by Ella Fields
I wasn’t sure what I could do. I just knew I had to make sure the soldiers who were now entering the woods didn’t reach them—
I rounded a thick cluster of trees, dirt spraying beneath my bare feet as I skidded to a stop.
One by one, villagers shoved children through a hole beneath a tree.
The elves.
Turning in a circle, I discovered more and more of them were climbing from their homes and taking the young, some of the mothers and elders running on if they could not fit through the tunnels in the ground nor the small doorways hidden in trees and under rocks.
“Climb them,” I hissed, some hearing and gazing behind them before scrambling up trunks and into the dark foliage above. I repeated myself, urging the breeze to carry my whisper to those out of earshot.
“You should go, princess,” a graying elf said, gesturing with her walking stick toward the deeper woods. “Queen now, no?” A sad smile tipped up her cheek. “Run, for they will hunt you too if they see you.”
She was right. She was right, but… queen.
In all the chaos since the glowing early evening ceremony that now felt as though it had taken place days ago rather than mere hours, I’d forgotten. I was no longer a princess.
I was a traitor who’d been, and would continue to be, used as a pawn to bring Dade Volkahn to his knees.
Rustling sounded, men shouting over the thunder of approaching horse hooves, and so I ran.
And then I flew once more, escaping the cover of the trees. In the sky, I found it no easier to breathe as I followed the fire-lit trail for a few miles and chased that familiar roar. A roar so violent and agonized it shook the trees, my bones, and the stars themselves.
Beyond the farmland, a circle of fire raged around the river separating it from the city. I continued toward it, toward that sound, followed that incessant tug at the chains that would forever bind me to him.
The carnage was so complete, limbs ripped and shredded, the dead tossed toward the river or staring at nothing while fire licked and ate their broken corpses. Wolves whined and howled in both rage and injury, soldiers, hundreds of them, falling by the dozen but unrelenting as they tried to push through the line of beasts that blocked their attempts to get to the city beyond.
Arrows flew, some swatted aside by giant paws, others missing their marks, others sinking into furred hides. Swords and daggers and axes and even pitchforks clashed as males and females fought in their Fae form, and others arrived from the city.
And across the river, surrounded by those who’d managed to break through the line of beasts, was the king.
The king and Prince Bron.
Dade held him with a blade to his throat, barking orders at Bron’s soldiers that I could not hear. A circle of his fire flared—its harsher glow and heat separating it from that of the manmade flames everywhere else—and surrounded them both, keeping the soldiers from their prince.
Then his eyes flicked up, and there was no mistaking the flash of fear in them when I circled lower.
An unearthly whine erupted, the ground shaking. The line of beasts broke, soldiers swarming around the river toward the city.
Toward the king.
I flapped my wings harder, shooting to the sky while scanning the ground for a way in, for a way to get in and get him out. He couldn’t win. Not this time. But that didn’t mean I would allow him to die.
I flew some yards away from the swarm to the ground and shifted.
The smoke was dense, crawling everywhere and making it hard to see. So I didn’t see him coming until he was already before me with his sword raised. “Stop,” I warned the helmeted soldier. “I am Princess Opal of Sinshell. We are not enemies.”
The man smiled. “You are of faerie blood, Princess.” The smile dropped. “We will always be enemies.”
He swung, and I ducked, rolling to the ground and smacking my cheek on a rock. I grabbed the rock, blood pooling in my mouth from a cut, and rolled again when his sword came down near my head.
Again and again, he struck, ensuring I could not get to my feet. I shifted, losing the rock and then shifting back in time to use his shock against him. The rock rose from the ground before I could bend for it, smacking into my palm and then into his head.
Blood spurted from his nose, through his fingers as he stumbled back and dropped his sword. “You fucking faerie bitch.” I snatched the fallen sword, then lifted the armor of the large man and buried it in his gut as one of his friends raced toward us.
He gaped at his fallen comrade, then charged for me. I didn’t bother trying to use my title this time. Not when the hatred in his green gaze burned hotter than any understanding they’d all reached with my mother.
Her words came back to me as I dodged and ran, turning when he least expected it to send him to the ground with a kick in the leg. Perhaps this was not about Dade and his crusade of revenge any longer.
I didn’t have time to contemplate that further after slicing through the soldier’s neck. I had to hurry before anyone else decided to wade through the smoke to find out who I was and what I was doing. I backtracked to steal a small knife from the man’s holster, then raced into the smoke and into the throng.
I nearly stumbled over a log when I realized what I’d just done.
I’d murdered two people. Two men who were probably going to kill me, but even so, I’d killed them and without hesitation.
I gritted my teeth against the surge of guilt, remembering those females who were left in pools of blood inside those pens, their families forced to run and leave them behind.
The first soldier didn’t see me, his blade dancing toward a wolf’s head then falling with his severed hand. He screamed, blood spraying the wolf’s face as he fought off another assailant, and I was gripped by the hair.
On the ground, I wheezed, the air rushing from me too fast and returning too slow. My scalp and lungs burned, and I lifted the dagger in time to avoid a sword to the face, pushing with strength I didn’t know I possessed and then rolling to slice at my attacker’s ankle.
