by Ana Calin
When I face Cerys again, her expression hits me in the guts. She’s too confused to even scream, her face white as death, her honey eyes shimmering with a feeling that’s not what I’d expect from a person who’s killed before. But I have to face it, this is only wishful thinking. She isn’t innocent. I just want her to be innocent because of my love for her, which has turned me into a weak man.
And yet, as the guard’s eyes roll up and he slides down the wall until he hits the ground, Cerys’ face doesn’t look like that of someone who is familiar with murder. She’s either the best actress she’s ever seen, or something about the story of her and the guards, as well as her confession, is off.
“Quickly,” I say. “Take off his armor.” I jerk my chin to the first guard, whose body lies lifeless at her feet, his blood pooling under him. The smaller of the two. “Put it on. It won’t fit, but if you stay behind me no one will notice.”
It takes me only a few minutes to strip the big guy and fasten his silver breastplate over my chest, but when I turn to Cerys, fitting his gauntlets on my hands, I find her still pulling at the metal wrapped around the man’s body.
“Step aside,” I tell her, and kneel by the man, starting to take off his armor plate by plate. Removing it is hard, because it’s the kind of armor that can become part of his body, which means that parts of it are merged with his flesh. Cerys scrunches her eyebrows and creases her nose as I basically rip it off of him as I would stripes of his flesh.
“Here.” I toss the elements of the upper part of the armor at her feet. “Put it on.”
She straps them on one by one, slowly, until she stops.
“I can’t.” Tears tremble behind her voice. “It’s got blood on it, I just can’t.”
I put my anger at her aside, and place my hands on her shoulders.
“Cerys, we’ve been through this before, on our quest for the Firestone. This kind of mission requires a strong stomach.”
“It wasn’t like this the first time, Xerxes.” A single crystal tear slides down her cheek, and my damn heart twists. I can feel it in my bones—she’s being completely honest, open, vulnerable, and it’s so damned seductive. “The first time I wasn’t already torn apart by a trial, having listened to a jury list all kinds of ways in which I should be put to death. I hadn’t been kept in a dungeon, beaten—”
“Beaten?”
She shakes her head and presses her eyes shut, tears rolling down her cheeks. My hands tighten on her shoulders. Luckily the armor, even though too big for her, activates and resists my strength.
“What matters is that I left the Fire Realm already feeling drained and weak both physically and mentally. Plus that I’m not the same woman I was when you and I first met, Xerxes.” Her voice trails off as she rests her forehead against my breastplate. “You know that.”
That twists the knife in my wound. I push her away.
“No. You’re not the same woman.” I step back and put the helmet on, then turn to lead the way along the row of cells. Nazarean walks by my side at first, but then he falls behind and climbs up on Cerys shoulder. With her long braided ponytail under her helmet, he can’t use it as cover, and he must rest on her shoulder, which means she has to hold the shield high in order to hide him.
We walk by a number of guards as we move up towards the castle, passing through a whole maze of corridors with cells on one side. Nobody notices something is off about us at first, even though it’s not exactly easy to blend in. There are fewer guards to mingle with than I keep in my dungeons, but that’s probably because my prisoners are far more dangerous. I’ve come across all sorts of strange beings in all the years I’ve been keeping all these ungrateful realms safe from Apophis and Orion, including hybrids of dragons and demons, which are nastier than any creatures they could be hosting here.
Most of Lysander’s captives are serpent shifters and alligators, both species descendent from dragons. But dragons are elegant and generous souls, like lions. They rarely prey on the weaker or commit senseless crimes, although they’re vicious once angered. Unlike dragons, serpents and alligators can be mean and slippery for no obvious reason, and they can be pretty damned dangerous for mortals and parahumans, but hardly a match for fae.
