The Lily Harper 8 Book Boxed Set

by HP Mallory

  And now the time had finally come.

  Over the last four days, I watched his color return and noticed he was able to stand without leaning against the wall, such that he had been before. Currently, he was inspecting the drawing of a tree I labored to create in the uneven stone of the cell’s floor, using a piece of charred wood as my pencil.

  “Dae ye ‘ave it?” Tallis asked.

  “Yes,” I answered, holding up the silver knife. It gleamed like a distant star when I showed it to him.

  He eyed it carefully as though it were a fine sculpture. “Aye, ’twill do.” He rested against the wall behind him. While his physical health was much improved, he was nevertheless not quite restored to his former self. “The stookie angel?”

  Tallis was, of course, referring to the peasant, Bill, whom he considered his friend of sorts for reasons I could not pretend to understand.

  “He’s been given extra food and drink as we agreed,” I answered with impatience, eager to get preparations underway.

  Of course, the food and drink in question were stale bread and water, which the heavenly dwarf did nothing but complain about incessantly. But Tallis did not need to know such minor details. He asked that the angel be given food and drink and so he was.

  “Good,” Tallis grunted.

  “Have you rested enough?” I asked, my anxiety evident in my voice.

  “Aye, Ah’m as strong as Ah’m goona git in these conditions, lass.” He shook one of his hands and the chains clinked against each other, sounding heavy and dull. “’Ave at ‘em then.”

  I looked at the key, then at Tallis, then back at the key and I wondered if I were making a deleterious mistake. “I must rid myself of the demon inside me,” I said under my breath, affirming my determination and steeling my nerves. For just a moment, I thought I saw a look of sympathy cross Tallis’s face. But the moment passed and I was left thinking I imagined it.

  I crouched down next to him, the key hovering beside the lock. I hesitated once again as I looked up at him. “How do I know you won’t simply kill me and flee with the angel in tow?”

  “Ah dare nae hurt Lily,” he replied with a thick voice, like he had to swallow down his own phlegm. “Much as Ah wish ‘twas nae so, ye two share the same body. So Ah cannae hurt one wifout hurtin’ the other.”

  I did not care for his reasoning. But the fact remained that Tallis guaranteeing her safety meant he was also guaranteeing my own. Hence, I decided to accept his answer.

  I abruptly stood up, feeling uncertain. “Tell me the plan again, please…” I forgot myself and cleared my throat angrily. Damnation, why was I asking him so nicely? “I demand you tell your queen what you intend to do!”

  “O’ course, mah queen,” Tallis said, and the sarcasm laced his answer like a poisoned chalice. I ignored the impudence with which he said my title. Pride would only cause me more grief in this instance.

  “Ah moost drain ye o’ Donnchadh,” he explained “If he is allowed tae spread, then ye will only sooffer more visions, more ootbursts, more voices.” Mind you, Tallis had already explained this to me a dozen times or more but I somehow needed the comfort of hearing it all over again.

  “Am I immortal?” I interrupted. If the answer were yes, then perhaps…

  Tallis sighed, “Ach, fer the last flippin’ time, besom, nae. Ah told ye afore that ye only got ah bit o’ Donnchadh’s spirit in ye. That means ye possess all o’ his temperament, boot none o’ the benefits. An’ one o’ the benefits ye are lackin’ happens ta be immortality.”

  I nodded my head slowly. I believed him. I wasn’t certain why but I did. At least I believed that he wouldn’t harm me so long as doing so meant harming his precious Lily. “Fine, let’s get on with it before I change my mind.” I crouched once more, the key touching the lock. Then another nagging question occurred to me. “Why do you need to be the one to cut me?”

  Tallis smirked, the first true emotion I’d seen on his face in a very long time.

  “Can Ah troost ye tae coot yerself in the correct place? An’ deep enough tae git Donnchadh oot o’ ye?”

  I had considered the idea of sticking the silver blade into my own body. But got queasy at the thought of feeling my skin breaking and my blood flowing. Not to mention the pain.

  “I suppose you have a point.”

