer the agony of killing the innocent." Something dangerous entered her voice. "It took him three years to stand on two feet again, and it might have taken decades or more if his General didn't love him. I preferred the honesty of the Beast."

Then she sighed, and seemed to relax away from it again, slipping into almost boredom. "People tried to rid the world of him for me, but they failed over and over again. It grew tedious, a parade of brash assassins, each so sure that they could best him." The Queen shook her head, and laced her dead fingers through mine. "You seemed like a gift when you arrived, so full of anger. He couldn't take his eyes off of you. His soulmate." The word dripped with disdain. "Nobody has ever had the position of trust you hold in his heart, not even his General." She leaned forward, putting her mouth next to my ear again. "Did you think yourselves clever, playacting like children? You're nothing but a crass little human. My footprints marked the dust of your world before your kind forged their first blade."

Horror crept across my skin. I'd assumed she was older than she looked, and three thousand years hadn't fazed me. But to know that she'd been around since the Stone Age? She was practically a goddess, someone who might have been worshiped in the ancient past. I couldn't be more than a mayfly to her, here today and gone tomorrow. She'd spent Dain's entire life focused on him. How had we ever thought we could fool her?