Fallen Princeborn: Chosen

by Jean Lee

  Charlotte begins to slowly slide her feet in the direction of Lord Artair’s voice. Where are you, you bastard?! “You want him dead so bad, then do it yourself. He ain’t your son’s problem.” I’m gonna rip out your tongue with my toes if I have to. “Unless you’re just a big cowardly dick who can’t even kill a gardener.”

  Liam drives the blood dagger into the ground. Fire tears a crack through the rock, surrounding Arlen. The flames swell to hip-height, turning the atrium a dark crimson gold.

  Liam leaves the dagger in the ground and steps through the circle. The fire rises behind him like a wall.

  Charlotte struggles to see his eyes, but that half-dead face, the stench of anger that could strangle the kindness, laughter, artistry, No I will not let it “Liam, stop!”

  But Lord Artair merely roars in delight at the sight of Arlen’s whitening hair and drooping frame next to his son’s stiff, unblinking gaze. “Yes, yes! Tear out his heart’s fire with your own two hands! Drown it in tears and blood!”

  E-fucking-NOUGH.

  The Voice in Charlotte’s heart sets to the bellows—If we die, by Aeather’s Fire, we’ll die fighting— and she feels her own limbs burn starlight bright. The burns on her hands buzz to nothing, and her fists ready themselves the moment she spies Psycho Santa’s outline on the other side of the fire. She stalks around, coils back, and punches the Lord Artair’s jowels so hard he spins off balance and tumbles. “Leave’em alone! What’s the matter—you can’t even beat a pathetic, foul thing like me, old man? Maybe I should tie a hand behind my back for a fair fight!” She clocks him again before he can regain his balance.

  That does it.

  Lord Artair looks up from the ground with a grin most inhuman. “Rose House be damned,” he hisses. “I will take my time stripping your limbs of flesh, one pound at a time.” Red ribbons of fire unspool from his shoulders. His jaw bone twists and stretches…

  Charlotte backs towards Liam’s blood dagger. In the dance of shadows along the wall, a darkness skulks close to the floor with blue and green eyes. “Sure you don’t need a nap first? As the great Harry Callahan once said, ‘A man’s got to know his limitations.’” She even wishes for a Tootsie Pop to toss at those bulgy frog eyes.

  Lord Artair’s teeth grow before the top of his head, forcing his eyes to roll back, to the side. A salamander with dentures, for a second there. And Charlotte actually laughs.

  The laughter echoes up to the ceiling and down. It falls into the circle of fire.

  It turns Liam’s head.

  It pulls the flames down, if only enough to see his father slowly transforming, and Charlotte, that crazed, beautiful, heart—she’s laughing at the man who sewed fear into Liam for centuries. She is telling him to leave Liam alone moments before he will rip her throat.

  And Father wants Liam to kill his kin, uncle, blood family. His father wants his own brother dead. Even in the darkest days, Liam never wished so for Keller, because he was family no matter how Mother insulted him.

  “I will not fight you, Liam.” Arlen withers before Liam’s eyes, the sorrow of so many years pickling his skin. “I meant what I said on the barge. All of it.”

  Blood should not define a family. And yet here, now, for the first moment in all the centuries, did he see hope inside his bloodline. Dorjan, Cairine, Aine—no longer mere friends. Kin. Family. His.

  Liam and Arlen both see Charlotte back-stepping closer to the blood dagger, towards them, as Lord Artair’s arms swell into furry legs of crimson fire.

  But the blood dagger can only do so much in her hands. Not enough to defend her from Father in his bestial form. He will lick her tears of pain as he tears her apart from the inside out.

  Yet knowing what he was, Charlotte threw herself in his father’s way the moment she met him and has done her damndest to remain between Liam and his father. Charlotte, warrior queen, protector of frightened children.

  “Finish him, boy!” His father shakes his head into its finished form, a horrifying bear’s head with eyes empty of all but fury.

  Liam lunges.

  He pulls Charlotte through the fire with one hand and grabs the blood dagger’s hilt with the other, willing the flames to reach as high as they can go. The gold of her hair blows between their faces, but he sees her eyes alight with a thousand colors as the shards of rainbow trapped in the arctic skies. His heart’s fire burns bright, brighter as her inner lights kiss every feather of his inner wings.

  She smiles. Spits a lock of hair out of her mouth. “See, that’s why I braid.”