  The Bladesmith gave me one of his indifferent shrugs. I tightened my grip on the key lodged in the lock. “Do not try anything sneaky, Tallis Black, or I will ensure you receive the slowest and most painful death possible.”

  His face became its usual stony self in the face of my threat. “Ye know Ah dinnae care fer mehself.”

  “Then let me promise you this punishment: a painful and miserable end to the body I inhabit. I will ensure that any and all remnants of your beloved Lily disintegrate before your eyes.”

  “Then ye would be harmin’ yerself, fer ye are one an’ the same.”

  “Oh, no,” I corrected him with a smug smile. “The crown ensures that Alaire could always find me another body. There are Soul Retrievers venturing through the Underground City every day. So a body of this quality is no rarity.”

  Actually, I was unsure about that last part. But Tallis wasn’t the only one who could hide his true feelings when necessary.

  His eyes darkened for a moment as he contemplated my threat. “Then aye, lass, ye have meh word.”

  “For whatever good it is,” I mumbled as I finally unlocked the chain.

  The lock unlatched and Tallis’s arm fell to the ground with a heavy thud. He began to raise it, flexing his shoulder to get the feeling back into the newly freed appendage. I stepped back in a hasty motion, suddenly afraid of what he might do to me. I held the blade of the knife between us, although I did not remember putting it in my hand.

  “Ach, put the knife down, lass,” Tallis said irritably, still moving his arm in circles. “Ah already told ye that Ah willnae hurt ye anymore then Ah ‘ave tae.”

  I didn’t believe him necessarily. But I also didn’t like not having control over my own body, thanks to Donnchadh creating the voices inside my head as well as the unsettling visions. And all this came without the benefit of immortality to boot. How could I hope to regain my rule as queen when my own body was so clearly working against me?

  I moved nearer Tallis and stretched out my knife arm as far as it would go. Tallis took the weapon, blade first, no less. He flipped it around several times to check its balance before running it along his leg to test the edge of the blade against his own skin. He didn’t even flinch as he made the cut along his thigh. The thin red line of blood that suddenly appeared was testament to how sharp the knife was.

  “’Tis a good blade, lass,” Tallis said, still inspecting the blood-smeared tool.

  I carefully sat down in front of him, my dread settling in my stomach. “Which way do you need me to face?”

  Tallis regarded me with his dark blue eyes. “Ah need yer back, lass.” Hesitant, with erratic movements and unsteady breaths, I turned around, exposing my back to Tallis and the blade I gave him.

  “Ah am nae goin’ tae lie tae ye. ‘Tis gonna hurt ye somethin’ fierce.”

  The blade abruptly cut into my skin. I gasped as the edge kept moving deeper and deeper into my back. The irrational part of my mind started to wonder (despite the searing pain that was building along my spine) if he intended to carve straight through to my heart.

  “Ahhh,” I breathed, realizing I couldn’t scream, lest I attract the attention of Alaire’s staff. The cutting continued up and down my back as though my skin were his canvas and the knife his brush.

  At last, Tallis removed the knife but the white-hot pain of the cut remained. I could feel the blood pouring down my backside, some of it running into the crack of my bottom. Woozy and lightheaded, I fell back into Tallis, who embraced me with his one free arm.

  “Shhhhh, lass, ’twill be oot o’ ye soon enough.”

  “I never stopped caring about you,” I said, shocking myself wit
h the sudden admission. Still, it was true. Despite everything that happened between us, and all the literal bad blood we shared, I truly loved this man. And still did.

  His face remained unchanged.

  Tallis scooted me closer to his chained arm and lowered my head underneath it. “Mah blood will strengthen ye, so drink deep one last time.”

  He sliced open his palm and made a fist. Raindrops of crimson magic-infused blood began trickling into my slack mouth.

  I’m dying repeated over and over in my head.

  No, Tallis is protecting me, the foreign voice interjected but I was so close to sleep that I no longer cared. Indeed, who could care what Donnchadh had to say? His very essence was spilling all over the floor beneath me. He had to find his way to Tallis’s stupid tree so that he could join the ether of the otherworld and never be seen nor heard from again.

