The Glass Scepter

by Bekah Harris

With a sudden surge of panic, Ivy glanced back at Jules, who was still unconscious in the Laltog’s arms. Fhaescratch flicked his tongue against his lips as he peered around her for a better look at Jules.

  “Let her go,” Ivy said. “I’ll stay. Willingly. As long as you don’t drain me, you’ll have a lifetime supply of royal blood. You’ll never have to feed on another rat again.”

  Fhaescratch rubbed his chin between his thumb and forefinger. “Tempting as the offer is, I’m afraid I must decline. The chance to drink the blood of Eve is too tempting to pass up, even for a Fae who smells as decadent as you. Besides, your friend smells delicious. Her scent overpowered me the second you stepped inside the outer tunnel.”

  “What are you planning to do with us then? Kill us after you’ve gorged yourself on our blood?”

  Ivy couldn’t understand his motivation. If he was starving, if he wanted to live peacefully among the Seelie Fae, Ivy could lead those efforts and begin the process. But the Laltog king seemed interested only his access to their veins.

  “Besides,” he added, “it is Teagan, not I, who wants you dead. It will be Teagan, not I, who will kill you after I’ve nearly bled you dry.”

  With a motion of his hand, his lackeys moved forward. The creature behind Ivy took her arm, holding it far too tightly, and led her to a small alcove. He pushed her inside, lying Jules next to her on the hard ground, and tugged at an iron gate. When it locked behind him, Ivy peered out from between the iron bars.

  I will find a way out of this, she told herself. I will keep us both alive.

  Before she could scamper toward Jules, the torches were extinguished, leaving them alone in utter darkness.

  Chapter Twenty

  Pushing past Madra, who was screeching out orders he ignored, Ardan tore away the doublet he wore and stripped off the gauzy shirt, both of them stained red with Queen Lyric’s blood.

  His happiness and his future, two hours ago secured in Ivy’s beautiful smile, had been torn from him. He sank down into the soft bed he shared with Ivy and placed his head in trembling, blood-stained hands. The Queen of Winter lay dying, and its heir had been taken to Unseelie, far beneath the bowels of his dark home. The future of Winter rested in Ivy’s breath, in his wife’s beating heart. Each time he imagined one of those creatures with its bony hands on Ivy, sinking his sharp fangs into her soft skin, the darkness Ardan struggled to keep at bay twisted around his heart. He fought his own nature every second of every day out of respect for the customs of Winter. But propriety wouldn’t deliver Ivy from the Laltogs.

  “Let it take you,” Padraic said from the doorway. “You’ll need it where we’re going.”

  He stormed past Ardan, heading into the closet, his expression shadowed by rage and determination. When he emerged, he threw a pair of fighting leathers at Ardan, hitting him square in the chest.

  “Collect yourself, channel your darkness, and do what must be done,” he said. “Winter soldiers await your orders in the hallway, and my Unseelie Fae are ready to be unleashed as soon as I give the command.”

  “The Queen?” Ardan asked. On shaky legs, he rose from the bed, slipping off his boots and breeks, replacing them with the thick black leathers of the Unseelie royals.

  “She lives,” Padraic said, “but Lochlan is uncertain of her fate. The Magi are with her now. Her explicit orders are for us to return her daughter, alive and whole, to Winter. As we speak, she sends messengers to all courts in the Seelie Realm, commanding them to arms. If the Seelie Queen grants her approval, both realms will unite. We won’t stop until the Unseelie mines are red with blood, and Teagan and her dark army mourn the day they struck their twisted bargain.

  “You believe Queen Endellion will agree to this?” Ardan said. “That traitorous hag will let the realms run with blood as long as her own court is safe.”

  For centuries, Endellion had ruled the Seelie Realm according to her own interests and advantage. It’s why the Unseelies had broken away from the realm to form their own more than five hundred years before. Though he hadn’t lived through the dark times, his grandfather had. Ardan and Padraic both had grown up with stories of Endellion’s treachery. She would never risk herself or her court for a human and a Winter Princess.

  “I have no delusions of Endellion’s loyalty,” Padraic said. “I have no doubt she will leave us all to die if it suits her best, but I know someone in Seelie who will force her hand.”

