One Blood Ruby

by Melissa Marr

  Several officers drew weapons.

  At first they simply brandished them, but eventually one the men fired. Rhys’ wall stopped the bullet. It simply thudded into the air and then dropped. Will felt Rhys flinch though. There was a limit to how long anyone could hold the air around them like a protective barrier, especially after the day they’d had.

  Will looked at Roan. “Stay close to him. A shield like this works better if it’s very small in space. It easier to hold. Stay with him.”

  Then Will walked through the shield and toward Creed’s prison.

  “What are you doing?” Creed and Roan both asked at once. The nearest guard asked the same thing. It was an odd series of not quite simultaneous voices asking the same question.

  He didn’t answer. He pulled air to him, not in as thick or wide of a shield as Rhys had done, but enough that the air vibrated an exhalation away from his skin. Then he walked over to the still-locked cage.

  “What are you doing, Will?” Creed asked again.

  “Something good.” Will concentrated on feeling the air inside the cage. He closed his eyes. Sometimes that was the easiest way to see everything, by not using his eyes. The air around people touched every surface, every shape, flowing around everything in constant vibration. It was the inverse of water in a container. Water took the shape of the vessel. Air was everything inside, outside, over, under, and around an object—be it vessel or solid.

  And that air could be agitated just as it could be slowed to be as a shield.

  As soon as Will could feel the air starting to respond, he dropped his shield for the moment it took to set the air inside the cage to manic motion. It was only a moment that he was vulnerable.

  The walls of Creed’s prison started vibrating from the air’s battering. At first, Will thought he’d made a mistake. He’d never tried this on anything this large or complex. He could feel the walls rattling, shuddering, trying to come apart.

  The sound was like a gasp, air moving faster and faster until it felt like he’d created the center of a tornado in the cage. There was no way Will could’ve tried this with his mother in the room. It was too dangerous for humans.

  Creed was an air affinity, too, so Will had no worry that he would be injured. If anything, Creed could protect himself from the currents circling him and pressing away. It felt like every molecule of air, every exhalation in the room wanted to run away at once.

  “Duck,” Creed called. “Everyone down!”

  The air pressure grew until Will could think of nothing else and then the air screamed, a shrill noise that grew louder as the glass shattered. The pieces ricocheted as they blasted outward.

  The sudden sting in Will’s arm surprised him. He’d never been hit by the explosions he’d created. Will glanced over at his arm, seeing a gush of blood. Absently, he reached out to touch it.

  That was when Creed knocked him to the ground and snapped, “Focus before you get shot a second time!”

  “Shot?”

  Creed jerked him to his feet, shielding Will with his body as he propelled him toward Rhys and Roan.

  Once they were beside the Unseelie prince, Rhys said, “I stopped most of the bullets. I apologize that I missed that one.”

  Roan wrapped an arm around Will’s waist. “That was your plan? Expose your affinity and get shot?”

  Will grinned. “It worked. I wasn’t sure if it would on something that large.”

  “Rhys could have done—”

  Rhys interrupted. “The boy did well.”

  There was something wonderful about having extracted Creed and done so with his affinity. Later, Will would ponder it.

  “Roan?”

  “Yes?”

  “The ground. It’s shifting,” Will said. “But you’re not earth and neither am . . . I . . . or . . .”

  Words were getting more difficult as exhaustion and blood loss combined to make everything seem suddenly fuzzy.

  “Ground . . . ,” he added, trying to explain.

  But then the ground seemed to vanish—or maybe everything did. Will couldn’t keep his eyes open to figure out exactly what had happened. All he was sure of was that Creed and Roan were holding on to him, but he still felt like he was falling.

  forty-one

  LILY

  “Violet will come to my palace,” the king pronounced. They had stopped, and Lily realized that they were at a crossroads leading to the regents’ individual homes.

  “I’m not your subject.” Violet tilted her chin upward. “My vow is to her.”

