The Iron Crown (The Darkest Court)

by M. A. Grant

  It was a sacrifice Roark shouldn’t have made. Mother spins on him, grips his jaw tightly in her hand, and drags him down to kneel beside her throne. Her magick swells and the air is so bitterly cold it hurts to breathe.

  Roark doesn’t flinch. He stares up at Mother, one hand clenched around her wrist, his breathing steady even as frost expands from her grip to cover his cheeks, his mouth, and his throat.

  Smith is almost as quick on the defense as Mother was in her attack. His hand clamps around Mother’s throat and the air around him wavers from the heat he throws off. It meets Mother’s magick and steam rises as they remain locked in that battle of wills.

  “Unhand me.” Mother’s words drip with the promise of pain, and Smith flinches. But he doesn’t falter.

  “Release my husband,” he counters.

  She glares down at Roark. The frost has climbed higher, nearly to his eyes. If I didn’t know better, I would think the expression flitting over her face when she sees him this way is regret. It’s gone too quickly to know for sure, but she releases him. He coughs the moment she drops contact. Smith wraps an arm around his chest, hauling him up and away from the throne. He keeps his body between Mother and Roark, and the ley line sparks in warning for her to keep her distance.

  With Roark beyond her reach, Mother glances toward Sláine, who hasn’t moved from his seat. Her eyes narrow and she points at me, though there’s no warning build of her magick. “Will you defend him as well?”

  Sláine’s scar stretches when he offers her a wry grin. “I’ve already defected, remember? Why shouldn’t Lugh?”

  “You support this?” Mother hisses.

  He shrugs. “He’s being a bit dramatic about it, but what can you expect from the baby of the family?”

  “Dramatic?” I can’t swallow it down fast enough and Sláine’s shrewd sideways glance confirms I took the bait. Of all my family, he’s always been the best at poking my open wounds, finding my weaknesses, and exploiting them. I never understood his patience. Or his callousness.

  “Yes, dramatic,” Sláine states. “This is a war, Lugh. People will die.” He leans back in his chair, feigning nonchalance, though he never turns far enough to lose sight of Mother.

  “People like Keiran? Or does he not count because he’s only human? I forgot you shared Mother’s views.”

  Smith’s sharp inhalation gives me no pleasure.

  Banked fury glitters in Sláine’s eyes and his hand twitches, probably to reach for his scar. He pulls himself back together swiftly. “Be very careful, brother,” he murmurs. “You speak of things you don’t understand.”

  “I understand all too well. Mother forced Keiran to transform against his will. She knew he would be vulnerable afterward. She knew the Sluagh would protect him. She used them as a shield while she fled back to this place unharmed.”

  “Yet the human lives,” Mother says.

  I clench my hands into fists and glare at her. “His people died. He nearly died. Would you have noticed if he hadn’t survived? Would it have given you a moment’s pause?” Behind her the shades drift aimlessly. I wave a hand at them. “Have you ever thought of your victims?”

  Sláine’s slouch vanishes. He leans forward and stares at the seeming emptiness I gestured to. I know he can’t see the shades, but his sudden interest is unnerving. “What victims?”

  “Everyone she destroyed to claim her throne.”

  “You know nothing of the sacrifice required to rule a Court,” Mother says. “You’ve spent your life running from those duties, safe because of what I have done to give you your position—”

  “I’ve spent my life running from the shades you created!” I snap. “Did you know they linger here in the sídhe? That they surround you even now, just as they do Goodfellow?”

  Every eye in the room fixes on me. The unnatural reality of my power lies exposed to those who could use it to hurt me most. There are no allies here. I long to return to Keiran, who will hold me in his arms without hesitation because this is who I am, and that’s enough for him. Has always been enough.

  “I hate this place.” The words scrape out of my throat, biting and bitter and hateful. “You let me play chess with their bones and told me nothing would harm me. Yet even you, the Queen of Air and Darkness, couldn’t prevent these shades from finding me and digging their fingers into my head and whispering all their secrets to me. They tell me what you did to them. How you did it. They thought I would help them. I was a child, and I bore the weight of your actions!”

