by Day Alyssa
Twenty-nine paces until she could force him to open the portal, and she could finally escape this hellish world.
He tried to escape her at twenty-seven.
The little demon was far stronger than she'd expected, but she was desperate beyond thought. Beyond reason. Fae desperation battled demon strength, and her magic, dark and twisted as it was in this dimension, prevailed.
After she fought him to a draw, she stabbed him in the shoulder, just to make her point.
Make her point. Goddess. Her subconscious was turning to bad puns—a clear sign that her mind was close to shattering under the strain.
The demon spat out a high-pitched whine that threatened to pierce her eardrums, so she punched him in the side of the head. "Shut up. I told you I'd kill you if you fought me, but apparently, I'm going soft. Open a portal to Earth, right now, and I might let this one go."
All three of his eyes bulged out of his skull. "I cannot. Don't kill me, Lady, but I cannot. I don't know how to do this, I have not the skill."
She stabbed him again, this time in the arm. "Don't lie to me again. I've seen you do it."
He took a deep breath, and she feared he might try to scream. It was time to get serious. She yanked him closer and stared into his eyes, and then she focused the demon-infected version of her power into a narrow beam of light that seared out from her hand and drilled into the demon's cannonball of a belly.
At the first touch of light, Grumpkin was no longer in any shape to fight, or scream, or do anything but hurt.
Pain. She sent him pain. Pain so fierce and focused that the demon must believe it was dying.
Must be close to begging to die.
She counted to five and then released the demon, who collapsed, broken, onto the dark sand.
"No more, please, Lady, no more," it whimpered, over and over and over. If she'd had any pity left in here, she might have felt it then. But a year in hell had burned pity from her.
"I will do more, and longer, if you do not rise and open the portal to Earth now. I know you cannot open the Summerlands, but anyplace high on a mountain will do."
Grumpkin still shuddered and wept on the ground, but he looked up at this, his eyes wild. "Yes, yes, please, Lady, yes, now."
He didn't even stand up but simply closed his eyes, waved one hand in the air, and muttered words in a harsh, guttural language that was perhaps distantly related to the Common tongue, but not close enough to it for Erielle to understand it.
When the shimmer of oily purple-and-black smoke began to form, a roaring of many demon voices raised in shouts sounded from inside the cave.
Erielle kicked Grumpkin. "What did you do?"
"I did nothing!" He cringed away from her. "They sensed the portal. The Lady must go now, or she will die."
At the word die, a flicker of nasty glee crossed his face, and she knew he spoke truth.
She didn't hesitate. The second she saw blue sky and the greens of a garden, she leapt through the portal, turning in mid-air to let her dagger fly. Smiling as she saw it pierce his skull, directly between his eyes.
She'd told him she didn't need to hurt him.
She hadn't told him she didn't want to hurt him.
She wanted to kill him. She wanted to kill them all.
Fae could not lie, but there were many, many shades of truth.
Her last sight in the demon dimension was the demon's black blood soaking into the scorched sand.
She closed her eyes at the sickening jolt that slammed into her body as the world blurred around her, and then she was falling ten or more feet through the air, time enough to spin around so she didn't break her neck at the impact. Opening a portal so high off the ground had been the nasty little demon's revenge. She hoped it gave him comfort in the afterlife, if demons even had such a thing.
She didn't quite make it to her feet, but the moment her side hit the ground, she immediately rolled over and jumped into a crouch, scanning the area for any threat. The lovely garden she'd viewed from the other side of the portal was misleading; the flowering bushes were merely a border to the reddish-brown dirt of what was unmistakably a training ground.
Where men were training.
She drew her two remaining daggers, took a long, deep, steadying breath, and smiled at them.
All three of them flinched.
And then they drew weapons of their own.
"We're under attack," one of them yelled.
Damn, but he was pretty. Too bad he was currently launching himself at her, sword first.
And not his interesting sword.
She laughed out loud. A year in the demon dimension—a year without sex—and her brain was making stupid dick jokes about the first hot guy who tried to kill her back on Earth.
"You picked a beautiful day to die, fool," she called out, and he stumbled to a stop, staring at her. His incredible eyes were the deep violet of dusk on the mountains in the Summerlands, and their beauty almost made her forget the sword in his hand.
Almost.
Instead, she made a come-on gesture with one hand. "Let's get this over with. I have people to see, Fae lords to kill."
"You're Fae yourself," the pretty one with the purple eyes and the ridiculously hard-muscled body growled. "And I hate Fae."
She'd almost forgotten the other two, who moved up to flank the one with the sword. One of them looked her up and down and then pulled a flask from a pocket, took a long drink, and then offered it to her.
"Demon rum," he said, a cool amusement in his expression and tone. "Good for what ails you."
"Maybe later," she told him. "You don't want to tell me about how you hate my kind, too?"
He laughed, took another, shorter, sip, and then put the flask away. "Nope. I don't hate anybody but myself. Welcome to Atlantis, whoever in the nine hells you are."
"Take one step toward us, and I will put you down," the first man said, shouldering the other two out of the way and behind him. If she were the type to believe that men could act for any reason other than self-interest, she might have thought that he was trying to protect them.