The upper levels of the dungeons are full of creatures from the Flipside, and I can imagine why. I recognize warlocks who’ve tried to take over mortal cities and form a kind of mafia there, and I know a few shifters that tried to impregnate human women in order to spread out their mutations and gain influence in the mortal realm. There is no end to all the schemes supernaturals use in an attempt to take over the world, as they have been trying since the beginning of time.
But what I don’t see at all in here is parahumans, people like Cerys. They are a species very similar to humans, but considerably stronger, and they have deeper inclination towards the occult. They have supernatural abilities, even though they can’t be classified as witches or warlocks, because they don’t actually perform magic except in small doses. There aren’t many such people in the Flipside, which makes them very precious, rare gems, but they’re also as slippery as soap in water.
Every parahuman has a unique ability. Some of them are magical energy workers, like Cerys, but each one of them has a unique specialty. For example, Cerys can recharge supernaturals with their respective elemental powers, but she can drain them as well. Also, she has other talents that her father Hades and her mother, who was a descendant of Merlin, left in her, but those remain undiscovered. She even doubts she has them, but I felt those talents while I had her, while my soul merged with hers.
“Milord.”
The word stops me in my tracks. I turn slowly to the side, from where the gruff voice spoke, and discover the form of a man in the back of a filthy cell. He sounds weak and battered.
I approach the grates, and he begins to help himself up, holding to the icy back wall. Nazarean meows softly from behind Cerys’ shield, which has started to tremble in her hands. He’s urging me to move on. The shield is too heavy for Cerys to carry for so long, we should find a place to rest for at least a few minutes, but the more I understand who this man is, the more anchored I feel in the ground. He’s got red eyes, bronze skin hanging on a gaunt face that’s lost its glow. A fire fae. One of my warriors.
“It is you,” he whispers in awe. His breath smells so bad I can barely take the stench, which means he’s been fed things that a fire fae’s body can’t tolerate. Things that ate him from the inside out. One of the oldest and worst forms of torture in the supernatural realms—using a man’s hunger to feed him poisonous things that will devour him from the inside in the end.
The bars bend under my gauntlets as I tighten my fists around them. Keeping my strength in check is one hell of a challenge at the sight of this poor creature.
“How did you know?” I breathe through the helmet.
He tries to smile, but the cracks in his black lips are too painful. “Starvation and abuse have a way of awakening abilities one didn’t even know one had. I could smell you, Milord. But do not worry, I’m sure no one else did.”
He reaches out through the bars and touches my armor. “Are you here to get us out?” His eyes open wider, filled with hope.
“Us? There are more of you in here?”
“Dozens. There’s a whole wing of the dungeons reserved only for fire fae. They have been going really hard on us lately. They caught and imprisoned every fire fae they could get their hands on in the Flipside.”
Nazarean meows, reminding us that time is of the essence. The tips of my ears adjust to the sounds coming from the other corridors. Guards are approaching.
“Xerxes, let’s go,” Cerys urges. “We can’t be caught here, talking to a fire fae prisoner, it will blow our cover.”
“Oh, what’s the matter, Cerys?” I hiss. “Worried I’ll kill more of the pretty men you like?”
“That’s enough.”
The honey in her eyes has turned to a version of gold that cuts through m
ine. “I’m here, with you. I’m on your side. Now let’s get going.” She looks at the prisoner, who stares at her with an open mouth.
“Cerys Dark, the Queen,” he whispers. He licks his lips and points at her, his finger shaking. He opens and closes his mouth repeatedly as if he’s struggling to find the right words. “She is, she’s the one, Milord. She’s the reason the Winter Fae have been after us in the Flipside. She’s the reason for this purge.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Please, Xerxes, we have to go.” Cerys already sounds panicked.
“You made her help you steal the Firestone, and rebuild your core. Then you mated her by force.”
“That’s not true,” Cerys reacts with a vehemence I didn’t expect.
“It’s what reached King Lysander’s ears,” the prisoner tells her.
“Well, she didn’t exactly come with me of her own accord the first time we met.”