  I turn to look at Roark, my brother who fought to free me from this hell, even if he didn’t understand why I needed to abandon him. “You asked me once what monster haunted me.”

  He nods, a fragile, wounded movement, and Smith’s arm tightens around his chest.

  I point at Mother. “She did.”

  “Enough,” Mother whispers. “You shall speak no more.”

  She trembles. From rage or sorrow or fear, I don’t know. I don’t care. After so long carrying this weight, the sudden absence of it leaves me empty.

  “Do you know what the Sluagh call me?” I ask her. “Of course not. They couldn’t possibly compare to the grandeur of the Courts, so you never bothered with them. I am their Horned King. The speaker for their gods. You cannot stop my mouth. Your empire is built from bone and blood and now you find it cannot bear your weight. The gods have sent you a reckoning, and he nearly killed us all tonight.”

  Sláine taps his fingers on the table, watching Mother’s reaction, the mask of her eerie calm. “If we survive this war,” he says slowly, “the Courts must change, or others like Goodfellow will rise again. Surely our institutions can be built without such bloodshed.”

  “Shut up.” We both jerk at Roark’s harsh warning. He’s stepped out of Smith’s grasp. His head’s bowed and his fists clench at his sides. “This Court was built from a rebellion. It grew from death itself, and that will never change, no matter how much we may wish it could.” He finally looks up and his pale eyes blaze with a pain I’ve never seen, a pain he’s never let me see before. “Both of you stand here and criticize, yet you have enjoyed full lives because of the blood on Mother’s hands. On my hands.” His voice cracks. “And now you intend to abandon us. To walk away and pretend you didn’t help to create this. Fine. Leave. We don’t need you.”

  Like Mother, Roark draws his glamour up and he lets us see him do it. The pain on his face is there one moment and hidden away the next. He straightens, sets his shoulders, and the bite of his icy magick has nothing on his voice when he states, “Freedom isn’t given. There is always a cost to it. The only people who believe otherwise are naïfs or fools, and neither have a place in my army.”

  “Your army?” Sláine scoffs. “I thought it would take her longer to earn your forgiveness.”

  Roark’s beyond Sláine’s jibes now, untouchable to his petty taunts. “This isn’t about forgiveness, Sláine. If it were, you and Mother would be on equal ground.”

  Sláine stands, furious, and I recognize the set of his shoulders. The bitterest wars are those between brothers. “You consider me as guilty as the woman who stole you off the ice and pretended you were hers?” Sláine demands, his voice rising when Roark’s composure doesn’t break.

  Mine does. My glamour fails and I’m no longer the Horned King. I’m just Lugh, Roark’s little brother.

  “What?” My feeble question lands against my brothers with the weight of iron-tipped arrows. Sláine pales, Roark’s glamour shivers, and I reach for Keiran on instinct, only to be met with empty air.

  “Lugh,” Sláine rasps, “I didn’t mean to—”

  “Coward,” Roark snaps, “don’t you dare lie to him now.”

  “Roark, what is he talking about?”

  Smith’s eyes narrow as he watches Roark and the room fills with the buzzing heat of the ley line’s magick. I wonder just ho
w much of that power he’s channeling into my brother right now, how much strength Roark requires to be able to wear his flawless mask when he takes a breath and tries to right a falling world for me.

  “Smith isn’t the first ley line host Mother sought,” he says calmly. “She found one before him. A baby with uncontrollable powers who had been left to die outside the village where he was born. The Green Man’s loss had left both Courts weak, and she hoped by bringing the child home, the Winter Court would rise to greater heights.”

  “But you can’t channel ley lines,” I blurt out. Roark’s unusual, too powerful, too perfect, the only one of us who can cast fire, but he’s my brother. I would know if he was something else, something like Smith—

  “Not directly,” Roark agrees. “But I can share Smith’s power. Shape it. Like knows like, it would seem.”

