The Iron Crown (The Darkest Court)

by M. A. Grant

  Movement at my left. Keiran’s there, broken from the cover of the trees, returned to the Hunt in my moment of need while his huscarls lead our hundreds of troops in a flowing stream down the hillside and onto the field. They cut off Goodfellow’s rear escape. With that last flank secured, I ride toward Roark, knowing Keiran will catch up to us.

  Goodfellow doesn’t see the shift in the battle. He strides forward, sword raised, Roark’s limp body in his sights. I urge Liath on and the Hunt thunders at my back. Keiran joins us, hefting his father’s axe as our horses race down the gentle hillside toward the widening circle of space around Goodfellow.

  Roark struggles to rise. The glistening edge of Goodfellow’s sword falls.

  Too late. We’re too late.

  Mother breaks free from her redcap guard and throws herself at Goodfellow. He barely parries her first strike, his sword’s iron splintering her ice dagger as the glamour is destroyed. She spins away, unsheathing her only remaining sword. The bitter wind she conjures forces Goodfellow to turn his head to protect his eyes. An opening. The fingers of her free hand spread wide, and her magick bursts forth in an unstoppable wall of ice. He avoids it with a desperate thicket of vines, cushioning the impact and breaking the initial surge of the attack.

  We’re so close now. Keiran pushes Dubh ahead of me, swinging his axe in a wide arc to keep the path clear, his humanity leading us deeper and deeper through the enemy’s ranks. I lose sight of Mother; I only catch glimpses of ice or vines and feel the buffeting forces of her glamour raging against Goodfellow’s magick. The line of Mainland Sluagh ahead of us shifts, twisting to avoid Keiran’s blows, and my family is there, so close.

  Roark staggers up to his feet, bleeding, trying to support his weight, and failing. Seb and Sláine must have regained their flank, because decaying corpses lie in Sláine’s wake, along with bodies impaled on thorns like a grisly testament to the Green Man’s power. My oldest brother’s nearly fought to Roark’s side. Fear colors his rasped calls. We slow our approach, searching for a way to jump into the fray, but Mother and Goodfellow’s clash is too violent.

  Mother darts in and forces Goodfellow away from my brothers. Her graceful, powerful swings remind me why fae like Cybel revere her. She’s unstoppable, a force of nature, a mother determined to protect her children no matter the cost.

  Despite the forced retreat, Goodfellow keeps taunting her. His words ring out against the collision of their swords. “A failed Court. Failed sons. A failed rule. I spent centuries stealing power from you and Oberon, using your hatred and distrust of each other to take my own throne. You made me the king I am—”

  “You are no king,” Mother spits. She ducks as she attacks again, scoops a handful of snow, and uses her glamour to hurtle it into Goodfellow’s face. Her magick sharpens the flakes so they cut against his skin, leaving him bleeding from a thousand delicate scratches.

  Instead of responding, he rips a hand up through the air. Mother can’t dodge all the vines, no matter how quickly she raises a shield against them. One slices at her shoulder and cheek as it flails. She cuts it down, but is forced several steps back. Around us, the fighting slows.

  Queen Mab, the untouchable Empress of the Gloaming and Winter, the Lady of Air and Darkness, is wounded. The dark blood trickles down her cheek and drips into the trampled snow.

  “A king’s purpose is to take his kingdom.” Goodfellow growls, clutching a hand over his injured face. “What more is there than striking down those who stand against you? Than moving your pieces into position and closing the trap around your enemies? Than using magick to climb? I have studied you, learned from you, fashioned myself in your image. I hid behind one face and watched you build this Court just as you did when you lived among the Seelie. I applied your lessons as I found people who believed my promises, who died to prove their loyalty to me. You have brought me here, to my triumph. Your blood is owed me. Your power is mine and I will claim it, as I have all others’. To rule is to conquer.” He lifts his arms wide. His sword glints, and the last remnants of the Green Man’s stolen power expand through the air, drowning out all other magick, drowning out the draugr’s roar of challenge. “What else is left for me to learn?”

