I watched in horror as droplets floated on top of the water like oil, danced weightless on the air, turned the flames a pure crimson, and sat on the rocks as round and solid as little red marbles. She placed the bowls in a circle around us, and magic surged like waves through the room, tearing at my hair. I tried to struggle, but the strength of her magic kept me frozen in place, my jaw locked shut so I couldn’t even scream for help.

Grasping my arm so that our blood ran together, Anushka met my gaze. “The tie that binds our souls to our bodies is a tenuous thing, dearest,” she whispered. “And once it is broken, there is nothing to hold your soul in this world. It will be gone in an instant, disappearing to a place where no more harm can come to you.” She extracted an oleander blossom from a velvet bag, and without hesitation, held it over the candle flame. The petals singed and burned, smoke floating up on the air. “Goodbye, Cécile,” she said, and blew it into my face.

My heart beat like a drum, and then it stumbled. And stopped. Pain bloomed through my chest, and I fell backwards to the ground, the sound of Tristan’s screams filling my ears. Then there was nothing. No sight, no sound, no smell. All my senses were gone, leaving me with nothing but… awareness. I was dead. I knew that much – knew that Anushka had killed me and was waiting for my soul to abandon my body so that she might infiltrate with her own. But she’d been wrong to believe that nothing bound my soul to this world, because though I had no senses, I could still feel the ties that bound me to him. And they were not ready to break.

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.

“Let her go.”

Tristan sighed, but I ignored the twist of crippling disappointment that writhed through my skull; instead I watched as Anushka’s feet settled on the ground and her arms were freed.

“You are making the right choice, Cécile,” she said, and then the arm holding the pistol rose, and I knew she intended to kill me, and for my death to kill Tristan. For history to repeat itself once again.

But I moved faster.

She stumbled backwards, fingers dropping her pistol to clutch at the wound in her chest. But it wasn’t deep. Wasn’t enough. Knife slick in my hand, I went after her, and stabbed the blade into her again, feeling it grind against bone. Leaning over, I met her wild gaze and swallowed the lump in my throat.

“You are not my mother. You are her killer.”

Anushka gasped out one breath. Then another. And then she whispered, “If the world burns, its blood will be on your hands.”

She said no more.

A dull echo reverberated through the air, and the ground shuddered and shook. Tristan caught me against him, holding me steady, and then the earth stilled. “She’s dead,” I said, my toneless voice at odds with the cacophony in my head. The curse was broken, but the implications of that had yet to settle in my mind.