I was far away but still seeing through eyes that weren't mine, eyes attached to a person who slowly rose from their position on a cracked, bloodied floor.

Amarantha's face slackened. There my body was, prostrate on the ground, my head snapped to one side at a horribly wrong angle. A flash of red hair in the crowd. Lucien.

Tears shone in Lucien's remaining eye as he raised his hands and removed the fox mask.

My host was looking at Tamlin now, who slowly faced my dead body.

Tamlin's still-masked face twisted into something truly lupine as he raised his eyes to the queen and snarled. Fangs lengthened.

Amarantha backed away from my corpse. She only whispered "Please" before golden light exploded.

The queen was blasted back, thrown against the far wall, and Tamlin let out a roar that shook the mountain.

He shifted into his beast form faster than I could see — fur and claws and pound upon pound of lethal muscle.

She had no sooner hit the wall than he gripped her by the neck, and the stones cracked as he shoved her against it with a clawed paw.

She thrashed but could do nothing against the brutal onslaught of Tamin’s beast. Blood ran down his furred arm from where she scratched.

The Attor and the guards rushed for the queen, but several faeries and High Fae, their masks clattering to the ground, jumped into their path, tackling them. Amarantha screeched, kicking at Tamlin, lashing at him with her dark magic, but a wall of gold encompassed his fur like second skin. She couldn't touch him.

"Tam!" Lucien cried over the chaos.

A sword hurtled through the air, a shooting star of steel.

Tamlin caught it. Amarantha's scream was cut short as he drove the sword through her head and into the stone beneath. And then closed his powerful jaws around her throat—and ripped it out.

Silence fell.

It wasn't until I was again staring down at my own broken body that I realised whose eyes I'd been seeing through, {{user}}. They didn't come any closer to my corpse.

"No," someone breathed — Lucien, his sword dangling.