  The dead litter the ground. Sláine supports Roark’s weight even as he watches Goodfellow and his unmoving soldiers for signs of an attack. Mother’s gaze lingers over my brothers. She turns, her dark eyes searching the crowd, finding me, fixing there. There’s so much left unsaid in her tremulous smile. I open my mouth to call to her, but her smile vanishes, replaced with unnerving calm when she glances back to Goodfellow.

  “Answer me!” His magick crashes against her glamour, raw power trying to carve her empty for daring to stand against him still. For daring to ignore him. He’s a child throwing a tantrum to gain her attention. “What else?” he demands.

  Her sword tip wavers and drops as she lifts her chin and smiles. “Sacrifice.”

  His blade sings through the air. My brothers and I scream out as one as Mother’s body transforms to crystalline planes and angles. She stands frozen in time and place, her beatific smile captured in the glittering pillar of clear ice. The iron sword nicks her shoulder and she shatters, ice shards flying out across the ground, denying Goodfellow his triumph. A final insult and reminder that he hasn’t earned a drop of her blood.

  I fall with her, my body and mind writhing against the icy bonds of the Triumvirate awakening. There’s no fighting it, this raw, unfiltered power of the Winter Court drowning me and my brothers. There’s nothing except Mother’s voice whispering in my head as darkness takes me.

  Finish this.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Lugh

  It hurts. The ancient shades trapped in my mind fight their way free, released at last by Mother’s fall. There’s no time to grieve her loss. The Triumvirate’s magick pulls me under like that frozen river, needles me with pinpricks of cold until I can’t stand it anymore and fight my way back up out of its current.

  When I pry my eyes open, the battlefield has transformed. Goodfellow’s forces scatter, some running in the direction he orders, others attempting to flee. Keiran helps me up from the ground. His mouth moves and I latch on to the rise and fall of his voice, but his words are gibberish. A swath of withered corpses and an uncontrolled pillar of ice are near the place I last saw Sláine and Roark. And shades—

  They cover the battlefield like fog, called here by my magick. There are so many of them, they form a hidden, secret army passing amidst the living without their knowledge. No matter how many times I blink, I can’t find a stationary point to fix on. There’s too much movement, too much distraction, so much my head pounds and threatens to split.

  “Lugh!” Keiran yells.

  I see it now. The veil between reality and Tír na nÓg gone stiff and solid. An impenetrable wall of the dead claw at it, unable to pass through. They howl and clamber over each other in an effort to slip through, only to fail and plummet back into the writhing mass below. The balance of life and death itself has been upset by Goodfellow. But now, with the Green Man’s rebirth, with Goodfellow’s first victim here to confront him and set right its death, there’s a sliver of hope.

  I cling to it in defiance. There’s so little to hold close now.

  The snow swirls while dark shapes skim over blood-drenched snow. Weapons clash, bodies fall, translucent figures rise, and the final effort for victory rolls over the field.

  Our breath clouds as the temperature drops lower and lower, and the melting snow begins to harden again into patches of crimson ice. I try to breathe slower to avoid the bite in my throat, but it does little good. Roark’s glamour is unstoppable, reaching into the clouds above to unleash gales studded with ice. And there, underneath Roark’s power, Sláine’s creeps through the earth itself. The ground yawns open to swallow swathes of Goodfellow’s soldiers, closing up and leaving no sign of their presence.
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  Goodfellow commands his army forward to protect his retreat, but the barricade he erects with their bodies won’t last long. The battle with Mother drained the last of his stolen power. Now that the Triumvirate took hold with her death, there’s nothing he can do to stop our new power.

  “He’s trying to run,” Keiran warns.

  Please, the draugr whispers from the shadows of my memory. Let us rest.

  If Goodfellow escapes, the shades will be trapped here, moving among us, when they should be at rest. They’ll never reach Tír na nÓg and their blight will continue to infect the land. If Goodfellow escapes and uses his power to steal and warp the magick of others in his next attempt to take control, this place will belong to the dead alone. The only hope for our Court, for Keiran and my future, for the balance my mother died to protect, is to eliminate the threat once and for all.