  There was something argumentative in Violet’s every move. Even when she wasn’t being confrontational, her tone was one that invited trouble. Lily had the same instinct, but she repressed it unless she needed it. Violet never seemed to do so, except on the rare occasion that she offered calm obedience to Lily.

  Leith’s smile was all teeth. He reached out and tousled Violet’s hair. “Oh, I like this one.”

  Violet growled. “I am not a pet to be—”

  “Vi! He is the king.” Lily stepped close to Violet. She didn’t expect her grandfather to react poorly, and in truth he was still smiling in that absurdly cheerful way of his, but he was also the same affinity as Violet. That meant his temper could be volatile too.

  The queen said nothing. For a woman who usually seemed imperious, her silence was unsettling. Her lips were pressed together as she looked at Violet, and that made Lily all the more uncomfortable.

  “Oh, come now, Dell! She’s the daughter of our daughter’s betrothed,” Leith pointed out in that merry voice of his. “She’s protective of LilyDark. . . .”

  Endellion said nothing.

  “She’s a fine granddaughter,” Leith added.

  The weight of that sentence seemed to toll through the forest around them.

  “Granddaughter?” Endellion and Violet said in tandem.

  “The daughter of our son-in-law, so . . . granddaughter by matrimony.” Leith seemed to tower over all of them, joyous in his pronouncements. “We have gained two granddaughters, and you have gained a grandson too.”

  At that the queen tensed, as if she heard other words not spoken. As with the rest of their peculiar interactions, this was one fraught with things that neither Lily nor Violet understood.

  “I’ll treat the boy as gently as I’ve treated Rhys,” Leith said, sounding deadly serious for a moment.

  The Queen of Blood and Rage exhaled sharply before saying, “I’d have been kinder to your sons if they were . . . not hateful to me and mine. They’ve tried to start troubles, attacked Lily, and—”

  “Nacton,” the king interjected. “Nacton was the one doing that. You know that as well as I do. Calder simply follows.”

  “He chose to follow.”

  They scowled and stared, seemingly forgetting that Violet and Lily were there. And Lily wasn’t interested in whatever decades or centuries of conflict they were trying to sort in hidden words. She cleared her throat gently and asked, “But aren’t Vi and I both your grandchildren? That’s what it sounds like you’re saying.”

  Leith gave her an approving look, and Endellion merely took another deep breath. Then she looked at the king and said, “Fine. As long as any of your get aren’t troubling—”

  “Intentionally troubling on major issues,” Leith cut in. “If they are unsupportive of a unified throne, you are free to be difficult.”

  “Fine,” Endellion bit off. Another deep breath followed before she resumed in a milder voice, “If any of your children or grandchildren are supportive, I will be . . . polite to them. Better?”

  “Violet?” Leith prompted. “Do you support a unified throne?”

  For a moment, the weight of both regents’ gazes seemed to quell Violet’s naturally bold temperament. Then, she glanced at Lily and grinned, “I support Lily. I support the world not being so nasty. I support a good sharp blade applied to anyone—relative or not—who threatens me or my friends.” She crossed her arms and looked at first the king and the
n the queen. “Or my father.”

  Endellion looked increasingly happy as Violet spoke. “You sound more Unseelie than Seelie.”

  Violet’s fire came to her hand in the form of a short knife. “As long as you and yours aren’t a threat to mine, I have no issue with anyone, any court, any unity or separation. I would like to know who attacked us though.”

  At that the King of Fire and Truth was preening and the Queen of Blood and Rage was staring at Violet with obvious interest. “As would I.”

  Violet glanced at Lily.

  “If it wasn’t my Seelie uncles, who was it?” Lily prompted.

  “I will ask those in my court,” Leith said.

  “Go with him, Vi.” Lily met her grandfather’s gaze. “I want to know what he discovers.”

  Lily had just challenged one of the fae regents. The reality of that was not settling on her yet, and before it could, she added, “And I will learn what I can in the Unseelie Court.”

