“I can find you anywhere, anytime, darling. I am your queen, after all, despite what you’ve done this day. Once, I was your lover.” Aveline gave him another slow smile. “I suspected you had betrayed me, so I came to do your job for you. A quick in-and-out job. No one will ever know what transpired, for I will be the only one to leave this...” She scanned the tunnels and grimaced. “Hovel.”

“You are not my queen,” he snarled. “Not any longer. I rue the day we were ever lovers.”

“Then you’re right.” Two daggers slid out from under her sleeves, her fingers wrapping around the hilts. “I’m not your queen. I’m your executioner.”

NOLA STUMBLED BACK as Bane and Aveline crashed together in a tangle of violence. Aveline’s speed and grace surprised her.

Should she interfere? This was what Bane had wanted all along. The vengeance he’d craved from the beginning.

He blocked the queen’s parries with mind-scrambling aggressiveness. Fierce and ferocious. But when he’d go to deliver a parry of his own, he would stop just short of contact.

Nola clutched her stomach, confused. Now that she’d earned her full power, he should be able to harm the other royal, right? Or, did he secretly not want to harm his childhood sweetheart?

Oh, he wanted to harm her, all right. His frustration was palpable, his fury growing by leaps and bounds.

Why, why, why did he stop, then?

Answers downloaded straight into Nola’s brain. He couldn’t harm her. Her instincts had been right. Only a queen could kill another queen.

The inability to cause harm would be his downfall. Aveline landed blow after furious blow.

Nola had to take over. “Bane,” she shouted, about to unleash her first command as a queen. Well, the first command he wouldn’t want to obey. He might resent her for it—no way; he’d changed—but he would live.

Blood and sweat soaked him. Cuts and bruises littered his entire body. His reflexes were slowing.

Before she could state the rest of her command, Aveline pressed her advantage, working her way behind Bane. She swooped down and slicked her blade across his Achilles tendons.

As he dropped to his knees, facing Nola, the other queen tossed one of the blades.

Too late to duck. The metal embedded in Nola’s heart. Nola dropped, the pain excruciating. Every time the organ beat, the wound grew longer, wider, tearing through ventricles. Her lungs filled to the brim with blood, drowning her. Can’t breathe. Need to breathe.

A cloak of darkness creeped through her mind. But she still had a bird’s-eye view as Aveline fit her palms against Bane’s cheeks.

“Be sure to watch,” the other queen told her. “This is the fate that will befall you, as well.”