  “We finish this now,” I growl.

  Keiran moves with me, step for step, as we skid through the gruesome slurry after him, barely able to keep our feet. This is the moment we’ve been heading toward our entire lives. Since I found Keiran in that burned-out village and saw his fearlessness, I knew he would lead me to my destiny. It’s here amidst the mud and corpses.

  Our movement catches Goodfellow’s eye. He spins on us when he reaches an open space in the field, his sword to the ready. His face contorts with rage. He will not fall easily.

  Keiran steps in front of me on instinct when Goodfellow flings a hand at us. A single vine wraps itself around the haft of the axe. Goodfellow can conjure nothing else. His strength is gone, reduced to nothing now that the blood magick’s run its course.

  Soon, I promise the draugr. Soon you can rest.

  I dart around Keiran, stealing a long seax from his belt on the way. My sword has more reach, but it’s buried in the gore where I fell from Liath’s back, and there’s no time to waste.

  Goodfellow meets me halfway. I deflect his blow with the seax, adjusting for the angry strength of his swing and letting his momentum swing me out of reach again. He corrects and attacks again. Another block. Keiran destroys the vine and rips his axe free. He rushes to join me and—

  A dark shape passes between me and Goodfellow, obscuring my vision utterly. I can’t get the seax up fast enough after the shade passes. Goodfellow’s hit flings the blade away. His swinging reversal hisses as it cuts the air. I dart to the side, scrambling against the sloppy ground. The blade lands inches from my foot. Move back. Faster. Dance out of reach until Keiran arrives and we can finish this together—

  Something moves in the edge of my vision and I duck, only to feel the cool trail of a shade’s fingers through my hair. Not Goodfellow. Which means—

  Keiran shouts and the blade is there. I twist, arching my back and clawing to maintain my balance despite screaming, contorted muscles. The iron edge scrapes over the mail on my chest, but doesn’t sink through. I try to twist back up, but my balance is off. There’s no time to recover.

  The fall is slow and accidental. The knowledge of what’s coming doesn’t lessen the impact of my back against the ground, doesn’t silence the rattle of chain mail. Goodfellow lunges, confident in his final attack, in his ability to destroy the Triumvirate.

  Fury crests, burning through my chest and veins like the spread of iron.

  Face me, the draugr rages.

  Goodfellow moves in for the kill. Only now, when he’s too close to pull away, to deny what he’s about to see, do I breathe out and drop the last barriers I’d set in my mind. I unleash the draugr on its child and pray the paths beyond the veil open at last for both of them.

  Keiran

  We are not Aage and Breoca. We are not. Gods above, don’t make me watch him die.

  My father’s axe, so familiar and comfortable in my hands, isn’t balanced for throwing. I ready it anyway. Goodfellow does not get to take Lugh from me. He can take my crown, but he cannot take my heart. I will not allow him to.

  They’re alone in that bubble of space. Lugh lays on his back, crimson mud smeared over his cheek, staring up at Goodfellow defiantly. It’s the lindworm over again.

  I send up a prayer to the gods. Goodfellow’s sword descends. My lungs seize with sudden cold. Lugh’s eyes cloud over with an eerie, familiar blue. He gives a soft sigh, and the air above him splits, disgorging the draugr before Goodfellow.

  I didn’t realize how strong he was. Lugh is a marvel to keep himself free from this creature’s grip, to find a way to work with it and not cede his control to it.

  It rises up, a towering wreck of a ghost devoured by its hatred of the living. Its clothes have shredded away, revealing frostbitten skin and bleached bone. Its face is a gaunt, twisted thing with blazing eyes. Eyes fixed on Goodfellow. He gapes at it and his grip on the sword falters.

  “Father?” he whispers.

  He pales when the draugr reaches for him. Blackened, pointed fingers threaten to rake across his face and Goodfellow screams in fear and fury. The strike meant for Lugh changes. Goodfellow thrusts his sword forward into the draugr’s gaping chest. The blade pulls free, but there’s no change on that ruined skin. Nothing except the series of stab wounds already rotted into place. It’s a useless blow. A blow that leaves his guard down.

