by Elena Lawson
She called out the charge. Spurring her mare onwards faster and harder. Edris joined her, leading the charge with the Queen of Day. His battle cry rang out over the land like the mighty roar of a dragon. The Day Court army swept in behind them, clad in white and gold, they broke over the reformed front line of the Alchemists in black, like light over shadow.
The Horde had shoved through the thinned force at the gates, driving them back. A head of golden hair was my singular focus. And I watched as Tiernan danced through the chaos like a leaf caught on the wind. His sword cutting down foe after foe after foe without rest. Without stopping. His jade eyes wild, and his movements precise. Anticipating the moves of those around him long before their blades could fall.
It’s time to fight.
The Day Court hadn’t managed to muster their full force—that was clear form their numbers. Perhaps one and a half thousand Fae had come to our aid. This was the deciding moment. We had to hit hard and fast with everything we had or risk losing the matriarchs of two courts on this day, plunging all Meloran into darkness.
Alaric kissed me on the forehead, crushing his lips to my flesh before he pressed me into the waiting arms of Kade. “You’re right,” he said, “It’s time to fight.”
He stepped close to Finn, and the Draconian took him by the arm. He was at war with himself. Knowing he couldn’t stop me from fighting but wanting so desperately for it to not be necessary. But he knew as well as I did; there was a reason Morgana blessed me with my Graces, and this was that purpose.
“I’ll see you when it’s over,” Alaric said, his voice gruff as though he’d swallowed stones.
“When it’s over,” I replied.
Finn tipped his head to me, “Be careful,” was all he said, conveying so much more than the mere two words in his gaze before he jumped from the terrace with Alaric in his clutches.
I spun to Kade, breathing hard. My muscles twitching in anticipation. The place in my core where my Graces emanated from roiling and bubbling and freezing and burning. Clawing at the cage of my bones and flesh, growling. Begging to be set loose.
Kade’s eyes glowed yellow, fierce and piercing as he drew me in close. The flames on our skin intertwining, growing stronger as they fed from each other. “Are you ready,” he asked through the crackle and pop of sparks, and the dull whooshing of fire as it licked up to my shoulders and spread over my hair.
My throat went dry. Was I? Against their better wishes I’d worn no armor save for a breastplate and gauntlets and held no weapons save for a dagger in my right boot. I wouldn’t need a sword or leathers. I didn’t plan for anyone to get that close to me.
“I’m ready.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Liana
The moment my feet touched the earth, I sprang from Kade’s arms and a blade swung for my head. I dodged the attack, turned to reduce the male who wielded the weapon to ashes. “Go,” I shouted back to Kade, as the other Draconians took flight. We needed him in the air, not on the ground.
“I’ll be fine, go!”
I didn’t turn to see if he’d listened. I didn’t want for him to look at me the way the others did before I lost sight of them—like it was the last time they would. As though they were saying goodbye. I couldn’t stand another look like that. I sprinted away from him, readying my Graces for a glorious release.
Men tried to stop me, swinging at me, chanting, casting spells, drawing sigils in the air. But none were fast enough, and none were prepared for what I threw at them. I bowled through them. Throwing out ribbons of flame and shards of ice. I heard their cries. Saw their anguished faces as they fell. But I roared through it. Kept going. Slaying men and Fae in a torrent of fire and ice.
I didn’t have time to feel it. Not the way I thought I would. The loss of life. The small tears in my soul with each life I took. I felt nothing. Only fury for what they’d done to my court. And it drove me near madness. The building of flame near bursting even though I kept letting it loose from my skin. And the ice shot out of me in bolts the size of jousting lances, but still there was no true release.
Another man in my path. Another corpse of ash. A Draconian’s assault from the sky. Left falling from the air in a block of ice. Shattering to the ground like broken glass.
I was close now. The last legion of Ricon’s army marched to join in the carnage on the southern road. The Day Court army wouldn’t fair well against the addition of another two-hundred men.
