That was when she saw Queen Charlaina, whom she’d met at the ball in Vannova. Sage couldn’t see exactly what was happening, but it looked as if the queen had a weapon—a small sword or a knife of some sort—and that she meant to kill Elena.

Sage clambered to her feet to get a better look, but what she saw made her stand stock-still.

Elena—or whoever she was now, because she was no longer the sister she’d always known, she stood wrong, and her expression was all wrong—lifted her fist and pointed it at Charlaina, stopping the queen of Ludania in her tracks.

The younger queen dropped her knife and fell to her knees. Her eyes bulged as she dug at her neck like there was a noose secured around it.

“Charlie,” she heard the dark-haired girl, the one with the huge brown eyes, shout as she was held back by two more soldiers in the tent with them. “Breathe, Charlie! Breathe!”

Charlaina’s eyes grew wider for a moment, and then they relaxed, everything about her going limp, and the dark-haired girl screamed, “Kill her! Kill Queen Elena!”

Sage glanced at the rifle in her hand, and hesitated. It was one thing to feel apathetic about a sister who’d shunned her her entire life. It was another thing altogether to actually kill her.

But as it turned out, she wasn’t the one the dark-haired girl was shouting at, because Xander was there, moving so fast, he was practically a blur in her vision.

He swooped in like a bird of prey, seeming to come from nowhere as he snatched up Charlaina’s discarded knife. And before Elena or either of the remaining two guards could stop him, his blade was buried five inches deep in Elena’s chest.

Niko Everything he’d ever wanted was within his grasp.

He and Sabara—his Layla—were going to be together again, at long last.

He watched her move from one queen to the next, holding his breath, the way he had so many times before. The way she transitioned was so smooth. Effortless. Like watching a dancer.

He heard the commotion behind him, and he turned in time to see Sage cutting the throat of one of the guards who stood watch. The other guard, caught unaware, was unprepared with his weapon, but he tackled the troublesome princess. It was no matter; she was too late.

And then everything went wrong. And it all happened so fast.

The gunshot booming through the tent and echoing in his head.

Charlaina falling to her knees. Almost finished . . . almost . . . And then Xander . . . Xander appeared from nowhere, and before Niko could move, or breathe, Xander had the knife. . . . And blood. So much blood. Elena’s . . . Sabara’s . . . Layla’s . . . all intertwined now.

The whole thing was all over in a blink.

He heard himself before he heard anything else, his cry a sharp keening sound, louder, surely, than the gunshot or any bomb had been. Dropping to his hands and knees, he hovered above Layla’s new form and stared down at her face, wondering at the fragility of her life. “No, no, no, no, no . . .”

He couldn’t say anything else, and he couldn’t find the strength to touch her as he watched her—the real her, the her he’d been waiting for all these years—flicker, and then fade, behind those new soft brown eyes.

He knew the moment she was gone. The moment the body was nothing more than an empty husk, its stare fixed skyward on the tent’s canvas ceiling.

He felt as empty as that body he gazed down upon. “NO!” he screamed. But this time he leveled his rage at Xander, who still held the bloodied weapon in his only hand. “We should’ve killed you,” he screeched.

The two guards who had been restraining Brooklynn released her, and they all stood there watching as Niko jumped to his feet and threw himself at Xander, ramming him with his shoulder. The two of them went sprawling, and he heard the knife land somewhere too far away from them to be of any use. He didn’t care. He planned to beat the life out of Xander with his fists.

When he heard the blast, he knew that definitively it had come from a firearm. That it had without a doubt come from behind him. But the sensation, the one centered between his shoulder blades, was indescribable.

It was as if he’d been stung . . . or impaled by a fire-tipped arrow.

But he knew neither was true, because he knew exactly what had happened.

He’d been shot.

XVII

I was confused about where I was, but that confusion lasted only a moment. It was the gunshot that had awakened me—if “awakened” was the right word, since surely I hadn’t been asleep. It had been more like I’d been swimming in a black abyss of nothingness, where I’d been alone—truly alone for the first time in so very long.

It felt strange to hear the silence inside my own head. To hear my thoughts, and my thoughts alone.

I blinked as I tried to assess the situation through bleary eyes.

It seemed I’d missed quite a lot while I’d been . . . indisposed.

Beside me Niko’s wheezing drew my attention. I turned to see him lying facedown, his cheek resting on the tent floor as his glazed eyes watched but did not see me. He gasped and sputtered while his fingers clawed at the ground halfheartedly, as if he might have been making an effort at one time, but now it was only a reflex. Blood spread wide from a wound in the center of his back, and it was plain to anyone who looked— even someone who’d been out cold for the duration—that it was he who’d been shot.

He made a few more attempts to breathe, and then it was over, his eyes going blank. His fingers going still.

In front of me Elena’s body too was prone, and her skin was already turning an ashen shade that meant death had settled over her.