I rose as he fell and left him to bleed out on the grass before slamming into a boulder of a man and thrusting my dagger into his stomach. It clanged over metal, unheard to regular ears, and I launched to the side as his fist slammed into my eyebrow, his axe following and skidding over my shoulder.
I bit back a moan, searing heat entering my skin.
Iron. Their weapons were not only steel but manufactured to slow our healing and any chance of survival should they strike a vital organ.
Hissing, I ducked as his next blow came, and then I ran at his chest.
Close combat. You stab instantly.
Dade’s voice was everywhere and nowhere as I charged, somehow managing to throw the giant of a man to the ground.
If they’re armored, find the gaps and use them.
Wheezing and shocked, his hands lifted, but they were too slow to stop the blade from inching between his breastplate and helmet—to keep it from sliding into his throat.
I released the blade and rolled when I felt an advancing soldier behind me and rose with the dead human’s sword to meet his. Steel clashed, his teeth bared as he pushed, then retreated and swung at my legs. I jumped back, then forward, nearly slamming into a furred body.
A brown wolf tore into the soldier’s throat, then raced onto the next while his blood still spurted.
I did the same, cutting and dodging and earning myself another slug to the head and a sliced stomach. Then he was there before I could reach him, furious and evidently frightened. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“Where else should I be?”
“Where’s your armor?” He threw a knife, hitting a man in the eye, then met mine as he screamed and fell. “You’re not even wearing shoes.”
“Where is your armor?” I fired back and dodged an arrow.
His throat bobbed, his face bloodied and blackened with soot, and his wedding attire in shreds. Deep gashes could be seen in his abdomen, blood
“Dade,” I warned, and he turned away, taking the shield from the advancing soldier and slamming it into his face three times. He went down, his four companions surrounding Dade before he could move.
I’d barely broken into a run to help him when a male’s voice shouted, “Get down.”
A ball of fire arced over my head, barreling toward Dade. He ducked as two soldiers launched over him with their blades raised.
Panic scorched my throat, but then a knife pressed into it, and a familiar voice crooned, “Princess.” I swallowed, the blade nicking my skin as I did, and was turned to face Prince Bron. “Or should I say, queen?”
A bandage was wrapped around his neck, as though Dade had tried to kill him when his army had rounded the river and he’d been overwhelmed.
“Do you intend to kill me?” I asked coolly. “I saved your rotten soul, helped your equally as rotten family, so that would make perfect fucking sense.”
Bron winced. “Yes, it is all so terribly convoluted, isn’t it?” He waded closer, fingers tipping up my chin to meet those brown eyes I’d once dared to consider handsome. They flicked back and forth between mine, assessing, unblinking, then he stepped back. “No, I don’t think I shall, but I will use you.”
I didn’t need to ask what for, though I was about to anyway to give myself time.
“Release her, Bron.”
My mother and Silver warped into the little circle he and his soldiers had made, and the former walked straight to me. “If there is so much as a drop of blood on her skin, I will peel yours from your flesh.”
The soldier’s hold on me weakened, but that was all I needed. I shifted, then took flight, all of them save for my mother, who cut down two of Bron’s men, gazed up at me. One dived at her from behind, but though I wanted to turn back, I had to trust she could take care of herself.
Wolves were everywhere, but they were no match for the number of soldiers who continued to overrun and push them back. In a valley beneath the city, fires raging on behind the hundreds in battle, the king and some of his warriors fought back to back, one of them falling and Dade roaring for him to get up.
A sword entered the wolf’s eye, and though I knew he longed to, the king could not break free of the crowd surrounding him in order to help one of his friends—the only family he had left.
This was a bloodbath that would only cease with the king’s defeat.
Not even my mother, I noticed while craning my neck, could reason with the prince as the two of them barked at one another back in the small clearing of dead bodies.
Dade knew this, but I hoped he knew that even if he surrendered, the carnage would continue. That they would not stop.
That he could not stop.
There was no safe place, nowhere to land that would help me get to him, nowhere to—
Tiny balls, golden and aflame, launched from the city sky. I tucked my wings enough to fall, swooping low and almost getting tangled in an old oak. Then I saw them.
More elves, this time on the rooftops of city buildings, with catapults three times the size of them, likely dragged up there by the crimson Fae who were standing upon balconies, launching catapults and arrows of their own.
The fireballs hit their marks and did not bounce off them, but rather stuck to their targets as though spelled to land and destroy.
I met the ground atop the valley, hope infusing each lurching step as I broke into a run toward Dade and his assailants, and nearly laughed with a relief so heavy and wild that I couldn’t keep from smiling.
Fire smacked into two of the soldiers battling with Dade, taking them to the ground where they rolled and screamed. One clawed at his chest as the fire ate away at his skin, then fell silent when it incinerated his heart, while the other bashed his flaming face into the grass before falling still.
Dade collapsed to his knees, bleeding everywhere but still fighting—still managing to kill another with a weak bout of fire blazing from his hand to the human’s face while two more advanced on him.
