Page 105 of The Blood Queen

Before I can blink, the Damhan-Allaidh launches from the back of the throne, fangs dripping with venom, claw-tipped legs aimed at the High Blade. I hear the High Blade’s sword clatter against the giant spider’s hard body, but there’s a scuffle, a grunt, and the High Blade is pushed back.

The Damhan-Allaidh is giving me just a little more precious time, trading her life for me to have one more chance to cut the High Blade’s thread.

I grip the shuttle in my hand, staring down at the glowing, woven magic.

A tiny black spider hops onto the loom, raising her front legs at me as if praying that I will do what must be done. She skitters over to the tangled threads. Another joins her—red as a ruby. And a third, emerald green.

These spiders have gleams to them—they’re not some household pests but fae spiders. Or…

Three of them.

Like the goddesses we met at Forres, the Weird Sisters.

A spinner, a weaver, a cutter.

“Cutting her thread is only one way,” I whisper, echoing what the goddesses told Samson and me.

Which means there’s another option. Another path. A chance to do something else, something that might change fate without forcing me to trade my own life to do it.

Before I can doubt, I throw aside the shuttle. It’s a Red Cap weapon, crafted by the High Blade herself.

I want nothing of hers.

Besides, Red Cap weapons—they’re just twisted versions of things that already exist in the world. Red Caps cannot invent, only pervert. And of course that means they can only destroy.

I don’t want to destroy.

I crouch over the loom, drawing close to the spiders. “Help me,” I whisper.

The littlest black spider hops over to the threads.

The High Blade knows how to cut threads, but can she weave them?

Destruction is always easier than creation.

“Here,” I whisper, touching the glowing red thread woven into the weft. Fae have no reason to weave; it is humans who create. And I have tugged at threads in Queen Mary’s court for years.

It is because of my humanity that I can work this magic in a way the Faerie Queen could not, in a way the High Blade never thought to. Because this magic? It’s crafting the way humans do, pulling magic the way fae do.

This is something only a Leth—both human and not—can make.

“Fate and time are tangled together,” I mutter to myself, carefully pulling apart the woven plaid, isolating the High Blade’s thread as much as possible. I know how to pull at the warp and weft, how to loosen a misplaced thread, how to tug it from the pattern.

I know how to change the cloth.

I know how to change fate.

“Here,” I whisper, and the little green spider starts to weave her silk between the threads of the hole I’ve made, darning magic into the weft.

“What are you doing?” the High Blade screams, and her distraction is enough to allow the Damhan-Allaidh to slash a pointed foot across her neck, a red gash emerging before it’s magically fixed, Elizabeth’s skin knitting together just as the tiny spider and I are knitting the cloth around a new pattern, silver spider silk breaking the even squares of plaid.

With a roar of rage and a sickening squelch, the High Blade plunges her sword into the Damhan-Allaidh. A gasping, horrible shudder of a groan escapes the giant spider as ichor leaks from the gaping crack in her exoskeleton.

“You had all that time, you stupid half-breed, and you did nothing,” the High Blade snarls, advancing on me. Her lips are twisted in a cruel mockery of a smile. “You have let them all die for nothing. Every one of them. And now it is time for you to meet your fate.”

“No,” I say. “I won’t meet any fate at all.”

She laughs. “I can hear defeat in your voice. What a pitiful way to die.”