  Liam laughs, and it shatters an ice he had not known settled on his limbs since returning to shore. His limbs, his skin, the very world of him quakes and settles in place, whole.

  A ROAR hurls at them like a rock from a trebuchet.

  Arlen touches their shoulders. “Fly her out. I’ll hold him off.”

  The ground quakes. A crimson snout pokes through the ring. Liam’s flames sting it like thorns, and it pulls back.

  Liam turns to face his teacher—uncle. Kin. He squeezes Charlotte’s shoulder. “No more running.”

  Even amidst the flames, Liam sees the sparks of mischief dance back into Arlen’s eyes, setting age on retreat.

  Wailing: irritating, persistent, a horn blown without loss of breath, its depth rumbles through the earth as it grows, swells, floods the atrium and Charlotte’s ears, face pained, but she keeps her fists.

  Until Father’s eyes of fury peer over the fire-wall.

  Lord Bearnard Artair stands a mountain unto himself, red as Mars and just as vicious. Liam dives for his blood dagger as the crimson bear rams through the fire-wall, sending its flames flying in all directions to die out against the atrium walls. Charlotte rolls under Lord Artair’s fiery body as Arlen dodges the jaws but slams his elbow into the jaw’s joint.

  Liam pulls his blood dagger free and grips the blade to pull it out the blood sword. He lunges, point at the ready for his own father’s neck, but Lord Artair throws up a paw to block him. The giant bear’s roar flares through his fur, whipping the flames of his body about. Arlen has to leap aside to avoid being burned in the face. Liam swings again, and a paw as big as Liam clamps down over him. Liam holds it back with his blood sword in two hands. His shoes slide back in the rock. His suit coat burns away, his father’s roar joyful, grin as wicked as it is on his human-like body.

  Charlotte crawls clear before Lord Artair’s other front paw can slam down on her feet, and she bolts across the atrium for the pile of scraps and her bone-knife.

  Arlen seizes his brother’s split attention and thrusts his own hand into Lord Artair’s mouth.

  The bulbous, enraged eye stares at its brother.

  “She will never be your Cairine.” Arlen grabs one of Bearnard’s teeth, punches the bear’s giant eye, causing Bearnard to pull back while Arlen snaps a tooth clean out of the bear’s jaw.

  Lord Artair roars with such ferocity the rock walls of the atrium splinter all around. The ceiling sewn shut by the roots begins to splinter open.

  Lord Artair kicks out with a back leg at Charlotte. She falls forward as the heat singes her shirt and hair, but yet she smiles, because she hears a wolf’s snarl in the tunnel ahead of her.

  Arlen grabs that same back leg by the tip of one claw and drives the bear tooth through the paw’s center. .

  The next roar blasts Charlotte’s ears. She sees the mountainous bear shudder and kick Arlen into the atrium wall. The crack of Arlen’s ribs deafens her more than Lord Artair’s roars ever could. “NO!” she screams.

  Liam sees his teacher’s body fly, crash, fall—

  Howling.

  Dorjan.

  The wolf runs fast as nightfall and catches Arlen on his back. Charlotte reaches her bone-knife’s hiding place. Her very body seems to glow with the same vengeance in her emerald eyes.

  Father only has to look Dorjan’s way, and Liam’s moment comes. He turns the blade on its side, to cut wide and deep into his father’s raging magic. While L
ord Artair spins, two paws now injured but still blazing hot with power and death, Liam channels his own heart’s fire into the sword and not his wings. By sword or talon, I will not submit to another boy spewing from your wretched mouth, Father.

  Liam dodges the bear’s teeth and uses the fire of his own blood sword to shield himself from the raging magic that burns from the monstrous Lord Artair. Liam strikes one of the injured paws again, realizing too late another crimson paw is swinging round to smite him—

  The paw is caught in another pair of jaws.

  Dorjan’s beastly form may be dwarfed by Lord Artair, but it does not cower or whimper. He bites down hard upon the mountainous limb, while Charlotte runs for the limp paw and strikes above the joint—

  Lord Artair flails again, launching Dorjan into the air only to have the wolf land on his neck. Dorjan digs his claws in at the base of Father’s head until the bear shakes hard enough to knock Dorjan off-balance. Dorjan lands mere feet from Lord Artair’s jaws, yet he takes the moment to bark to Liam in Mawdre: “Get Arlen!”

