by D. D. Chance
“I got them all through a portal by myself,” he announced proudly. “I made my own door!”
Alaric is the heir of the High King, the future of the realm. The words flashed through my mind, clanging around awkwardly, and I glanced at Aiden as his brows winged up, his thoughts tracking mine. A shiver of knowledge spun through me. Soon there would be destruction in this beautiful room, but for the moment, seeing the high nobles of the Fae gathering and laughing despite how serious the situation would become, it felt right. It felt good. They weren’t my people, but they were Aiden’s people. And that was enough.
Aiden held up his hand—and the room fell silent.
34
Aiden
“Do you know why you’re here today?” I began the formal call to battle in the way my father had always done, and his father before him. Niall was not here, but several of my warriors were, including Marta, who stepped forward, waiting a few moments before responding as tradition dictated because Fae did not fight for passion, we fought for purpose. That opening, however, did not go unfilled.
Lord Rone, the king of the forest Fae, who had no training in battle or warcraft, stepped into the gap as if embarrassed by the silence, but his tone held no hesitation when he spoke.
“We fight for the forest Fae,” he announced. “We fight for the fertile valleys, the high mountains, and the broad ocean, that they all may be swept with light and abundance. We fight so that the shadow of the Fomorians may never again darken the lives of our children or our allies.”
I blinked, meeting Marta’s eyes, and she stayed silent as another voice sounded across the room: Lady Magdalen, queen of the valley Fae.
“We fight for peace,” she announced, “and for the future. The stain of the Fomorians has crept across our fields, always threatening. There is a cost to living in fear, and we no longer wish to pay it. We fight for freedom from that fear, no more and no less.
“We fight for honor and because we must,” Lord Sarrin of the mountain Fae finished, looking much stronger than when I’d seen him last in this hall. “And because we have bested these bastards once before, we will win.”
A cheer went up, and I met Marta’s eyes again, offering her a small smile.
“I could not have said it better,” I told the assembled crowd. “So I’ll only add this: I fight for you and we fight together, and I am honored twice over for it. I regret I have not fully prepared you for what may come.”
Lord Sarrin folded his arms. “Though we are few, the Fae of the mountains do not easily forget our storied past. And if we ever wanted to, the dwarves would set us straight.”
Corran the dwarf lord laughed, stepping forward from his own warrior detail. His thick, heavily muscled body was wrapped now in chainmail, and his helm was tucked under one meaty arm, leaving his braided, gray-streaked brown hair free to spill over his shoulders. “Forget at your peril and relive your mistakes,” he boomed. “King Aiden, don’t you worry about the mountain Fae. They can fight. And if the battle goes to the forest and the valley, your people are strong. All the Fae and your allies will defend the Light together.”
I grimaced inwardly as I accepted these words as truth. If the fight took us to the forest and the valley, we were likely already doomed and so were the more fragile realms we protected.
“So what is the plan?” Queen Magdalen of the valley Fae asked. “We can tell our people to be prepared.”
I nodded, and in the absence of Niall, Marta stepped forward to take over the conversation, only to be interrupted once again.
“Wait!” Alaric blurted, waving his hands for emphasis. “You can’t start without Mom and Magnus. They have to set all the proper spells of protection in place.” Beside me, Belle gasped, and my thoughts brushed hers. A sizzle of pain sliced through her, some piece of the unseen puzzle slipping into place, but unveiled for our eyes. What could Lena and Magnus have to offer that would peel away King Lyric’s layers of deception?
“What does your mother have to do with war?” I asked Alaric, my temper ratcheting up “Magnus has been hidden in the depths of the Witchling Academy since the time of Reagan Hogan. He’s had no place outside it.”
“Well, agreed.” Alaric shrugged. “But Mom told me she was going to seek Magnus out the moment the Witchling Academy sprang to life again after Belle showed up. I mean, you’re not the only one who wanted to bring magic back to the Fae, right? She talked about it all the time—it was her favorite subject. She knew all about the djinn instructors in the academy, and she’s been asking her muse to return magic to the high family since probably before you were born. She’d given up on your dad to do it, and obviously his father she barely knew, but with you, there was hope. That’s what she always said. Making the Fae magical is all she’s ever wanted—and grandma too, for that matter. If there’s any old spells or whatever that Belle hasn’t already found, Mom might know them.”