“But you didn’t impose your will on me when you could have,” she cuts in. “Now come on, let’s go, or they’re going to catch us.”
I turn to the prisoner. “I’ll get you out of here.”
The moment I step away from the cell a pair of guards round the corner, laughing, and swinging their blades. I can’t help thinking that I could take them both down with one slash of my sword. But Cerys grabs my arm from behind, her gauntleted hand on my armored elbow.
“Keep cool,” she breathes.
I force myself to. I need all the self-control I’m capable of now that we’ve reached the higher levels of the dungeons. Now we’re out of the catacombs carved on the inside of the castle rock, and entering the ground floor of the actual castle.
This palace is overfilled with guards and guests attending Lysander’s feast. We walk close to other guards, keeping my ears trained on their conversation to find out what the feast is about. When we finally hear it, Cerys shield hits the floor, drawing dozens of eyes to us.
CHAPTER IV
Cerys
NO, JUST NO! EVERYBODY is staring at us. My limbs tremble under the heavy armor from holding the shield too high for too long in order to cover Nazarean. Luckily, he jumped off my shoulder the moment I dropped the shield, and slid under it.
Xerxes steps in front of me, blocking me from the others’ sight, but it doesn’t do as much as he’d hoped to dodge attention. We heard the guards talk about our tracks in the snow, so they already know the castle’s defenses have been breached, but they’re not making the info public because of the feast. They have orders from ‘the Throne Hall’ to keep it quiet as not to cause panic among the guests.
But I’m pretty freaking sure that our cover will blow in a matter of seconds. Xerxes has already started raising his weapons, expecting soldiers to approach us, or the courts to start asking questions. But an impressive-looking retinue of what looks like royals appears on the grand stairs in the middle of the hall. Grand stairs made of ice, adorned with magical runes and symbols carved in icicles.
Trumpets fill the air, and then more instruments join in with music that carries magic. The kind of magic designed to delight the senses, sucking all attention away from us. It reaches me on deep levels as well. My mouth opens, and I can’t stop staring, even though I’m aware I should use the moment to pick up my shield, hide Nazarean, and make my way with Xerxes through the crowd away from here.
But Xerxes fixes his eyes on the people on the stairs as well. His irises have turned into molten fire behind the visor in his helmet.
“Honored guests, thank you for joining us on this special occasion,” a man declares, opening his arms. He seems to be the leader of the group, and he looks familiar, but I can’t make out his face clearly enough to recognize him. What I know is that he isn’t Lysander. In fact he can’t be a Winter Fae, not with his dark hair and his bronze skin. By his strong frame he’s a warrior, even though he’s wearing a prince’s clothes. He continues with his speech, the crowd hanging on his words, but only when he refers to Lysander as his ‘brother, the King’, the memory hits me.
This is Sandros, Lysander’s half-brother, who is half fire fae. I look to Xerxes, gauging his expression. I don’t think he’s under the spell of the music, especially now that it’s stopped—it was only meant to introduce the group of men, a group of winter fae with gold and silver hair, icy-bluish skin and blue and golden eyes circling Sandros, a half fire fae that Xerxes regards with animosity.
He turns and glides through the awe-stricken crowd. No one dares speak louder than a whisper, so we can hear Sandros’ entire speech, but when it becomes clear what they’re celebrating, Xerxes comes to an abrupt halt. Even under the armor, I can tell that all his muscles tightened. He’s taking the posture he always does when he’s ready to launch into battle.
“This time, Xerxes has upset someone like himself—a villain,” Sandros says. “Samael, the Archangel of Death and the keeper of the gates of both Heaven and Hell will stop at nothing to get back what Xerxes has stolen from him—the souls from the Cemetery of Doom. Either that, or Xerxes will have to give up something else he loves dearly.” He raises his voice triumphantly. “In the first war against Xerxes, he had his allies, strong allies, and we had ours. There was always a balance of power. But not anymore. Hell is done staying neutral. As we speak, its portals are expelling hordes of demons upon the ramparts of the Fire Realm. Xerxes is going down. His allies of yore are turning to us, in case we decide to join in, and help destroy the Fire Realm once and for all.”
