A blow struck me on the chest, and I gasped, light filling my eyes even as air flooded my lungs. Anushka leaned over on top of me, face white with panic and the weight of her failure. “Impossible,” she whispered, recoiling away from me.

Her power had been expended, and I felt the weight of all her spells fall free from me. Struggling upwards, I watched her warily even as I pulled the white gloves off my hand to reveal the bonding marks brilliantly bright against my skin. “Not impossible. You cannot vanquish my soul and steal my life, because they are bound to him. Just as his are bound to me.”

“They do not bond humans,” she whispered. “They’d never lower themselves.”

“Sometimes, one must do the unthinkable,” I said, “for it is the only way to accomplish the impossible.” Taking advantage of her shock, I snatched up the pitcher of water and poured it down Tristan’s neck, washing away the spell. Anushka bolted for her pistol, snatching it up even as the metal manacles on his wrists shrieked apart, and for a moment, I thought he’d kill her. Bore a hole through her chest and end the curse here and now.

But he did not.

Instead, Tristan lifted her up in the air and deposited her back in front of me. Picking up Sabine’s knife from my belt, I turned it over in my hand, barely managing to contain the desire to embed it in her chest.

“Cécile, have mercy.” She sobbed. “I’m your mother. I bore you, and I cared for you as a baby. Brought you to Trianon and made all your dreams a reality. Please.”

And this was it. The future the prophesy had foretold. By binding me to Tristan, it was ensured that Anushka could not strip away my soul and use my body as a vessel for her own. Any of her descendants before or after me could have done the same, but some twist of fate had made the fey decide that now would be the time for them to reveal the knowledge they had gleaned from watching the world. And so the task fell to me.

My eyes sought Tristan’s.

“I’m not going to kill your mother, Cécile,” he said. “At least, not unless that is what you want.”

I let my eyelids drift shut, not wanting to see him or her while I thought. The end of the curse was no longer an if, but a when. The body she possessed was yet young – she might live another thirty years. Three decades more for the world to be kept safe from the dark power of those like Angoulême, Roland, and Lessa.

But what of those in Trollus? My friends, the half-bloods, and all of those who were desperate for a better life? How many of them would end up like Élise? How many dead friends would arrive in caskets at our door while Anushka lived out the rest of her years? In my heart I knew Trollus existed in a fragile moment when change was possible, but that it would not last for long. The trolls’ freedom was inevitable, and not acting on it now might well cast a blacker cloud on the future.