The fire went out when its task was complete, smoke sizzling from the bodies into the cool night air. It had to be nearing dawn, which meant more help would hopefully arrive soon.
Maybe we could do this, stop this, if we kept working together.
Snatching up another forgotten sword, I hurried to Dade, running, racing against time, the buoyancy of hope helping me to ignore the pain in my stomach and the ache in my skull to leap over body after body. A fallen soldier reached for me, trying to trip me…
“Get up.” The words carried across the valley, but on his knees, he couldn’t stop it, fire sailing through the air and hitting not the soldiers with their swords meeting Dade’s but the group fighting a small ways behind them. “Get up, get up, get up.”
One of those swords met his side as he sliced the arm holding the other, and then he fell forward. The remaining soldier kicked him in the gut twice, then forced him to his back.
I was close enough now to see that Dade’s eyes were closed, but his weapons still twitched in his hand, lifted slightly, then fell. Fear struck me cold, weighing each step as I screamed his name, screamed for him to shift, but of course, he couldn’t.
He couldn’t shift, which meant… “Dade,” I screeched at the top of my lungs as that sword came down, poised to pierce through his chest.
Then he grabbed it.
His hand wrapped around the steel, and with a swiftness no one could have predicted, he pulled it and the soldier to the side. The man cursed, lurched, and fell over the king. They rolled down a small slope, and I raced after them, dodging a man with a mace who ran past me, wailing, his other hand on fire.
They came to a violent stop before a giant rock, and then I was taken to the ground, a fist in my shirt and a blade aimed at my nose.
My dagger was lost within the grass, as was my sword, but I gripped the soldier’s wrist before my face and sent a wave of heat into my hands. It startled him enough for me to plunge my heated fingers into his eyes. They bulged, then darkened. He screamed, black flowers exploding from where his eyes had once been.
A growl, and then a wolf launched at my attacker, tumbling with him into the ground behind me with earthshaking force. A one-eyed midnight black wolf tore at the soldier’s face, then leaped toward the king as I climbed to my feet.
Scythe didn’t make it, an arrow hitting his side. He rolled, shifting back into his Fae form to pluck it free before engaging in hand-to-hand combat with a bleeding soldier who sprang up from the grass.
I blinked, my vision blurring. Dade. I walked on, breaking into a run when I heard it.
A snarl vicious enough to tear down the moon as another blade sank into Dade’s side. He’d shifted. His white fur soaked in red and brown, too much for me to know whether it was his or someone else’s blood.
Both, I acknowledged with a rapidly sinking heart as he was forced back to his haunches, that same soldier now dead next to him, but another having taken his place.
Bron laughed, the sound spurring me faster, then lunged forward, too fast for Dade to dodge as he shifted back from his wolf form. He missed his heart but hit his shoulder, the sword pushing right through flesh and tendon.
Dade roared, the agony within heightening my rage as I snatched a sword from a fallen soldier’s open palm and circled behind Bron’s back.
Too lost to his attempt at another killing blow, the prince paid me no mind.
My blade hit home, sliding into the back of his neck…
At the same time, his sword cut through Dade’s chest.
They both collapsed, and I screamed, shoving the dead prince from Dade and stabbing him again in rage, ensuring he was as dead as dead could get. And then, with shaking hands, I turned back to my king.
To my mate.
A crack flooded my ears, a ravine opening and yawning wide inside me, filling and overflowing with blistering pain.
No. No, no, no.
“Dade,” I said, brushing his hair away from his face. “Savage.” I pushed at the gushing wound at his chest. Blood oozed between my fingers, so warm. Still warm. “Hey.” I leaned over him, nudging my forehead into his. “Hang on.” I sniffed. “Wait, okay? I’ll get help. I’ll get a healer.”
Twisting away, I looked for one while knowing I’d find none. None that weren’t already tied up helping others or dead. Though it was fading, the elves and citizens’ assistance having helped to gain more of an upper hand, the battle raged on.
No one was coming.
I didn’t care. I called for help, shouted for it until my voice grew hoarse, then gave my attention back to the king. “Open your eyes,” I demanded through gritted teeth. “Right now.”
Silence. So much silence when I needed the solid thud of his heart against my blood-soaked hands. But he couldn’t.
He couldn’t because I hadn’t, and we hadn’t had the time to… My eyes burned then flooded, that chasm inside me too large, too overpowering, too much to bear.
It singed each breath, eroded my bones, and sliced at my skin.
“I forgive you,” I sobbed, the words robbed from my soul, my heart, fracturing into the air warmed by his blood. It was all over me, slippery, so much of it, shit…
My fingers gripped the collar of his tunic, so wet with his blood, and I shook him with every ounce of strength I did not possess. “Please, Dade. Come back. Come back, come back, come back. I forgive you.” I fell over his wounds as though I could stem them all if only I could cover them…
“I forgive you,” I yelled, the words echoing into eternity, useless, meaningless now that he was no longer.
No, no. I grabbed at his cheeks, fingers desperate for his rumbling laughter beneath me, that smile. What I wouldn’t give to see it, to hear it in his voice. The words trembled out of me, over and over until I couldn’t breathe unless I said them to his mouth.
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