  I looked for the black tar Tallis warned me of. The sludge that would expel itself from my veins, sludge that represented the removal of the demonic spirit inside me. Instead, I saw a spreading pool of bright red blood… my bright red blood.

  “Tallis, where is Donnchadh’s essence?” I asked weakly. I knew I should have been more outraged but my eyelids felt so heavy.

  “’Tis nae there, lass,” Tallis answered, placing his palm on my forehead, “’Twas all a lie.”

  I fought to keep my eyes open but surprise coiled through me just the same. “Whhh… what?”

  “Donnchadh is gone,” Tallis wrapped his arm around my neck. “The only interloper in Lily’s body now is ye.”

  He tightened his hold and the last thing I saw was Tallis’s face, his eyes so bright and shiny as his mouth broke into a malicious grin.

  “Pass thou therefore on.”

  - Dante’s Inferno

  SIX

  Persephone

  I was in the dark.

  Floating weightless, I could not recall a thing about myself. How had I arrived in such a terrible place? Who was I? Who abandoned me here?

  The first thing I could remember was my name, Persephone. Yes… I was Persephone, once and forever, the Queen of the Underground City.

  The next thing that occurred to me was what the darkness implied. My heart ached with the fear that I was again forced back into the crown.

  No, I assured myself, it’s far too warm for me to be inside the crown.

  A light washed over me from somewhere.

  Then I was consumed by the burning hatred I harbored for Tallis Black. He brought me to this lowly place with an artful lie I never thought he could even conceive, never mind utter. It was his fault that I was now here and suffering in this destination that was nowhere.

  The fires of indignation began to blow through me as I promised myself I would see that for every minute I was left here, Tallis suffered twice as long. Surrounded by this nothingness, I could only see myself in my naked form.

  This body, MY BODY—

  “No, it isn’t,” a voice called out from the darkness.

  I looked around. Only the endless expanse of oblivion was in view. Could it be I was hearing voices even here?

  To focus myself, I looked back down at my nude form. This body was mine by right and by fortune. Mine to claim, mine to own, all mine.

  “That’s not true,” the voice said, again interrupting my thoughts. Terror vibrated through my…her…my perfect body as I finally recognized the sound of the intruder. It was the foreigner who was invading my thoughts ever since that night I tasted blood while being taken by Alaire.

  “Who are you?” I demanded, fully aware now that this was not the voice of Donnchadh. He was no more than a fabrication, a lie, a ruse to lure me here. I was not entirely certain if I said the words aloud or merely thought them but either way, there was no response.

  “Don’t play coy with me, coward!” I screamed. “Do you know to whom you are speaking?”

  “A thief,” the disembodied voice replied.

  As if in response to the voice’s words, something began changing in my surroundings. The blackness that was all around me was fading into something… green.

  In the blink of an eye, my feet were touching solid ground. A lake was visible on my left with the castle I saw in my vision standing strong in the distance beyond it.

  “Here again,” I said as I shook my head without understanding. That was when I noticed the man ahead of me, Tallis Black, the treacherous Bladesmith who summoned me to this hell.

  “Ah am glad tae see ye’ve made it, mah queen,” he called above the whipping gusts of wind. White poppies floated through the air like snowflakes. The woman covered in mud, whom I suspected was the source of the mystery voice, lay at Tallis’s feet. I did not look at her. I only had eyes for the backstabbing bastard who brought me here.

  He was back to his clean-shaven self, and his hair was cut close to the scalp. The sunlight above illuminated the lengthy scar that ran through his eye, making it much more pronounced . The Bladesmith’s sword had also been returned to his side. Suddenly feeling afraid, I tried to back away, only to find myself rooted in place.

  Already fearing what I had not yet seen, I looked down to find the vines once again wrapping themselves around my legs.

  “You son of a bitch!” I screamed at the Bladesmith.

  The wind picked up, drowning out my words. Tallis raised his sword, mumbling an incantation I could not make out. He brought the sword down in an arc over the drying mud that trapped the other woman in the earth below. The dirt flaked off and blew away in the wind as the blade cut across the body it formerly covered.