“She asked her muse?” Belle asked gently, and Alaric rushed on, pleased to be able to share new information.
“Yeah, you know, sort of like the Greek muses? They’re on another plane, she said, but they have power and knowledge, like actual gods and goddesses, which, of course, she loved. And one of them promised he’d help her return the power of magic to the Fae, and she wanted that so much, she named me after him, you know, and—”
“Stop,” Belle gasped, her hands shooting up to her temples again, as if her brain was struggling to break out of her skull.
The attack came with no more warning than that.
The lack of sound struck me first. A burst of thick, roiling clouds raced up from the horizon, galloping across the sky in less than a breath to blot out the sun. Instantly, the bright, airy chatter of the solarium was plunged into darkness, every voice within silenced, every creature without going still.
I manifested a sword into bright and deadly existence and, with a gesture, armed every Fae in the room with similar blades. The heavy weapons coalescing in their hands were perfectly sized for each of them, male or female. My warriors fanned out, Marta barking orders as we looked to the sky.
Belle turned, her hands alight, fire sparking from her fingertips, her eyes scanning from edge to edge of the solarium.
“Not the sky,” she murmured in my mind. “That’s not what matters—”
Whatever she was going to say next was cut off as the sound reached us, a booming crack of thunder. Thick clouds exploded, and long-limbed creatures streaming with slime rained down upon us in fat clumps, passing through the solarium’s wards as if they were nothing. Their oily forms splattered across the marble floor and barely missed those Fae fast enough to raise their swords in defense. Where those blades sliced into Fomorian, protective force fields sparked into life, which served only to slow down the rainfall, not to stop it. And wherever the foul spill of the creatures touched the floor, a new Fomorian surged up, taller than the largest Fae, billowing with tentacles. Both Fae and their Fomorian brothers screamed at each other in absolute outrage.
The fight was on.
The fact that the majority of the noblemen and women in the room were not trained to fight didn’t at first damage us. The Fae piled onto the Fomorian monsters with a fury I suspected was aided by the strange appearance of our enemy. It was easy to recognize these creatures as something that needed to be annihilated. Something about that bothered me, as I considered the lizard men of the river district. Those were supposedly Fomorian-born citizens as well. So why choose this uniquely hideous glamour? The Fae were not humans to be cowed by the grotesque. If anything, it would spur them on to stamp out that which was an affront to the senses.
“Watch out.” No sooner had these thoughts formed than the Fomorians’ true strength emerged. They spread their long tentacles wide, and every one of them exploded like an overripe plum, only this time, the liquid they spewed was acid.
“Portal!” Belle and I screamed at the same time, the two of us turning, and then Alaric was there, making his own doorway as he practically
glowed with delight, shielding the remaining Fae as my warriors swept over the ones that had been struck down. The fiery oil blasted into the portals we created. My portal opened onto some misbegotten hole in the In Between. Belle’s revealed what looked like an abandoned city block. As to Alaric’s portal… I turned to see the boy’s face blanche.
“I let it outside,” he whispered, horrorstruck, and I saw the desecration outside the solarium on the lawn of the castle, a great billowing plume of smoke bursting up. Out of it, more monsters struggled to their feet. “I let it out!”
Then his face hardened, and before I could stop him, he was through the portal as well, his sword brandished high.
“Marta!” I shouted, and pointed for half my team to follow them. They were all trained, and Alaric was fairly aglow with rage. I didn’t know what magic the boy had within him, but I knew the power of needing redemption and how it could drive a Fae to heights unknown.
I couldn’t spare the time to watch him step into the Fae he would become, however. Another knot of Fomorians was building to the bursting point, as Magdalen and Rone charged forward, lopping off tentacles and heads, disorganizing the creatures just long enough to give us some breathing room.
“Niall,” I roared, sketching another portal. My second-in-command was there, dressed in human clothes, something that looked like black tactical gear, his fists bulging with metal…eggs? Behind him flowed his makeshift army of witches and Fae warriors.