  I draw my weight back, lift the axe high, and shift my balance. Goodfellow turns, noticing me at last.

  Every ounce of strength I have left is given to my swing. Father’s axe bites deep into the juncture of Goodfellow’s neck and shoulder. The shock of the blade cutting through the collarbone to bury itself in the spine travels up through my hands and arms. Goodfellow’s head lolls forward, severed before his body grasps what’s happened, and Aage’s crown catches the clouded sunlight like a star winking out. A violent pull on the haft and the weapon comes free, along with a decapitated head.

  A delicate wisp of a figure stands there after Goodfellow’s body crumples. The draugr pounces with a haunting screech of triumph. The wisp struggles, but there’s no escape from the greedy fingers.

  “Enough.” Lugh, pupils blown, fighting for balance, stands and faces the draugr. A horrible roar grinds from its throat and its dark, rotting mouth gapes wide, flashing sharp teeth at Lugh in open threat. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t flinch. He simply says, “Take him with you. Take them all with you.”

  The draugr turns toward me, though its eyes seem fixed on something else. I lift my axe and brace myself, but it vanishes before it collides with me, leaving nothing behind but a foul mist.

  “Lugh,” I croak. His hazel eyes meet my gaze, and we fumble into each other’s arms, clinging together as we sink to our knees.

  “You’re alive,” I whisper.

  “It worked,” he tells me over and over again. “It’s over, Keir.”

  He shakes, sobs into my neck, and I hold him as the raw force of the Triumvirate’s power finally ebbs. Dimly, I realize the noise of the battle has ceased. The only sounds are the clatter and muffled thuds of weapons dropping to the ground. A glance up finds Goodfellow’s army surrendering.

  Someone clears their throat. The Northern warriors stand at attention around us. They’re bloodied, limping, supporting their wounded, but gloriously alive. Even the Hunt have made their way over, worse for wear, but still here. Lugh’s brothers cross the field to us, Roark supported almost wholly by Sláine. Resnik, half his face coated in a sheet of blood and his leg bleeding, limps doggedly across the mess to where Lugh and I kneel. He examines what remains of Goodfellow’s corpse.

  I don’t look. I don’t regret my actions, but there’s nothing gained from reveling over a kill. Resnik makes a pleased sound when he takes in the site of the fatal wound and reaches to lift the crown free. The sight of the dark metal held aloft for all to see sends up a cry across the battlefield. He lets the relieved note of triumph linger in the air.

  “The false thegn has fallen,” Resnik calls out to all. “Who bears
witness to his end?”

  Voll steps forward, smiling wide. “I do.”

  “And I,” Kermode agrees from farther afield.

  Resnik nods. “And who will pledge their allegiance to this victor?”

  My huscarls lead the call, with their soldiers bellowing their approval only moments after. Their cries of “To the thegn!” leave the Mainland Sluagh bowing their heads, though some dare to look up and call their acceptance out as well.

  The Hunt follow with weary, but heartfelt, shouts in my honor. And then, just as their assent fades I hear, “I, Roark Tahm Lyne of the Winter Court, and my consort, Phineas Smith, swear our Court will recognize this man’s sovereignty.”

  The Unseelie princes stand mere feet away. Sláine barely waits for his brother to finish before promising, “I swear, as an official witness for Princess Aislinn of the Summer Court, our Court will also recognize this man’s sovereignty.”

  The final victory. Roark’s promise made real.

  I swallow hard and risk looking back to Resnik. All my worries and fears quiet at the sight of his proud smile. He gestures and Lugh and I rise. Lugh steps back, leaving me suddenly, painfully alone.

  Resnik balances the crown in his hands. He lifts it high enough for all to see before lowering it onto my head. The weight of the band settles into place like a piece of my soul I never knew I’d been missing. Lugh moves now. He reaches out and clasps my hand in his, squeezing a reminder that my seidhr won’t abandon me.