  Liam waves his blood sword to send a wing of fire in front of Father’s face, blinding him long enough for Dorjan to evade capture. The bear-jaws snap at Liam instead as the princeborn rolls beneath them, leaps over a swinging paw. Charlotte runs past Liam for the shards of the water road, and by Aether she is picking it up AGAIN, madness!

  Dorjan uses his wolf’s head as a battering ram aimed for the mountainous bear’s neck, then in pure madness the rogue transforms. “Surprise!” he says, blue eye almost white with vicious glee as he leaps away from snapping jaws—

  —just as Charlotte whips the water road’s cord and shards. Surely she shreds what little of her hand-skin remains, but the cord knots around Father’s good back leg, and will not burn away.

  It burns him.

  Liam watches Charlotte as he runs. What a glow, my warrior queen, brighter than any— Liam slams into the wall and falls next to Arlen. He curses himself and puts the blood sword to Arlen’s purpling torso. Liam’s Gaelic is fiercely swift as his cut hand smears blood and veli across the blade and Arlen’s chest to speed the spell. No time for herbs. By Aether I will spill my own blood to not lose you.

  Lord Artair’s back leg buckles. He spins round to swipe at Charlotte, but Dorjan is there first, his wolf maws tight upon his enemy’s leg. The bear’s roar cracks the atrium further.

  Rocks begin to fall.

  “Liam!” Charlotte cries, hooking Arlen beneath his shoulders to drag him back while Liam finishes the spell at the same time. Boulders smash where Arlen lay a moment ago. Liam pulls the blood sword away. So many bruises remain, but Arlen’s shattered ribs no longer stab him from the inside. Arlen’s chest heaves, and he coughs without blood.

  Dorjan’s lands on top of the boulders with a nasty thud. He changes, crawls to his feet. “Had enough yet?” He spits blood at the crouching bear as he staggers towards the others. “You see that flip I did before he threw me? Course not, let me try it again—”

  The roar dies to a rumble. The paw Liam cut changes color.

  Ashen.

  A low, sad note begins a dissonant harmony with Lord Artair’s growl.

  The beast’s smile stretches, stretches, it should not be possible for a bear to smile like that—

  Arlen wakens and rolls upright, a soldier’s training never completely absent from his battered limbs. “Charlotte, you need to run,” he says, eyes locked with his brother. “Now.”

  “No.” Charlotte grits her teeth, but doesn’t cower, like any creature with sense would.

  And then there’s Dorjan. “C’mon, you barrel of rat piss.” He points to his singed face. “Give us a kiss, right here!”

  The ceiling does not merely crack.

  It shatters.

  Soil and rock, root and bone hurl down, the herald of Father’s power, called by the stone ring from the heavens—

  Liam sees it in slow motion—the lightning’s plummet, Dorjan’s horror, Father’s smile. The drops of his sweat and blood flying in the grooves of the feathers carved in his blade. He sees it all as he shoves Dorjan out of the way and holds his blood sword high, free hand bracing him on the ground.

  One moment, Liam’s heart’s fire feels blasted to ash. The next, his insides are encased in ice without touch. The naked sky, home of the cold, unfeeling starfolk, it swallows him whole, far and away from the clouds, from the lights of Charlotte’s eyes, the touch of her breath, the grace of her inner music, the rhythm of her heart, her heart, her heart…

  37

  Calling Down the Heavens

  Charlotte screams as Dorjan drags her into the tunnels.

  Another scream falls from the sky, rich and heavy.

  Arlen runs to Liam’s side, ever aware of the blood dagger still sparking with the lightning’s magic. The burn’s channel is clearly carved on his hand, neck, right temple. Arlen tears away the buttoned shirt to find the cursed mark made by Lord and Lady Artair three centuries ago, still thorned and vile on Liam’s right arm. Now the entire right side of Liam’s body is laced by dark red lines intricate as a flower’s veins.

  A golden eagle flaps its wings as it enters the atrium and lands in billowing dust near Dorjan and Charlotte’s hiding place. Feathers burn away to reveal Lady Treasa Artair. “Why did I see the stone ring’s call to the heavens, Bearnard? Why?”

  Lord Artair’s crimson mountain blows away to a lump in a ruffled suit, eyes wide, mouth wider. “Damned song comes and goes as it will. Like my own heart’s fire isn’t good enough for it anymore.” He kicks off the water road shards and stands side by side with his wife as Arlen checks over their son.