  Finished with his strange form of gardening, Tallis jammed the tip of his blade into the ground, where it swayed back and forth in the heavy breeze before helping the woman to her feet. I was prepared to yell at him once more but when I saw the woman’s appearance, my words dried up and died in my throat.

  I don’t understand, I thought to myself as I continued to stare at her, now aghast.

  The woman was me. The same facial features, the same body…a mirror image of the vessel I inhabited. Except I knew there was fear in my eyes, and I saw unbridled rage dancing in hers.

  “Lily,” I said, the name clinging to the air around me, pulling me down even harder than the vines.

  Tallis wrapped his meaty arms around her and kissed her deeply. She returned the kiss with enthusiasm, wrapping her (our) meager arms around him as best she could. A pain shot through my chest and I was brought to my knees as the vines quickly clung to me at the hips. The earth beneath me began to yawn open like a waiting grave.

  “No! NO! NOOO!” I wailed, reaching out for something, anything that would help me escape the fate that I now saw for me. I clawed at the dirt and snatched at the weeds and the grass but it was all for naught. The weeds snapped. The grass gave way.

  And suddenly I was falling.

  The world around me rumbled and the wind whipped my hair, blinding me temporarily. I could hear the soft crunch of approaching footsteps. With no warning, the wind ceased, rendering the water and grassy shore as utterly silent as the former blackness. Before me stood the two deceivers, Tallis and Lily. Retriever and Bladesmith. Bastard and Bitch.

  “Tallis,” I pleaded, doing my best to suppress my anger over yet another betrayal. “Please… don’t do this! I’ve waited so long to be reunited with you! I… I love you.”

  “Aye, so ye’ve told meh afore.”

  He shook his head. As usual, I could not tell if it was out of sadness or disappointment.

  Lily, the imposter, the enemy within me, knelt down before me. Our eyes were now level with one other. For the longest time, she looked at me with the same stare as someone who is just about to squash a troublesome bug. In that moment, I wondered if this was how Saxon felt just before his demise.

  “You must understand,” I started to babble. The tears, real or not, leaked from my eyes as I spoke. “I waited so long in that dark, cold, lonely prison!” And that’s exactly what the crown was: a prison. For all the power and
opportunities it granted me, it also was my ultimate bane.

  Lily just continued to look at me, the rage in her eyes gradually being replaced with contempt. Finally, when her face became hard as the earth imprisoning me, she spoke.

  “I’ve watched you while you desecrated my body, ruined the man I love and tortured my friend. I had to silently watch you allow Alaire to…” Her voice faltered for just a moment, prompting her to swallow. Then she came back with “… to use me. I had to feel him inside me against my will! And now that the shoe is on the other foot, you ask me to spare you?!”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, rather pathetically.

  “Now you are. But you weren’t before.”

  She didn’t say anything more as she stood up. A sword that was not there previously materialized in her hands. It was a blade almost the same size as Tallis’s and just as finely crafted.

  She continued to speak like a magistrate pronouncing a prisoner’s sentence. “The most important truth is this: there are fates far worse than death and sometimes…” She paused to lift the sword above her head.

  I reluctantly had to admit that Tallis had trained her extremely well. Her form was impeccable.

  “…There are those who deserve that fate.”

  The sword flashed down. I winced, waiting for the sudden burning pain of a decapitation or impalement. But nothing happened. I dared to peek from behind a tightly shut eyelid. The sword was buried almost up to its hilt… in the ground in front of me.

  “What… what is the meaning of this?” I started to ask as I looked up at her.

  “Tallis said death was way too kind for someone like you,” she seethed at me. “For once, I’m inclined to agree with him.”

  Prickling, burning pain started radiating over my body as the vines began their inexorable crawl up my form once more. I tried to plead, to scream, to curse at the pair of them. But as I opened my mouth, a vine crawled into it, plunging down my throat. Its needle-like thorns shredded my tongue and esophagus. Once more, I tasted blood, knowing well and truly that this time it was my own.