That makes me smile.

Tatterfell paints my face, shadowing my eyes and reddening my lips.

There’s a knock on the door, and then Taryn and Vivi come in. “You won’t believe what we found in the treasury,” Vivi says.

“I thought treasuries were just full of gems and gold and stuff.” I recall, ages back, Cardan’s promise that he would give the contents of Balekin’s treasury to the Court of Shadows if they would only betray me and release him. It’s an odd feeling, remembering how panicked I felt then, how charming he was, and how I hated it.

Tatterfell snorts as the Roach comes in, pulling a chest behind him. “There’s no keeping your sisters out of trouble.”

His skin has returned to its normal deep green, and he looks thin, but well. It’s an immense relief to see him up and moving so quickly. I wonder how he was recruited to help my sisters, but I wonder more what the Bomb said to him. There is a new kind of joy in his face. It lives in the corners of his mouth, where a smile hovers, and in the brightness of his eyes.

It hurts to look at.

Taryn grins. “We found armor. Glorious armor. For you.”

“For a queen,” Vivi says. “Which, you may recall, there hasn’t been in a little while.”

“It may well have belonged to Mab herself,” Taryn goes on.

“You’re really building this up,” I tell them.

Vivi leans down to unlock the chest. She draws out armor of a fine scale mail, worked so that it appears like a fall of miniature metal ivy leaves. I gasp at the sight of it. It truly is the most beautiful armor I’ve ever seen. It appears ancient, and the workmanship is distinct, nothing like Grimsen’s. It’s a relief to know that other great smiths came before him and that others will follow.

“I knew you’d like it,” Taryn says, grinning.

“And I have something you’ll like almost as well,” the Roach says. Reaching into his bag, he takes out three strands of what looks like silver thread.

I tuck it into my pocket, beside the hair I plucked from Madoc’s head.

Vivi is too busy taking out more items from the chest to notice. Boots covered in curved plates of metal. Bracers in a pattern of briars. Shoulder plates of more leaves, curled up at the edges. And a helm that resembles a crown of golden branches with berries gathered on either side.

“Well, even if the serpent bites off your head,” says Tatterfell, “the rest of you will still look good.”

“That’s the spirit,” I tell her.

The army of Elfhame assembles and readies itself to march. Whippet-thin faerie steeds, swampy water horses, reindeer with jutting antlers, and massive toads are all being saddled. Some will even be armored.

Archers line up with their elf-shot, with sleep-poisoned arrows and enormous bows. Knights ready themselves. I see Grima Mog across the grass, standing in a small knot of redcaps. They are passing around a carafe of blood, taking swigs and dotting their caps. Swarms of pixies with small poisoned darts fly through the air.

“We’ll be prepared,” Grima Mog explains, walking over, “in the event that the bridle doesn’t work the way they claim. Or in case they don’t like what happens next.” Taking in my armor and the borrowed sword strapped to my back, she smiles, showing me her blood-reddened teeth. Then she places a hand over her heart. “High Queen.”

I try to give her a grin, but I know it is a sickly one. Anxiety chews at my gut.

Two paths are before me, but only one leads to victory.

I have been Madoc’s protégé and Dain’s creature. I don’t know how to win any other way but theirs. It is no recipe for being a hero, but it is a recipe for success. I know how to drive a knife through my own hand. I know how to hate and be hated. And I know how to win the day, provided I am willing to sacrifice everything good in me for it.

I said that if I couldn’t be better than my enemies, then I would become worse. Much, much worse.

Take three hairs from your own head and knot them around the bridle. You will be bound together.

Lord Jarel thought to trick me. He thought to keep the word of power to himself, to use it only after I bridled the serpent, and then to control us both. I am sure Madoc doesn’t know Lord Jarel’s scheme, which suggests that part of it will involve murdering Madoc.

But it is a scheme that can be turned on its head. I have tied their hair to the golden bridle, and it will not be me who is bound with the serpent. Once the serpent is bridled, Madoc and Lord Jarel will become my creatures, as surely as Cardan was once mine. As surely as Cardan will be mine again with golden straps digging into his scales.

And if the serpent grows in monstrousness and corruption, if it poisons the land of Elfhame itself, then let me be the queen of monsters. Let me rule over that blackened land with my redcap father as a puppet by my side. Let me be feared and never again afraid.

Only out of his spilled blood can a great ruler rise.

Let me have everything I ever wanted, everything I ever dreamed, and eternal misery along with it. Let me live on with an ice shard through my heart.

“I have looked at the stars,” says Baphen. For a moment, my mind is still too lost in my own wild imaginings to focus. His deep blue robes fly behind him in the early-afternoon breeze. “But they will not speak to me. When the future is obscured, it means an event will permanently reshape the future for good or ill. Nothing can be seen until the event is concluded.”

“No pressure, then,” I mutter.

The Bomb emerges from the shadows. “The serpent has been spotted,” she says. “Near the shoreline by the Crooked Forest. We must go quickly before we lose it again.”

“Remember the formation,” Grima Mog calls to her troops. “We drive from the north. Madoc’s people will hold the south, and the Court of Teeth, the west. Keep your distance. Our goal is to herd the creature into our queen’s loving arms.”

The scales of my new armor chime together, making a musical sound. I am handed up onto a high black steed. Grima Mog is seated on an enormous armored buck.

“Is this your first battle?” she asks me.

I nod.

“If fighting breaks out, focus on what’s in front of you. Fight your fight,” she tells me. “Let someone else worry about theirs.”

I nod again, watching Madoc’s army set off to take up its position. First come his own soldiers, handpicked and stolen away from the standing army of Elfhame. Then there are those low Courts that took up his banner. And, of course, the Court of Teeth, carrying icy weapons. Many of them seem to have frost-tipped skin, some as blue as the dead. I do not relish the idea of fighting them, today or any other day.

The Court of Termites rides behind Grima Mog. It’s easy to pick out Roiben’s salt-white hair. He is on the back of a kelpie, and when I look over, he salutes me. Beside him are the Alderking’s troops. Severin’s mortal consort isn’t with him; instead, he’s riding beside the red-haired mortal knight whose nose was bloodied by Nicasia’s selkie guards. She looks disturbingly chipper.

Back at the palace, Vivi, Oriana, Heather, and Oak wait for us with a retainer of guards, the better part of the Council, and many courtiers from Courts both low and high. They will watch from the parapets.

My grip tightens on the golden bridle.