  The silence …Charlotte’s ready to scream, to beg, actually beg, if it means she can stay by Liam and see him healed. But Dorjan’s arm is wrapped around her tight, so they shudder together, senses strained for anything, anything at all.

  Finally: “He will live,” Arlen says.

  Treasa slowly raises her ringed hand—not at Arlen, but at her husband. “Get away from my son.” The shriek barely lasts a heartbeat, but it’s enough to hurl Bearnard at the stairs to Rose House.

  He rolls upright, croaks, “How dare you, woman!”

  But Lady Artair snaps her ringed hand, and the shriek smacks Lord Artair in the face. Two threads of blood braided with veli trickle out of his nostrils. “I am through with your dalliances taking our House to the brink of destruction. You will behave with our guests upstairs, or I will break you before them all. Do not think Brutus Aleron will help you, not after what you did to his wife.” She does not even watch to see Lord Artair sputter to his feet. She kneels at Liam’s side, wary of the blood dagger still in Liam’s hand. “So many lines…”

  “Your husband’s rage has been known to do worse,” Arlen says.

  Lady Artair snarls. “Calling the heavens down on his own son. Pathetic.” Her tongue clicks as her gaze follows her husband’s approach.

  “I did not call them upon Liam. What do you take me for, a monster? That mangy Durant boy was here with that human bitch.”

  Neither Dorjan nor Charlotte dare breathe, the air stillborn with malice and suspicion. Lady Artair turns to Arlen, who is carefully moving Liam’s hand still gripped around the blood dagger up onto his chest. “For you.”

  Arlen nods.

  “See? He even admits it!” Lord Artair holds up his own ringed hand, but the note is weak, stammering. Arlen barely flinches under its song. “We must bring the tunnels down—”

  “Stop it, Bearnard.” A wicked-high shriek silences the sad note. “If you had simply left Arlen to Keller, none of this would have happened.”

  Charlotte’s lungs tighten. The Voice in Charlotte’s heart sighs, exhausted and angry. No matter what happens with this wedding, Keller’s going to kill someone.

  Dorjan’s throat barely contains his growl. All Charlotte can do is stay close, bite her lip to stay quiet.

  “N-no.”

  Dust stops floating.

  Air stops r
eeking.

  Charlotte stops breathing.

  Liam is speaking. “L-leave him.”

  Lady Artair flies to Arlen’s side. “Liam? Liam, can you see, hear?” Panic shivers beneath her question.

  Liam coughs. Arlen grips his free hand tight and speaks with the firm direction of a doctor. “He requires veli and more, unless you still consider my land-bound ways too pathetic for your son’s healing.”

  “A bath in veli has worked miracles before,” Lord Artair passes his ringed hand up and down his body. One sad moan later, and his suit is clean and pressed, his face blood-free. “I’ll tell Keller to send out the scouts on the premise it’s for tomorrow.” He walks up as if he has the last word on the matter.

  Which he doesn’t. “Wait.” Lady Artair shares a look with Arlen. “You can ensure his readiness tomorrow?”

  “N-no.” Liam’s voice flutters like a bird with a broken wing.

  “Woman—”

  “The wedding must take place despite your stupidity, Bearnard.”

  “N-no one moves me until,” Liam coughs, “until I know Charlotte and Arlen will be left in peace. I’ll marry Darra,” he groans, “without a fight. But swear to leave them alone.”

  No.

  No no no no no

  The Voice in Chartlotte’s heart runs frantically throughout her chest, catching falling pieces and clutching them close. Don’t give up!

  Charlotte only realizes she’s crying when Dorjan rubs his coat’s lapel against her face. I thought he’d fight it harder. Free of the zombieness, he’d fight it. But he’s giving up. But seeing Arlen, how Arlen himself was ready to give up… This place. These fucking Pits just sap the hope away.

  Yet the Voice in Charlotte’s heart holds her tight. You didn’t give up. You were ready to die fighting Orna to get your sister to safety. They need your hope, Charlotte, more than ever.

  Lady Artair’s hips slide to one side, then the other, floating leaf-style down, down to her knees next to Liam’s head. She turns her hand and caresses Liam’s cheek. “Listen to your mother,” she says softly, sweetly, “and know your request is heard.”