  The feathery wings of hope warred with the inky tentacles of jealousy that snaked around Ardan’s heart.

  “Barrett,” he concluded.

  He didn’t want to admit it, but Padraic was right. If anyone could sway the Seelie Queen, it was her only son and heir. It pained him to seek help from Ivy’s first love, but for Ivy, Ardan would forsake his own soul and beg on bended knee. He only hoped Ivy’s former guard hadn’t forsaken his feelings for her entirely. Barrett had changed over the last several months. It was clear he still cared for Ivy, but his life was more complicated now that he had his own heir to worry about.

  “Do you think he’ll leave Slaine in her condition?”

  “I guess we’ll find out,” Padraic said. “I already have a scout carrying a message that bears Winter’s seal and Lyric’s signature.”

  Ardan buckled his weapons belt around his waist, testing the magic-infused daggers and sword at his side. But his own fear was crippling him. It was pathetic. Childish. But he couldn’t help himself. Hanging his head before his brother, he admitted his worst fear.

  “I cannot lose her, Brother,” he whispered. “She is the last and best part of me.”

  “No,” Padraic said. He placed a strong hand on Ardan’s shoulder. “Ivy only brought out what was there all along. Father stole it from you as a child. Beat it out of you like a broken horse with his punishments. But it was there the whole time. The strong defiance. The rebellion. The will to defy him even when it meant pain. I saw it, too, only you hated me for being the heir so much that you would never let me in. Even after mother died, you would never let me through. But Ivy sees the best in you, and when she allowed you to comfort her at her most broken and vulnerable time, that spark ignited once more. It’s what led you to trust others again. Ivy might have tugged at the first stone that brought down the walls, but she is not the best part of you. Your strength has been there all along.”

  Finally, when he was able, Ardan met Padraic’s eyes. Brother to brother, they embraced, fully equal and united in their deadly quest. Padraic had as much to lose as Ardan.

  “Juliet and Ivy: they both come out of this alive,” Pardaic said, his eyes burning gold. “Not for me or for you, but for them. You know as well as I, if one of them dies, something of the other does, too.”

  Padraic was right. Both of them pushed aside by their families and locked away in a boarding school, Ivy and Jules had formed their own family in childhood, unwaveringly loyal and bound by love in the midst of their rejection. Ardan and Padraic were much the same, and they would give their last breath to ensure that Ivy and Jules never had to taste the bitterness of that kind of loss.

  Before Ardan could respond, Lochlan burst through the doors to the bedroom Ardan shared with Ivy. He looked upon them like someone who had survived a fire but was about to crumble to ash. It was so easy for Ardan to forget sometimes who Lochlan really was beyond his duty as head of the Winter guards. He looked at them now as a husband about to lose his wife. As a father who stood to lose his daughter.

  “Bring her back to me,” Lochlan said. “Bring them both back. I cannot leave her. I cannot leave my…Queen.”

  Ardan nodded, surprising himself by pulling Lochlan into an embrace. Ivy’s unlikely father had been more of a parent to him these last few months than Odhran had been his entire life.

  “I won’t come home without her,” he said. It wasn’t merely a promise, but a vow.

  He followed Lochlan into the hallway, where a small team of Winter soldiers waited, both male and female, all of them dressed in the sleek dark b
lue fighting gear of the Winter Court. They lined the walls, standing shoulder to shoulder, awaiting his orders. They were absent their typical shields and heavy weapons, carrying only small daggers and blades they could reach at a moment’s notice. It wasn’t a mob ready for war. It was a team ready for a tactical mission.

  “Teagan and her dark army have assaulted our queen and stolen our princess,” he said. “I trust Lochlan has briefed you on the dangers of the Unseelie mines?”

  The soldiers nodded, their faces shadowed with resolve. Lochlan had trained them to be lethal and fearless. Some of them might die, but they would not return without their princess. His brother joined him in the hallway, the soldiers dipping their heads out of respect for the Unseelie King.

  “We must stop in Unseelie first,” Padraic said. “I have a team waiting to guide us into the Unseelie mines. Keep your wits about you. The Brags will use your own minds against you while the Laltogs use the distraction to tear out your throats.”