But they would never make it there. A slow, sneaking smile spread over my mouth. I raised my arm to set flame to the men, and gasped, the wind knocked from my lungs at the ferocity of the blow to my thigh. I cried out, releasing the hold I didn’t realize I’d had on my Graces.
A torrent of wind blasted out from me, visible as it swept out over the land, knocking every soldier it hit to the ground. Leaving most unconscious and unmoving. Not what I had planned, but I’d take it.
The arrowhead jutted out from the pale skin on my inner thigh. Gritting my teeth, I snapped off its head. Sucked in a breath as I dragged it back through the way it came, my healing Grace working fast to stitch the skin closed. Erase any damage done to tendon and nerve.
And then I saw him.
Beyond the dead or slumbering bodies strewn around me like fallen flies. Silas charged for him, alone, his sword raised. His eyes shining with insatiable bloodlust.
For the smallest second, I had hope. I thought he would be able to do it. That I would watch Silas end the life of Ricon once and for all.
But I was wrong.
Silas stopped as though he’d hit a wall. His sword fell to the earth. I watched the captain of my armies’ eyes widen and chest sharply expand before the Mad King lifted his sword and swung it over his head, ending Silas in one fatal cut.
His headless body slumped to the ground.
The fire burned hotter in my core. Stretching and growing.
Time to die.
My heart pounded. My blood sang in my ears.
And I moved. Feeling weightless as a feather drifting in the cold afternoon breeze. My body came back to itself all at once—heavy and weak. A taste like ashes coated my tongue. Had I… had I traveled by smoke?
There wasn’t time to think on it, Ricon stood with his back to me and I had but a second before he’d sense my presence. I pulled the chain from my pocket, surprised to find it intact after resting so long against my molten skin. I supposed it had something to do with the clenched fist of bindstone clutched in the crude silver setting.
Lunging, I cleared the four running steps to him. He turned. I sprang from the ground, dropping the necklace around his head.
I had the satisfaction of watching his expression open in shock before I crashed to the ground. He raised his hands to remove the amulet, but I was faster. Freezing his hands into twin blocks of ice, the weight of his new manacles so great he crashed to his knees. His encased hands immovable as stone on either side of him.
A tingling of malice ran down my spine, alerting me to the attackers just before they could reach me. I blasted them with fire, then drew a ring of it in the sand around us. Coaxing the flames high.
Ricon’s sea-glass eyes shone and his shoulders shook with silent laughter until he was gasping uncontrollably, his head bent and breaths heaving. The cackling laughter echoing all around us, mingling with the hiss and pop of flame.
“Enough,” I said, and he raised his head, a tear falling from his left eye and a crazed smile on his lips.
“What are you waiting for?” he spat, his expression instantly changing from one of hilarity to one of a coarse, fury-laced growl, “Go ahead. Kill me. Become the murderer you believe me to be.”
“You are a murderer.”
His gaze flicked to the corpses at my feet, smoke still coiling up from their charred bodies. “And you aren’t?” he asked me, tilting his head, his silver hair falling over half his face.
The dead man at my feet bore a ring on his left hand. I knew what it meant. That he was
bonded—in their ways of the ritual. Somewhere his mate would wait for him, but he would never come home. Had he had children.
“Yes,” Ricon hissed, “Murderer…”
All the emotions I hadn’t granted entry before came crashing over me in great white-capped waves. How many had I killed? How many families had I broken?
No. No, they had hurt us. They came to destroy us.
Murderer…
I realized what was happening at the same time Alaric tumbled through the ring of flame. Batting out a lingering fire from his tunic.
“Liana,” he said, relief oozing from every inch of him at the sight of me. I searched him for injury and found nothing more than shallow cuts and bruises.
He stepped forward, his jaw clenching when he beheld the monster kneeling before me.
“No, don’t!” I yelled, “Even with the bindstone, he managed to get in my head.”
“What are you waiting for?” Alaric asked, “Kill him.”
