Lidia had known, even as a child, that she was pure power, and she'd kept that power buried in her veins.
Not witch-power. She knew her flames were ... different. Her father didn't have them, either.
She'd kept them secret, even from the Asteri.
Especially from the Asteri. No other shifters had them, to her knowledge, and she knew what revealing them would mean: becoming an experiment to be pulled apart by the Asteri.
Then she had run into Danika Fendyr, who had somehow learned things about Lidia's paternal bloodline, and wanted to know if Lidia had any strange gifts. Fae-like, elemental gifts.
She'd debated killing Danika then and there to keep the gift secret. And what else did Danika know—could she know about her sons?
The shifters were Fae from another world, Danika had explained. Blessed with a Fae form and a humanoid one, gifted with elemental powers.
It confirmed what Lidia had long guessed. Why she had named Brannon after the oldest legends from her family's bloodline: of a Fae King from another world, fire in his veins, who had created stags with the power of flame to be his sacred guards.
Lidia hadn't mentioned any of that as Danika had filled her in on how they'd become shifters, and the Asteri's experimentation with them on Midgard, which had eventually erased their pointed ears. She'd been glad when Danika had died, all her questions with her.
No longer.
After ingesting the antidote that her brilliant, brave sister had made, the fire had surged so close to the surface that she couldn't deny it.
Didn't want to deny it.
Flame rippled from Lidia as she raced out of the palace, through the city, and onto the battlefield beyond. Untethered, unconquerable.
It was time for Lidia to clean house.
Her fire a song in her blood, Lidia walked across the battlefield. Bullets melted before they could reach her.
It was so much more natural than it had ever been. In the Cave of Princes, it had taken nearly all her concentration to douse the flames of the Autumn King around her companions.
Only Morven had seemed to be surprised—the others hadn't questioned how the flames had disappeared. There had been too much chaos for anyone to piece it together.
Now her fire flowed and flowed. Her truth was freed.
The war-machines halted. Angled their guns and bombers toward her. They'd wipe her from Midgard.
But she'd keep going until the end. She didn't look behind her at the palace, where she could only pray that Ruhn-her mate-was getting her sons to safety.
For the first time in her miserable existence, she let the world see her for what she was. Let herself see all that she was.
The missile launchers turned white-hot. Lidia rallied her flames. Even if she intercepted the missiles in midair, the shrapnel alone could kill her allies—
There was one way to stop it. To get there first.
Before the missiles launched. And take them all out, herself included.
She began running.
She wished she'd been able to say goodbye to her sons. To Ruhn. To tell him her answer to what he'd said.
I love you.
She cast the thought behind her, toward the Fae Prince she knew would keep her sons safe.
The war-machines followed her movements with their launchers. They'd try to blast her into Hel before she could reach them.
Emphasis on try.
It had been a short life, as far as Vanir were concerned, and a bad one, but there had been moments of joy. Moments that she now gathered and held close to her heart: cradling her newborn sons, smelling their baby-sweet scents. Talking with Ruhn for hours, when she knew him only as Night. Lying in his arms.
So few happy memories, but she wouldn't have traded them for anything.
Would have done it all again, just for those memories.
Lidia dove deep, all the way into the simmering dregs of her power.
The war-machines loomed, black and blazing with power. Ready for her. Launch barrels stared her down, brimstone missiles glowing golden in their throats.
Lidia unleashed her own fire, ready for her final incineration.
But before her flame could touch those war-machines, before the brimstone missiles could fire, the launch barrels melted. Iron dripped away, sizzling on the dry earth.
And those brimstone missiles, caught in the melting machinery ...
The explosions shook the very world as the missiles ruptured, turning the war-machines into death traps for the soldiers within. They melted into nothing. The heat of it singed Lidia's face, and amid the burning and billowing smoke
Three tiny white lights burned bright. Fire sprites. Simmering with power.
Through the fire and smoke and drifting embers, Lidia recognized them. Sasa. Rithi. Malana. Blazing, raging with fire. They must have crept up unseen from behind enemy lines.
Too small to be noticed, to ever be counted by arrogant Vanir.
"Let's burn it all down."
Because ahead of them, dozens strong, an entire line of war-machines headed their way.
Missile launchers groaned into position. All aiming for where they stood.
"With pleasure," Irithys said, and even from a few feet away, Lidia's skin seared with the heat of the queen's flame. "We shall build a new world atop their ashes.' Rithi, Sasa, and Malana turned blue, matching their queen's fire with their own. The four fire sprites unleashed their power on the war-machines and the Vanir powering them. Lidia's white-hot flames joined theirs, twining and dancing around it, as if every moment of recognition until now had built toward this, as if her flames had known theirs for millennia. And as one flame, one unified people, as Bryce Quinlan had promised, their fire struck the enemy line.
Machines ruptured. Lidia staggered back, back, back with the force of it, still unfamiliar with the fire in her veins, after it had been so long suppressed.
But the sprites kept their fire concentrated on the machines and their pilots. And as Lidia hit the ground, as the missiles exploded upon contact with the flames, she cast the last of her power upward. To shield the allied forces fighting behind them and the fire sprites now ahead of her from the shrapnel, which melted until it became raining, molten metal.
It hissed where it hit the earth.
Irithys blazed like a blue star, shooting from machine to machine, leaving burning death in her wake. The three other sprites followed suit.
Where they shimmered, imperial forces died.
And as the enemy melted at their fingertips ... for a moment, just one, Lidia allowed herself to kindle a spark of hope.