  Ardan cast a sideways glance at Padraic. It wasn’t his best motivational speech, but the guards looked unaffected and unafraid. With a sharp nod, Ardan led them toward the portal.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Jules opened her eyes to impenetrable darkness.

  Somewhere in the distance, she heard a heavy scraping and the occasional dripping of water. The floor beneath her was cold and damp. Rocky, like a cave. Afraid to move, she blinked to orient herself as she tried to recall where she was and what had happened. But in the pitch blackness that surrounded her, she couldn’t think clearly. Instead, her chest tightened, and she struggled to breathe, transported through time and space to those dreadful hours spent at the bottom of a well at Kingston Academy. She clenched her fists and tried to focus on breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth. Hot tears slid from her eyes and down her cheeks.

  “Jules?” a voice whispered. “Jules, are you awake?”

  Ivy. Thank God.

  Jules pushed herself up from the hard floor, reaching out blindly until her hands found Ivy’s.

  “Are you okay?” Jules whispered. “What happened?”

  “The Laltogs crashed Violet’s wedding. We were almost to the portal, but when they attacked my mother, I turned back,” she whispered with a shaky voice. “I should have kept going. If I had kept going, you would have been safe.”

  “Like I ever would have agreed to leave your mother,” Jules said.

  Her wrist was throbbing. Touching her arm with her opposite and, she felt the sting of a single puncture wound. The hooked talon of a bat.

  Everything came rushing back. The half human/half bat creatures that flapped with leathery wings, swooping from the sky like devils. Jules had been running so fast, so driven by adrenaline, that she hadn’t seen the creature attack Lyric. But when Ivy’s cry had torn through her like a blade, Jules turned around to see the Queen’s limp body lying motionless on the ground. Before she could even scream a warning at Ivy, both of them had been plucked from the ground like carrion and carried through time and space.

  “Where are we now?” Jules asked. “Have you been awake this entire time?”

  “There’s no way I could have slept down here,” she said. “It’s too…dark. Too…”

  “Terrifying?” Jules finished.

  “Exactly,” Ivy whispered. “We’re in the Unseelie Mines beneath Padraic’s castle. We’re here on Teagan’s orders.”

  “That bitch!” Jules hissed. “Guess she’s still a little pissed Padraic turned down her marriage proposal.”

  “Clearly,” Ivy said. “But right now, Teagan is the least of our worries. King Fhaescratch himself locked us in this cell.”

  “Who’s King Fhaescratch?” Jules asked. “I mean, other than the obvious.”

  “He’s the King of the Laltogs, but he also commands all the dark creatures of Unseelie. According to Ardan, they were banished years ago by Queen Endellion, and they want their freedom back.”

  “And I suppose now is when they plan to get it back?”

  “Exactly. We’re not doomed to be midnight snacks. We’re here because the dark creatures of Faerie have united. We’re here as prisoners in a war that’s about to start.”

  “Frickedy Frack!” Jules whispered. She took a deep breath and scooted closer to Ivy. “What the hell is wrong with the Fae?” she fumed. “I mean, you drink and throw parties and wear gorgeous dresses. Your food is to die for and you live forever. Why is it so impossible to get along?”

  Ivy laughed, but the sound was more of a huff. “I’ve been asking myself that same question for the last six months. I’ve decided that maybe it’s because we do live so long. Peace gets boring, I guess, so you have to invent things to get pissed off about.”

  “That is the most bass ackwards thing I have ever heard,” Jules said. “So, onto the more pressing question: how do we get out of here?”

  “I don’t know. When they brought me here, I kept trying to make markers in my memory, like weird colors or unique details in the rock, but it felt like we walked for an eternity before we reached this level. The Laltogs held dim torches, but everything looked the same after a while. Just endless passageways and rocky walls. We did enter a large chamber before King Fhaescratch threw us in this cell. But even if we could escape the cell, I don’t know how we would ever find our way out. I mean, it’s so dark. There is zero light down here. I tried using my magic, and I could see for a minute, but I was afraid the ice would make you too cold.”