  Her grandparents exchanged a smile, and then Leith shrugged and walked away.

  Violet followed.

  She was Seelie, and if the queen thought that her temper was Unseelie, she wasn’t paying enough attention to the actual true nature of the Seelie-born fae. It was obvious to anyone without bias that fae of both courts were more similar than not. There were minute differences, primarily in skin color, but in truth, any other differences were merely a subjective opinion that said more about the speaker than about the object.

  Once they were alone, the queen looked at Lily and said, “Nacton might not have caused the wave or the fire, but he knows who did. The king knows more than he’s saying too.”

  Lily gaped at her briefly.

  “I’ve been quarreling with Leith for centuries.” Endellion shook her head. “He has his tells. I do too. He answers by omitting things.”

  As Lily played over what she could remember, she couldn’t figure out what her grandmother meant to say. It felt very much like a test she was failing. The king had defended his sons, flirted with the queen, and spoke of family.

  “He didn’t mention our daughter,” Endellion said after a moment.

  “Eilidh?”

  “Yes.” Then the queen’s voice grew less conversational: “Weapon.”

  A sharp whistle cut through the air a split second before the queen stepped backward abruptly. Three more whistles followed. Lily realized a moment later that they were arrows. One nicked her shoulder.

  “Who dares?” Endellion’s voice crashed through the forest as she saw the blood on Lily’s shoulder.

  “I’m fine.” Lily dropped and tried to figure out where the shooter was. She had no long distance weapon with which to defend herself. Swords weren’t much use against arrows, and Lily had none of her guns because of the incident at the pier.

  As more arrows came toward them, Endellion disproved Lily’s theory on swords. She moved quickly enough that she cut down a number of them as they flew toward her. Earth and air both surged toward Lily like shields, but Lily brushed them back. “Let me help.”

  Endellion didn’t reply, but she didn’t overpower Lily either.

  “Where are they?” Lily asked.

  “Moving.” The Queen of Blood and Rage started to stalk toward the attackers. Soil lifted like a shield in front of her, rolling forward like a vast invisible plow was gouging the earth. There was nothing in either world that would make Lily want to be in the shoes of the fae who had attacked the queen.

  There was a seeming blindness to the queen’s temper as she went in the direction of the last volley of arrows. They hit the soil and jutted there only to be buried in the earth as the moving shields shifted around the queen. It was akin to the waves that had towered over them at the pier, but this was the obvious extension of Endellion’s affinity.

  Lily kept her sword aloft as she followed the queen.

  Without warning, an arrow came from behind Lily. It pierced her upper leg, sinking deep into the flesh, and causing Lily to scream. Unlike the one that had grazed her shoulder, this one had embedded in her skin.

  The Queen of Blood and Rage spun to face Lily. Her hand lifted and the earth around Lily rose up to shield her. As that happened, the shield that had protected Endellion dropped—and a blur of arrows flew toward the queen.

  “Grandmother!”

  Endellion stayed in front of Lily. Earth flew around them, encasing them in a mound akin to old burial cairns Lily had visited with her father on holiday. The earth hardened like stone, sheltering them from further attack. The queen, however, only looked at Lily, smiled, and said, “You’re safe.”

  Then she closed her eyes.

  Lily crawled toward her. Blood was soaking the ground, and broken arrow shafts were crushed under them. The queen was alive but not moving.

  “Help,” Lily asked the earth.

  Instead of protecting herself, the Queen of Blood and Rage had defended Lily, and now there were several arrows protruding from her body.

  forty-two

  EILIDH

  Eilidh could hear Torquil and Zephyr speaking, but their words had become nothing more than cacophony. It was as if they’d slipped into a tongue she didn’t recognize. She could hear the earth and sea though. They were growing louder, beckoning her.

  Her mother and her niece were wrapped in soil where no air could find them. Someone had taken their blood and spilled it in earth. Without a word spoken, Eilidh turned and started to descend the stairs of her tower.

