Page 104 of The Blood Queen

I touch the tip of the needle to the hidden blade in the shuttle.

As soon as I lower the bloodstained shuttle closer to the loom, one thread in the warp gleams brilliantly, a vivid, bright red, glowing like an ember.

The Damhan-Allaidh clacks her fangs, her beady black eyes watching me. “You are running out of time,” she warns urgently.

What is fate but time?

That’s what the goddesses said.

I examine the shuttle with the hidden blade, the tool crafted by Red Caps—likely by the High Blade herself—strong enough to cut the threads of fate.

I take in a breath.

And I note the silence.

My heart stutters. What’s happened to Samson? He wouldn’t give up. He would never give up.

A sticky, rending sound drifts to my ears, soft as a whisper. Spider silk being shredded. Footsteps, barely audible.

The spiders are trying to buy me time, but what are cobwebs against the High Blade?

“Hurry,” the Damhan-Allaidh says again. Faintly, a chorus of the smaller spiders, echoing the desperate plea: Hurry. Hurry. Hurry.

How many died for the High Blade to even get inside? My father? The brownies? The Seelie who reviled me, the Leths who believed in me? How much blood is spilled outside this room?

“What happened to Samson?” I ask. I shouldn’t pause, not now, but all I can hear is the soft schk of metal against webbing, the gentle, even paces of footsteps drawing closer, and I know that’s not Samson. I know it.

And then I hear her voice. “Have you figured it out, Leth bastard?” The High Blade’s voice is mocking and cruel, twisted with triumph.

I can’t move. My eyes blur as I look at the loom. “What happened to Samson?” I ask again, a hollowness to my voice that I don’t recognize.

“You know,” the High Blade says, her voice loud, echoing over this desolate throne room, bouncing off the cocooned bodies of the Faerie Queen’s fallen heroes. “You know that I have won already and that traitor is dead.”

“No!” I scream.

But it is her laughter that answers me, not Samson.

Not Samson.

Never Samson again.

“My sword slid between his ribs, sliced up and out. His organs spilled at my feet. His blood poured like a river on this floor. His death was so quick and easy,” the High Blade mocks.

“Do something!” the Damhan-Allaidh screams at me. “Save us!”

What is there left to save?

Samson is gone.

The Seelie Court is breached.

Scotland is lost.

And that is a fate that cannot be changed.

A cold breeze makes the nearest webs shift. Spider silk drifts by, a tiny gossamer thread.

The High Blade has broken through the spiders’ silk, and I know without turning that her sword is raised, ready to strike me down.