  Mother hasn’t moved. Hasn’t spoken or looked away. She’s a statue, an observer to this moment, and I hate her for it. “You wanted to use him?” I ask her, pointing at Roark. “You wanted to use a child to secure your throne?”

  “It didn’t work,” she states, her voice hollow. “The sídhe transformed him and his magick. He was no longer a host. He was useless.”

  Roark winces despite her lack of inflection and I step toward him, only to have Smith hold up a hand in warning. Any trace of kindness in his face is gone, replaced with hard edges and a strength I know he’s wearing for Roark’s sake alone.

  I hold up my own hands to show him I mean no harm, which makes the ley line calm a little. “Roark,” I say, and I’m amazed when he looks at me. “Have you always known?”

  “No,” Sláine says for him. His eyes are red-rimmed with unshed tears. “Only I did.”

  Another blow. At least this one knocks my thoughts about, helps slide pieces into perspective. “So you never really hated us?”

  “I thought I did,” Sláine admits.

  “Stop,” Roark tells him quietly. “You are our brother. I remember what you were like before you tried to prove yourself worthy of your title. You never hated me, or Lugh. You hated her. You have every right to, and later, you can tell her off and walk away for good. But you can’t yet.” My brother squares his shoulders and addresses us both with a softness I’ve never seen from him. “This isn’t about our family anymore. This is about protecting the fae who trust their lives and safety to us. This is about putting faith in something bigger than ourselves. About making a choice we won’t regret if we survive. I know what I’ve chosen. I can’t decide for you.” He looks to me, the brother I’ve always admired, tired, broken, but steady. The pillar of our Triumvirate. He always has been, no matter what Mother’s claimed over the centuries. As long as Roark remains, our Court will stand.

  “I can’t stay,” I tell him, hating the roughness in my voice. “You’re the best of us, Roark, but I can’t stay at your side.”

  He offers me the ghost of a smile. “I don’t remember asking you to.”

  My laugh turned sob chokes me when I remember the first time I heard those same words. Long ago, I had to stand in a public audience before Mother and argue why I should be allowed to train with the Hunt and live outside the sídhe. Roark stood beside me while I floundered and tried to explain why I needed that freedom without admitting the true reason. He didn’t speak for me until I finally gave up, resigned to my failure. He defended me, defended the Hunt, cajoled the Court into believing my freedom was in our best interests. Even Mother was swayed by his arguments, and I was granted my request.

  We walked out of the audience and when the doors closed behind us, I turned to him and started crying. When I told him I had to leave, that I couldn’t stay, he ruffled my hair and said, I don’t remember asking you to.

  There’s more behind his words now, more than either of us is comfortable saying aloud: an echo of the brotherly love that sustained us, and forgiveness and acceptance of my choices. He offers me liberty without hesitation, just as he did so long ago, and it’s blessing and curse in one.

  Roark crosses his arms over his chest and lifts his chin, challenging me with a single look. “Stay safe, Lugh.”

  “You too, brother,” I whisper and walk away from these people to return to my family in the Wylds.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Keiran

  “He’s back,” Drest announces as he pokes his head into my tent.

  Jokinen’s been binding the last of my superficial injuries by the light of a small oil lamp. Seb’s magick—the Green Man’s magick—has mostly healed my injuries and kept the transformation sickness at bay. Jokinen swears when I rise, but only makes me wait for her to tie off the last bandage before letting me go.

  It’s quiet outside my tent. After news of Goodfellow’s win and our heavy losses, the camp’s been lost in somber mourning. The fighters who were with me in the sídhe have taken it upon themselves to tell the story, giving me this one night of freedom from the public’s questions. The unexpected liberty has left me untethered. Even the Hunt’s quiet support hasn’t put my world right. The sight of Lugh striding through the camp, his head held high, does. Every dark, broken piece of me that’s been quietly bleeding since I walked out of the sídhe knits back together when he draws up in front of me and places his hand over my heart.

  “It’s good to be home,” he says.