And maybe it was wrong. But I wanted him to feel as I did when that black stone knocked against my breast. The hollow, heaviness that made me weak, and rendered me all but useless.
Just then, Kade, Tiernan, and Finn dropped from the sky into my ring of fire. Drawing their blades at the sight of Ricon.
“Are you alright?” Finn asked, looking to where the arrow had pierced my thigh. They must’ve felt it. And when I threw up the walls of flame, they thought it was a beacon—calling for aid.
I didn’t really care why they came. Seeing them all, I was so relieved.
Tiernan kept the weight off his right leg, and Kade had what looked like a stab wound on his bare stomach. But the brute had already cauterized it closed, leaving the skin raised and red. Finn didn’t seem injured at all, and I sent a silent prayer to whatever gods had been looking after my males in my absence.
“Fine,” I answered Finn, stopping him and the others from approaching with a raised hand. “Don’t come too close.”
“So that’s what you were hiding…” Finn mused, eyeing the onxy crystal hung around Ricon’s neck. “You could’ve told us.”
I shrugged, “You’d have told me it was foolish.”
“I would’ve.”
Ricon loosed an exaggerated moan, “Get on with it already. Death will be a welcome reprieve from watching you reign over my lands.”
I tsked him. “Not so fast, King Ricon. I want to savor this moment.”
His eyes glinted, peeking up at me, filled with the reflection of the flames all around us, and something like surprise or… pride? “Perhaps I was wrong about you…” he said, cocking his head, “I thought you were so like her, my Morgana,” he shook his head, the silver hairs brushing over his forehead, “But I was wrong. You have my mind.”
Murderer…
The jeweled hilt of the Blessed Blade caught the mottled sunlight, throwing red, yellow, blue, and green reflections against his armor. The stones near glowing with light.
Yes, I suppose that today, I am a murderer, I pushed the thought back to him and watched his brows raise as my voice entered his mind without physical contact. A murderer of Night Court foes and Mad Kings.
I reached for the blade but stopped as three dark-clothed males vaulted over the flames and into the ring with us. Alaric went to attack them, but I threw out a blast of air, shoving them back towards the flame.
Stop! The command permeated my mind, and I fought to keep my hold on my Grace of air. In awe at the Mad King’s strength of power. But I kept them at bay while Alaric and the others stalked towards them around the outskirts of the flame, keeping a safe distance from Ricon. Their swords out, eyes glowing, going in for the kill.
“Please,” Ricon said, and the tenderness with which he said it had my power faltering even more. “Please, don’t hurt them.”
Ricon’s eyes held the weight of his request. Had he said please? He looked to the three males and back to me, silently pleading me—no, begging me to stop.
I recognized them. They were the ones who had ridden with him to join the battle. Two with deep chestnut hair and honey eyes, tall and thin. And the other with long silver hair tied back with a strip of leather, his face streaked with blood and dirt, but there was worry in his features. Panic.
And I realized it before he spoke the words in my mind.
They are my sons.
And Thana’s… I added to his thought.
His jaw clenched, yes.
“Alaric, wait,” I said, stopping my captain before he could make quick work of them.
He gave me a confused stare, stopping in his path—stopping the others too. But none withdrew their swords. It was taking all the energy I had left to keep the wind gusting out from me, holding the three males back.
They cursed and shouted, and I heard Thana in their voices. Saw her in their eyes. In the one on the right’s slender hands, and the one in the middle’s sharply chiseled jaw. They were mortal still. Not but children by Fae standards.
“What is it?” Finn asked.
My heart clenched, “They’re Thana’s sons,” I breathed.
My hands curled to talons at my sides. Shaking. Gods damned fool! I wanted to scream in frustration. How could I kill her children? Even after what she’d done to me. Even if they shared his blood, too.
I squared my shoulders at Ricon, who had begun to shiver from the icy chill running up his arms from where his hands were still encased in thick crystal ice. The skin within the blocks turning black. “Tell them to drop their weapons.”