They are celebrating the fall of the Fire Realm. That’s what this feast is about.
My heart drops into my stomach, and despair fills me, my eyes switching from Sandros to Xerxes. The unfairness of it all breaks my heart, I can feel it crack inside my chest.
Xerxes and his people have been keeping the cosmic behemoths at bay for thousands of years, and if they became brutal, it was only as a result of that. Many of them developed PTSD, but those they protected saw that as a threat instead of seeing it with compassion. They grew afraid of their fire fae protectors, and started murdering them. And when the fire fae returned the violence, they were officially branded villains. And yet they continued to protect all the realms from Apophis the God of Chaos and Orion the Lord of Dragons. Enough is enough though, and one day Xerxes and his men grew tired of the mistreatment, and of the rumors that spread about them like wildfire. People loved to hate them, while taking advantage of their protection at the same time. His heart filled with hatred and he became vicious, and tried to take over the world. He wanted to subdue it to what he believed would be a fairer rule, despite the apparent evil it brought along.
After millennia of war and hardship in which his heart had turned hard and cold as a rock, he met me, and we became bonded mates; tender feelings came to life inside him, the sun came out in his heart, and he started to believe in something again. And then I destroyed it all.
The tears in my throat are about to choke me, but that won’t help him. I cling to the decision I made back in the Fire Realm—I will help Xerxes get out of this not only clean and with his realm intact, but I will also be sure to save his reputation. This time, the princess will save the prince, if it’s the last thing she does.
“Come on,” I whisper, touching his arm. “Let’s find Lysander.”
Those lava-filled irises burn into mine from behind the visor in his helmet. I manage to hold his stare, even though it’s not easy. But doing what I’ve decided to do means toughening up, and I might as well start now.
“We need to get him alone,” he says. “And that won’t be easy, not today.”
“Leave that to me. You find him, I’ll get him alone for us. But you have to make an effort and trust me on this, Xerxes.”
He frowns, clearly not convinced, but he nods. He leads the way, though I wish we could set Nazarean free so he could do it for us. This way we have to rely on his soft meows and purring that communicates which direction we should take. At a certain point, Xerxes has to let me take the lead, even
though he obviously doesn’t like it because he thinks he can protect us better when shielding us from the crowd with his large frame.
My limbs hurt so bad that my muscles burn, and my arms tremble as I struggle to hold up the shield, but I force myself to push through it. I do my best to make it look natural, but I fail. We catch the eye of a few guards in the end, and they maintain their focus on us until we disappear into the hallway connecting the main hall to the rest of the ground floor.
“You need to rest,” Xerxes says, close behind me. Exiting the main hall is like emerging from water onto land, the air is so cool here, so quiet and so dark except for the glittering of the ice coating the walls.
“No time. We have to get to Lysander before he comes down into the main hall. Sandros is preparing his entrance.”
“If that’s the case, then Lysander is already on his way, and he’s sure as hell not alone. He’ll have a whole squad of winter fae flanking and trailing him.”
But I have a burning purpose in my heart, and I’ll let nothing sway me.
“We’ll find a way.”
“Cerys.” He grabs my elbow, and turns me around. After everything he thinks I’ve done to him I would have expected him to be much harsher, but he speaks to me as if reasoning with a child. “You’re exhausted. You’ve been carrying that thing around for hours.” He motions to the shield, and ends by sliding it gently off my forearm. “This castle is huge, probably as big as the Fire Realm Palace, which means you’ll most likely have to carry it for much longer, while also hiding and keeping your senses sharp for possible threats. Those are no easy tasks. They’re a warrior’s business.”
“I am a warrior. I’ve been with you on a dangerous quest before.”
He smiles, I can see it through the slits in his helmet, and it warms my heart.