  Armel and Cybel have joined Drest to watch us from a nearby fire. They give us space, but knowing they’re here, close enough to intercede if Lugh needs it, helps. Lugh doesn’t seem to notice their presence. He releases a weary sigh when I cup his face in my hands and wipe away the damp streaks of tears with my thumbs. “What about your family?” I ask him, keeping my voice low.

  “Roark understood. He let me go.”

  Gods, his lopsided smile makes my chest ache. There’s more to this story, but we’re standing in the middle of the camp. Lugh deserves more privacy than this. “We can talk inside.”

  He groans and lets his head fall forward to hit my chest. It’s instinctual to wrap my arms around him, protecting him from everyone around us, even if they aren’t threats. “Can we go to bed instead?” he pleads. “I don’t want to think anymore tonight.”

  I peer over Lugh’s head to Cybel, who looks lost for the first time in centuries. I doubt he expected such a schism in the royal family. For them to release Lugh from his obligations now, to break their familial ties when we’ve reached the end of Faerie itself is unnecessarily cruel. Cybel meets my eyes and gives a short, sharp nod. Drest and Armel nod as well. They’ll watch the camp for us tonight while I comfort Lugh.

  “To bed then,” I murmur into Lugh’s hair. He hums and lets me lead him inside the thegn’s tent. The thick canvas blocks most of the night’s chill, and our bedrolls fill the small space. They lie side by side for one last night, as they should.

  “What will we do tomorrow?” he asks. He lets me close up the flaps while he strips out of his bloody clothes.

  “We’ll watch the battle. Then, if it goes as I expect, we’ll face Goodfellow and our traitors after. Hopefully we’ll take most of them with us. Facing him here, before he can recover from fighting your mother, may be the only way to stop him and keep the rest of our people safe.”

  He’s silent, head bent as he works to undo the laces of his pants, and his fingers keep fumbling in his exhaustion. He offers a half-hearted complaint when I set about the task for him, but quiets and lets me work soon enough. I need to do this, to care for him as much as he’ll let me. He steps free of his pants, using a hand on my shoulder to steady himself. His linen shirt falls about his thighs, garishly stained with my blood. I scowl at it, my earlier fury rising. Lugh notices. He taps my cheek with a finger.

  “Don’t,” he chides. “My laundry doesn’t deserve your anger.”

  “Smart-ass,” I grumble and smack his hand away so I can rise.

  I’ve been saving a small cup of water and some b
andages, knowing Lugh would want to wash as best he could after tonight, and settle onto the bedrolls with them. This won’t be perfect. Honestly, it won’t come close to the kind of experience he could have had in one of the heated soaking tubs of the sídhe. Despite that, he chose to spend the night out here with me and our people. This is poor repayment for his loyalty.

  I dip one of the bandages in the water and gesture at his shirt. “Off,” I murmur.

  He gives me a curious look and fiddles with the hem for a moment. “Keir—?”

  “Take it off, Lugh.”

  The linen skates over his skin, drawing up higher and exposing him to the lantern’s flickering light. He shudders when I lean forward and press a kiss to his hip. “You saved me,” I whisper against the jut of the bone.

  “I didn’t.”

  I look up at him, honest and open and desperately in love. Gods, I will vanquish any foe sent after me if it ensures this man’s place by my side. “You did,” I say. “Tonight. Throughout our journeys. And at the beginning.”

  Lugh flushes, but doesn’t look away. He watches when I lift the cloth and begin wiping away the places where blood seeped through the shirt’s fabric to stain his skin. He stands patiently, his breath catching if I brush over a ticklish spot, but otherwise calm. More together than he was outside this small, safe space. This surrender is all I’ve ever wanted from him, to lavish him with care, to be open about it, and to know this isn’t the only time I’m allowed such intimacies.

  The water in the cup is almost gone by the time I finish dabbing at his nearly healed cheek. The bottom tie of the tent’s flap is quick to undo, and I toss the remaining liquid outside into the snow. Lugh crawls under the blankets and furs while I finish tidying. He shifts over to make enough space for me to slide in beside him, and the moment I’ve dragged the blankets up above my shoulders, Lugh tucks himself in close. He buries his face against my chest and settles a thigh between my legs.