For a moment, it was almost as though the madness left him, and I was staring into the face of a father who would do anything to save his sons. Not the monster of a moment before.
“Hand over your weapons,” he called to them through my onslaught of wind, “Do as they say.”
“Father!” The silver haired one shouted, his face twisting.
“Do as I say!” he commanded, and the three boys discarded their swords, daggers, and a bow onto the dirt.
“Take them,” I shouted to Alaric, releasing the last of the wind from my body, my legs shaking with the effort of standing.
My guardians took hold of them, locking their arms tightly behind their backs.
“You won’t kill them,” Ricon said, more a question than a statement.
You can’t… the thought scratched on the inside of my skull. I know your mind, I can see inside it. I know what you hide. That a child grows within you. You can’t take the lives of mine. I can see it. You won’t.
My skin turned to ice. My throat went dry. How had he known? I wasn’t even certain I’d admitted it to myself. But I’d felt strange for days now, perhaps weeks even. I wasn’t sure, and I had no way of knowing whose father the child was or if it were even true.
But he was right about one thing. I wouldn’t kill them. Because unlike Ricon, I was not the sort of monster who killed children. The youngest one looked as though he hadn’t even begun to grow hair on his face. No—they would live. But no where near me or Meloran.
“Take them away,” I commanded Alaric, “No child should have to witness the death of their parent.”
“No! Please,” one begged.
“Leave him alone!” the youngest whined, his eyes brimming with tears.
But I couldn’t bring myself to believe that Ricon was anything less than a monster as a father than he was a monster to everyone else he encountered. These poor young males simply didn’t know any different. I told myself they would be better off without him
Tiernan drew seeds from a small pouch at his waist and bound their hands and feet quickly with thick vines he grew, weaving them around their wrists and ankles before handing them off to Kade and Finn to carry back to the palace.
The cries of battle still sounded in the distance, but they were less and further apart. It was almost over. And the skies were clear of Draconians save for a few baring the mark of the Night Court. They would be safe enough to fly back. “Be careful,” I told Kade and Finn, “Take them to the d
ungeons.”
Ricon nodded gravely to his sons, once, slowly. The only goodbye he would give them. And then they were gone. Shouting and screaming from the sky as my Draconians carried them off on black wings shining with flecks of bronze in the light of the setting sun.
“Thank you,” Ricon said, bowing his head.
A half laugh bubbled up from some dark place within me. Alaric moved to stand beside me, placing a hand on my shoulder to lend me strength I didn’t need. “Don’t thank me,” I hissed at him. The anger returning, bringing a haze to the edges of my vision.
How dare he thank me. How dare he take advantage of my kindness. After all he’d done. All the lives he’d taken and families he’d ruined. Villages he’d burned along the way. How many of my people would be left homeless because of him?
“You will still die on this day. And your children will never set foot on Meloran again.”
I shook off Alaric’s hand, stepped in and wrenched the Blessed Blade from his belt and the steel chest plate from his torso. His eyes bulged, the pupils constricting just before I drove the blade into his heart.
He choked, gasping, his breaths coming slower, shorter, as I knelt down to whisper in his ear, “Monsters like you shouldn’t be allowed to have children. For their sakes, and for the sake of who their mother once was… I pray to the gods they don’t turn out as mad as you.”
The blade did its job, taking his life in swift seconds, feeding his Graces into me. The ground trembled beneath my feet and something like shadow seeped through my skin. My back arched, and my heart raced. Feeling more energized, more powerful than I ever had before. Alaric knocked me away from the blade, my hand slipping from its blood coated hilt.
I took a long shuddering my breath, my vision fading. The flames died around us. And when my vision returned, I found myself wrapped in the arms of Tiernan and Alaric, alone save for corpses in a ring of charred earth.
“It’s over,” Tiernan said, brushing my hair. “It’s all over, my queen.”
Chapter Thirty-Five