  “What about Padraic and Ardan?” Jules asked. “Did they make it out?”

  “I saw them both, Lochlan, too, as the Laltog took me. They’ll be coming for us. But if you have any bright ideas in the meantime, I’m all ears.”

  You’ll never have to be in the dark again. You never have to be alone again.

  Hope bubbled up inside Jules’ chest, as she recalled Padraic’s gift to her the first night they were together. She traced the lines of her collarbone until she felt the moonstone still hanging around her throat. She had thought it so beautiful that she had asked the Unseelie jeweler to fashion it into a necklace. The Laltogs hadn’t taken it. The clasp hadn’t broken. Grasping the smooth stone, she yanked hard, tearing the thin chain. Closing her fingers over the stone, she pictured the flickering of a candle.

  True to Padraic’s word, the stone illuminated in bright, shimmering light.

  “Where did you get that?” Ivy asked. “Jules, that’s incredible!”

  “A gift from Padraic,” she said. “Now we can at least see where we are.”

  Aided by the light, they crawled toward the iron bars of the cell. Though Ivy could tolerate iron, it could still burn her skin and weaken her magic, so Jules stopped her with a hand to the shoulder. Then, she crawled closer to the door, snaking her arm between the bars to illuminate as much outside the cell as possible. The only thing she could detect was dark, cavernous walls that sparkled here and there with precious gems in a variety of colors: rubies, emerald, quartz, and amethyst. In the middle of the room or chamber, there was a throne of sorts, that looked as if it had been formed over many years by water. There was a dark shape in the middle of it. Jules squinted trying to make out the details.

  Suddenly, two bright yellow eyes snapped open, landing directly on her. Startled, she scooted back, nearly dropping the moonstone in the process. When she held up the light once more, the dark shape grew closer.

  “King Fhaescratch,” Ivy whispered.

  As the king of the Laltogs drew closer, Ivy pushed Jules behind her, crouching protectively in front of her.

  “So, the daughter of Eve is awake,” he said from just outside the iron bars. “Forgive my lack of hospitality. I am upholding my end of a bargain, you see.”

  Those yellow eyes burned like flames, as if they could see the very darkest part of her soul. Jules couldn’t look away from him, no matter how much she wanted to, as if something about him was compelling her to move closer. They weren’t golden with excitement like Padraic’s, tho
ugh. They were wild and feral, like some sort of diabolical cat. Still, something about them made her want to get a closer look, but just as she moved toward him, Ivy held her in place with a firm hand.

  “Stop the mind games,” Ivy ordered. “Jules is my friend and honored guest, chosen Queen of the Unseelie Fae. You would be wise to leave her alone.”

  The Laltog King laughed then, a deep, gravelly rasp that sent chills up her spine. “Delightful! How does that work, if I may be so bold? Having a human as a best friend? I would think Queen Endellion might take issue with a human treated as an equal in Seelie.”

  “Queen Endellion can go and —”

  “Enough, Jules,” Ivy said, squeezing her hand to cut off her words. “Queen Endellion’s lack of loyalty and commitment has no bearing on the decisions made in Winter. She, herself, enabled Alena’s rise to power and the protection of her daughters, who now rise against her in betrayal. I think you would find more sympathetic ears in Seelie than you might imagine.”

  “How very diplomatic, Princess Ivy. And yet, even in Unseelie, among your husband’s own people, we darklings are condemned to the depths of society to live like scavengers in caves. It’s true the Unseelies have employed the Red Caps and Hellhounds to use like common servants, but we Laltogs will not be so easily pleased. Now, I command the Red Caps. I command the Hellhounds. I command the Brags, the goblins, the leprechauns, hollows, and wraiths. Soon, too, I shall command you and all of your kind.”

  “And then what?” Jules wasn’t impressed.

  King Fhaescratch smiled, exposing two razor-like fangs. “You are not convinced?”

  “No, I’m totally convinced you can accomplish everything you say,” Jules said. “I mean, you’re apparently the king of darkness and all that. But my question is what then? Once you have all this power and everyone bows down to you, what are going to do? Sit on a throne, bark orders, what?”

  Ivy squeezed Jules hand in warning, once more, but she ignored her.