  Torquil took her arm in his hands, holding her back.

  “Release,” she managed to say as she shook him off and continued down the steps. Something was wrong.

  Or perhaps everything was wrong.

  As her feet touched soil, she heard her mother cry out in pain. Her mother’s voice had joined with the soil. Both of her mothers were hurting. The earth was sick. The coronation had been threatened by human and fae alike.

  Eilidh had gone to sea, felt the water beckoning, and when she’d given over to it, the waves tried to bring her family home to her. The sea had pulled Lily, Endellion, and Leith under where the poisons and humanity couldn’t destroy them. And Eilidh herself had gone to Rhys and Zephyr.

  Still, they were not safe. No one was safe. Her mother was in pain, blood soaking soil. Eilidh had to protect them. It was why she had been given life—to protect.

  Eilidh’s body felt like it was fracturing. Earth reached through sea, sending tentacles of vines to ensnare her and working with fire to create lava tubes to imprison her. She was theirs. Belonging to no one or nothing but the Hidden Lands. It was foolish to think elsewise.

  Not safe, not good, not pure. The Hidden Lands were speaking, and finally she understood them. The world was too poisoned. They were protecting her, as she was a part of them. Need. Stay. Need. Safe.

  She didn’t resist. The elements were a part of her, had always been within her, and she was of them. If she sickened, so too would they. Of course it was right that they hold her.

  “Eilidh!” Torquil spoke. She knew him even now, but the name-word seemed less familiar than before now. That was what she’d worn as a name. She knew it. It was wrong though.

  Steadily, she walked past the fae who were reaching out to her. They were hers. They were all hers. This was her duty. She would protect them all.

  “Land,” she whispered.

  “Sea,” she sighed.

  “Fire,” she screamed.

  Her body was one with the elements that had given her life as an infant, and she could feel her seams, all of the cracks within her body, starting to vanish. She would come apart. She would give the Hidden Lands the strength and health that she’d been lent by the elements.

  “Air . . .” She exhaled the final word, the piece of her she had barely known. It was all there. Other affinities were in her bones and blood. Healing, dreams, compulsion, they were inside her because the Hidden Lands were rooted in her every fiber. Metals were there, letting her draw sword and knife, dagger and ax. The thought
of it brought weapons singing through the air toward her body where it was suspended in a fiery, sea grass–wrapped cage. Waves circled her. The corrywreckan became even more vast than it already was.

  “Home,” she told them, her voice echoing across the Hidden Lands. She felt them all, her family, her fae, Seelie and Unseelie. They would be safer now.

  “No!” Torquil tried to pull her back, to separate her from the Hidden Lands.

  “Come,” she said, wrapping herself around him as she told the lands, “He is of me. He must be safe.”

  The elements allowed her this, and her last thought was of gratitude as Torquil was completely wrapped in vines. Thorns jutted from them. No one could harm him now.

  Then Eilidh let her affinities control her, gave over everything that was thought, and she went to find what belonged to her and those who had tried to take it away.

  forty-three

  CREED

  They’d only just entered the Hidden Lands when Rhys stiffened as if he, too, had been shot. Will was alert enough to walk, but he leaned heavily on Roan and Creed both in order to do so. Rhys was obviously more than able to keep them safe in this world, so it was as fine of a plan as anything could be.

  “What?”

  “She’s missing.” Rhys inhaled sharply, turning as he did so. “She can’t be missing. She’s—”

  “Who?” Creed’s panic was starting to feel like it had reached a critical level. Alkamy was dead; Lily’s father was shot. Will was shot. He couldn’t bear the thought of Lily being hurt too.

  Rhys ignored him.

  Creed grabbed his arm, and immediately felt stupid for thinking that would be a threat to the queen’s son. “Who’s missing?”

  Finally, Rhys seemed to gather enough focus to say, “The queen.”