From her.
Smart man.
"Try it and die, warrior," Erielle said, and her magic leapt inside her, straining toward the sunlight shining down on their bizarre little tableau. The yellow sunlight.
At long last, she was truly home. Or, almost.
She wanted to shout, or weep, or sing out her joy and triumph. She'd survived.
She'd survived.
Her magic, so long dark and twisted by the demon dimension, was spiraling in her soul, dancing with pure, golden, happiness. Home, home, home. At least, home on Earth.
Atlantis?
But it must be true. The magic was different from any she'd ever felt before, and it sang through her, soaring with her own power, filling her with light and song.
So. Much. Light.
She laughed, simply for the sheer joyful relief of it, and then she smiled again. "Come for me, then, warrior, and you shall be the first Atlantean to die by my hand."
"Oh, I don't think so," said one of the two she kept somehow forgetting to watch, because Purple Eyes was so damn compelling.
She sketched a brief, mocking bow. "Then, by all means, show me what you've got."
Turned out that what he had was a dragon.
He was a dragon shifter.
This year sucked.
3
Gabe pushed by the freaking huge dragon that suddenly stood next to him–the first dragon to set foot? Claw? On Atlantis in more than eleven thousand years—and positioned himself in front of the woman who'd shot through that portal like all the demons from the nine hells were chasing her.
She was filthy. Covered by what looked like purple sand, of all things; her battered leather clothing, a warrior's clothing, torn to shreds in contact places. Knees. Elbows. But it fit her well enough that it made him, briefly, wonder what she looked under those clothes.
The thought filled him with self-loathing
. Here was a warrior Fae, just like the one who'd murdered his brother, and instead of immediately killing her, he was wondering what she'd look like naked.
He was exactly as worthless as he'd always suspected.
"Are you going to fight me or stare at me until I fall over from old age?" She circled her dagger in the air, pointing it at him. "I'd heard Atlanteans were a bunch of cowards, but I'd hoped the rumors were false."
He stepped forward. "I'd heard the Fae were a bunch of soulless, murdering bastards. Unlike you, I knew them to be true."
The dragon roared, and the drunk—Rafael—laughed.
Gabe and the Fae ignored them both.
She glanced down at Gabe's hands, oddly enough. "You have no weapon, Purple Eyes?"
"I don't need a weapon to fight you."
She sheathed her dagger, and a brilliant smile spread across her dirty face, lighting her pale green eyes with an almost manic glee. "Oh, how fun! The Atlantean wants to play."
Then she attacked.
She was faster than anything he'd ever seen, and he'd seen the best of the best of Poseidon's Warriors fight on the training grounds. Faster than thought, faster that reaction, she was on him, aiming a flying kick at his head.
He managed to duck, so her foot only grazed his shoulder, but it still carried enough punch to knock him back a step. Before he could recover from that, she'd whirled around and slammed her elbow into his face.
That one he took full on the chin, which snapped his head back.
"Are you going to fight or just stand there like a fool and let me beat you to death, Pretty Boy? You're taking all the enjoyment out of things for me."
It was the Pretty Boy that did it.
Gabe's mind went blank—logic and reason and poetry, all the things that had made him who he was for his entire life—vanished in a heartbeat, and he exploded into action. He swept a kick at her legs, aiming to take her down, but she did a powerful twisting leap to evade him.
He leapt into the air to meet her, and she struck with the knife-edge of her palm toward his throat. He blocked it, caught her around the waist, and then slammed her to the ground. She somehow managed to land on her feet in a crouch and spring back up, aiming her knee at his face. He twisted out of the way, but her fist caught him in the face.
Then she broke all the laws of physics—or possibly used a little magic—to somersault into the air, trap his shoulders with her legs, and took him to the ground so hard that it knocked the breath out of him.
Then she landed on top of him, still straddling his shoulders, in a position that almost reflexively made him hard, in spite of himself, which only made him angrier. But then he looked up at the straggly-haired, filthy woman who'd taken him down and wondered how someone so evil could have a smile so filled with the purity of triumph and joy.
Then Rafe and the dragon—now human again—started clapping.
"I give her ten points for style, with a minus-two deduction for hygiene," Rafe drawled.
The dragon made a noncommittal noise. "And yet he's the one in the superior position at this point, if you consider how beautiful she must be under all that dirt."
The Fae's incredible eyes widened, and she leapt up and away from him so fast that Gabe barely saw her move.
"Take me to your king," she demanded. "I am Erielle N'Elysium, and I am a princess of the Seelie Court."
"Oh, boy," Rafe said, taking another long drink out of his flask while Gabe rolled up off the ground, face hot with humiliation. "We might have ourselves an international incident. King Conlan is going to be pissed."
Gabe stalked over and punched him in the face.
It didn't accomplish anything, but it made him feel better.
The Fae started laughing.
That's when Denal showed up, followed by King Conlan and Griffin, a mage who was rumored to be as scary-powerful as former high priest Alaric.
Griffin, who wore all black, had waist-length, pure white hair and silver eyes, skidded to a stop at the sight of the Fae and then stepped between her and the king. "Explain yourself," he told her.
