It was Sasha’s dress, but it wasn’t Sasha.
Ariel of Firi darted through the grove, clothed in the queen’s raiment, as if his words in the garden had pricked her vanity and her humanity. The gown pulled at her breasts and dragged through the underbrush, collecting bits of leaves and sticks that tore at the pale garment. The trees warned silence, but his heart could not comply. It thundered in his ears and sent his blood roaring through his veins as he crept forward, following the Changer.
Then the curious moon stepped out from behind the clouds and illuminated the clearing where Aren had crowned him king. Sasha waited there, bathed in moonlight, her bearing both regal and resigned, her unbound hair melding against the deep red of her dress, and her hands hanging loosely to her sides. She didn’t hitch her skirts to flee, look to the trees for a place to hide, or call his name for rescue. She simply stood in the center of the grove, watching as Lady Firi approached, wearing her dress, as if she’d been expecting her all along.
Kjell drew up, struck by the terrible beauty of the scene, of the vicious serenity of the woman he loved quietly facing the woman he feared above all else.
He didn’t know whether to charge through the trees, upsetting the hushed balance of life and death that permeated the grove, or to hold back, drawing his bow, and trusting in his ability to make the shot.
“It is time for you to go, Changer,” Sasha said, her voice calm and oddly kind.
“It is time for you to die, Saoirse,” Lady Firi crooned. The glee dripped from her words like the Volgar blood had seeped through the vines. She circled Sasha with scorn and confidence, smoothing her borrowed dress and prancing as though her feet were clothed in bejeweled slippers and not caked in the soil of Caarn.
Then the gown puddled and pooled, abandoned like snake scales, as Lady Firi grew claws and her face became feline. Silken black fur rippled over crouching limbs and a curling tail. She scampered up the wide base of Grandfather Tree and skulked along the widest bough, positioning herself above the queen.
It was the form she had taken during the battle for Jeru City. Kjell had seen her perched on the parapets, watching havoc unfold around her. She’d left her mark on Queen Lark but had been denied the kill, interrupted by an archer’s arrow and Zoltev’s wrath. She had shifted from shape to shape, purging the arrow in her side before reassuming the panther’s grace, stalking along the ramparts the way she now padded along a low-hanging limb.
Sasha took three steps back as if bracing herself for battle. Then she lifted her chin to the Changer, an unmistakable challenge that evoked a bellow from Kjell’s lungs, a denial that rang through the trees as he began to run, too far to save her, too close to deny the events unfolding before his eyes.
The panther leaped, a black slash against the pale light, her teeth barred, claws protracted, and Sasha raised her arms—almost as though she meant to embrace the beast—and was knocked to the ground. The cat roared, the sound like a thousand swords unsheathing in unison, and covered the queen, swallowing Sasha beneath its superior size.
Kjell hurtled through the trees, releasing one arrow after the other, screaming as the whistling shafts flew wide and long, missing his target. He flung his bow as he threw himself at the Changer, wrapping his arms around the body of the huge cat, rolling as he heaved the weight from atop the queen.
There was no resistance, no yowling flex of muscle or slashing teeth and claws. Kjell released the Changer and scrambled free, his eyes on the inert beast, shock and disbelief replacing the horror in his chest.
His blade, the blade he’d pressed into Sasha’s hand before the second Volgar attack, protruded from the panther’s chest, skewering its heart. He crawled to Sasha’s side, running his hands over her body, begging the Creator for mercy and assistance.
She was gasping for breath, her eyes black and bottomless, her lips parted and panting, and Kjell moaned her name, the palms of his hands stained in blood and trembling with denial.
“Sasha,” he begged. “Sasha, Sasha, Sasha.”
Her breath shuddered and caught, then caught again, and her eyes fluttered closed in relief.
“She stole my breath, Captain. That is all,” she whispered, her voice hitching on every word. “I am unharmed.”
He caught her up, embracing her, feeling the warmth and the wet of spilled blood between them, a reminder of near death and deliverance. He began to shake, and she held him, pressing her lips to his neck, wrapping her arms around him, reassuring him.
But he needed distance between his beloved and the beast.
He half-crawled, half-staggered, dragging Sasha with him, moving so his back was braced against Aren’s tree, Sasha across his lap. They watched as the inky black of the panther’s fur became the pale skin of limbs and legs, the rise of a feminine hip and the fall of a narrow waist. Ariel of Firi, wrapped in the length of her matted hair, lay unmasked in death and stripped of her gift. The knife did not fall from her breast, expunged by the change, but remained buried deep, the hilt glittering and wet.
“All is well, Captain. It is done,” Sasha soothed.
“You saw this. You knew this day would come,” he cried, the knowledge flooding him as his heart quieted.
“I knew there would be a battle,” she confessed. “And she would not protect her heart.”
He started to laugh, incredulous relief robbing him of breath and sense, and then his laughter became a rasping moan, and he felt the heat and slide of tears down his cheeks, washing the blood from his skin and the fear from his heart.
“You are weeping, Captain,” she whispered, and he heard the tremor in her voice as she clutched him to her.
“I am healing, Sasha,” he said, and her mouth found his, administering her own cure, tasting the salt of past sorrow, relieving the weight of old wounds. For several moments he returned her kiss, gratitude falling from their tangled tongues and urgent lips, hushed whispers and professions of love moving between their mouths.
He rose, drawing her up with him, wanting to be free of the grove where his queen had faced the Changer and kings went to die. But Sasha held back, stepping from his arms and turning back to the dead woman with the same compassion she approached everything else.
“We cannot leave her here,” Sasha protested. “Not like that. This is a sacred place.”
“I will send Isak to turn her body to ash. He has suffered this night. He will be relieved to see it end.”
“I think we should ask the trees,” she said, turning to the largest oak in the grove. With complete confidence, she pressed her palms to the bark, speaking with the firm authority of a monarch.