The king, one of the most powerful warriors Atlantis had ever seen in his own right, rolled his eyes and stepped around the mage. He still carried a lethal-looking sword in his hand; this blade was clearly made for battle, not ceremony or display. "Step aside, Griffin."
"My duty is to protect my king," the mage said, his voice ice.
"I was protecting myself long before you were born, although thank you for the thought," Conlan said, reminding Gabe that the king was well over five centuries old.
"We felt demon magic on Atlantis," Conlan said, studying the Fae. "Was that you?"
She bowed to the king with an elegance and grace that looked out of place on someone so ragged. "It was done on my behalf, to help me escape from the demon dimension. I apologize for the trespass—I had no way to direct the portal wielder to more accuracy."
Conlan sheathed his sword and then returned her bow. "I am Conlan of Atlantis. And you are?"
"I am Erielle N'Elysium, and I am a princess of the Seelie Court. I went to the demon dimension to escape a murderous, power-mad Fae lord, who followed me there, and I was trapped there for more than a year. I wish to contact my … people … immediately and then leave this place to return home."
"Please come with me, Princess. We will provide everything you require. And you're in luck. The Fae ambassador from your court is here in mine this week. I'm sure he will be able to assist you as well."
Gabe could hear the unspoken words in the king's measured tone: If you are who you say you are.
Gabe wanted to know that, too.
Denal fell into step with the king and the Fae, with Griffin a pace behind. The dragon and Rafael made no move to follow, but Gabe wasn't about to let her out of his sight. She was one of them.
If she made any move to harm a single hair on any Atlantean's head, she would die. This time, he'd be prepared.
He headed for the armory. He was going to need to borrow a few supplies.
4
Erielle's instincts were screaming at her to run. Run and hide, seek cover, go to ground. It was, after all, the first time she'd been walking around for all to see in more than a year. But there didn't seem to be danger here.
She'd heard of the Atlantean king, that he was wise and just, if hotheaded. She'd also heard of his human wife and the story of how the Atlantean warriors had secretly protected humanity for millennia.
But, no matter how extraordinary the gardens in which they now walked, no matter the beauty and breath-taking grandeur of the marble and crystal spires of the palace they were about to enter, she only wanted to get this meeting over with, so she could go home.
Find her brother. Be sure he was safe.
A child left with the Fae had no guarantee of protection. No, more likely, he'd been taken in by one of the High Court families to be used in a bid for power.
Still, her almost-desperate thoughts of her brother were interrupted, ever-so-faintly, by thoughts of the purple-eyed warrior she'd battled.
She'd taken him down, but the satisfaction of that was shadowed by the unwelcome surge of attraction she'd felt when he'd put his hands on her.
When she'd straddled his shoulders, unintentionally putting herself in one of her favorite positions.
When the other warrior's comments had made her wonder what it would feel like to be rolling around with this hard-bodied, purple-eyed, gorgeous man in the throes of passion, instead of anger.
She felt … something … and glanced back over her shoulder to see him running after them. When he approached, he slowed and fell into step with the mage with the Fae blood in him, gaze still locked on hers.
This time, he wore a sword.
She smiled at him and dropped her hands to her daggers, in their sheaths at her hips.
This might be an interesting day.
* * *
The Fae ambassador was out, touring the island with the queen, when they arrive
d, so the king offered her the use of a room in which to rest.
Rest. Ha!
They probably all were dying for her to bathe and remove the stench of her person from their fancy palace. She was tempted to stay just as she was, just to spite them, but only for half a second.
"We'll have food sent to you, as well. Is there anything else you desire?"
Her eyes flickered to the purple-eyed warrior, and she forced her attention back to the king.
"I accept. And if there are any spare sets of clothing about—" She held out an arm. "I fear mine is beyond repair."
The blue-tiled bathing room in the cream and gold chamber was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen, or at least it seemed so after so long without a real bath. She stood beneath the shower for perhaps an hour, scrubbing and scrubbing, working a year's worth of dirt out of her hands and arms and feet. The makeshift bathing she'd been able to do at the few fresh-water streams she'd found had always been rushed and done with one eye always on her surroundings. She'd been attacked so often at water sources that she'd finally decided dirty was better than dead.
She unbraided and untangled her hair with handful after handful of frothy, delightfully scented cleansers and conditioning oils. At least Fae grew no hair in anyplace but their heads, so she hadn't had to deal with that.
Then, when she finally, finally felt clean again, she ran the water to fill the tub, poured in foaming oils, and sank into a hot, steaming, paradise of warmth to soothe battered muscles. She exhaled, long and deep, a year of pain and terror and hopelessness slowly seeping out of her into the hot, silken water.
And then she heard the door open to the bedchamber and footsteps that sounded nothing like those of the woman who'd shown her to the room. Seconds later, the door to the bathing chamber swung open, and the warrior she'd fought stood framed in the doorway.
Holding a tray of food.
"Do you want this or not?"
She studied him for a long moment, weighing various responses. She could be out of the tub and across the floor before he could divest himself of the tray.
However, if he were there to harm her, why would he be carrying the tray?