“Clear the area,” Niall commanded. There were too many Fae, hemmed in at all sides by pools of spattering goo.
“Go,” I commanded. Whatever idea he had, it would be better than us playing our war of attrition.
“Reagan, wherever your spirit roams—it’s time.” Belle’s order layered over mine. She shot her hand toward the ceiling of the solarium and leaned back. “Protect,” she cried. “Protect and heal.”
The witches didn’t hesitate. They leapt into the battle, seeming to know instinctively that the death of the Fomorians was not so much the goal as dismemberment. Each group broke off into small triads, chanting spells that shot like arrows into the Fomorians, breaking them down into bubbling bits. The nonwitch fighter, her grin wide as she stomped forward, cackled with something that sounded like real joy as she tackled Fomorians with only one witch in tow, the young woman Maggie with the red hair.
We battled on but seemed to gain no ground, though I was relieved to see the fire on the lawn had been put out on. But the noble Fae were flagging. We would not be able to hold them for long.
“We’ve got options,” Niall grunted in my mind. “Some kid from one of those fucked-up magic academies came in with a backpack full of what he called magical cherry bombs. He said it’d make a mess, but if we were dealing with a creature that shot fire, it would turn them to ash.”
“Go,” I commanded again.
Niall pulled out his strange egg again, hefted his hand, and launched the egg into the air.
35
Belle
As the chant of the witches soared upward, the arches of the solarium glowed brighter. The silvery-white cage crackled with energy, and the open panels became webbed with crisscrossing arcs of fire. That flame raced down the archway and onto the marble floor, setting it alight wherever there was a puddle of goo, and turning the goo itself into miniature whirlwinds of silver-and-white light. The Fomorians screamed their displeasure, while the warrior Fae wasted no time shoving every one of them they could reach into the swirling fire.
We were finally gaining ground in the battle, and I sucked in a heavy breath, my mind racing. I’d opened a portal—me, all on my own, the same as Alaric had. How? Because I was now the queen of the Fae? Because my power was augmented by Aiden? Or was it…simply me? Where was my power truly coming from?
I tried to draw power from the emerald crown, the steel shackles, but when I summoned my great-grandmother’s aid, the crown burned like fire against my skull, blinding me with pain. I couldn’t focus on anything but reinforcing the framework of wood and stone that made up the solarium, protecting the Fae who battled within.
My attention was blasted into an entirely different direction as Lady Magdalen stumbled. “The forest—no!”
I registered her cry and in the same moment received a new vision, the one I’d most been dreading: King Lyric, bathed in glory. And Magdalen was right. The powerful, white-blonde king was surrounded by a dark and verdant glade, but there was no mistaking the sun high above, barely piercing the canopy of trees.
“Belle,” Aiden commanded, and a portal appeared before me. I didn’t hesitate to step through, expecting to see Aiden appear beside me. He didn’t. The only figure in front of me was Lyric—tall, blond, and big as an ox. What did they feed their people down in the underworld prison?
I squinted in confusion. Surely the king of the Fomorians wouldn’t be in this place alone.
I was right. As soon as I exhaled, King Lyric turned to face me, his teal-green eyes lighting up in recognition and an emotion I didn’t want to dwell on too much. Affection? Pleasure? As revulsion rolled through me, the sound of falling rain clattered through the trees. Only it wasn’t rain—it was warriors. No longer the long-limbed oily creatures that had assaulted Aiden’s castle, but the lizard men and women of the Riven District, loosed from their bonds.
As they breached the glade, their war cry swept up, terror, pride, and hope all mixed together, the energy so strong that I staggered back a step.
“Stop,” I tried. “It doesn’t have to be this way!”
“You’re wrong.” Lyric pulled my attention back to him as he roared the words at me, his face a mask of pain and fury. “Because of the perfidy of the Fae, this is the only way.”
“But why—” My anguished question was drowned out by an answering roar as Aiden rushed out of the portal, his fiercest warriors close behind. Not all in one wave either. Instead, portals flashed open all around the glade, some of them behind or in the midst of the oncoming warriors, and startled screams began to punctuate the battle cries of the lizard men.
King Lyric thrust his arms out, shooting spectral flame in an arc around him as he laughed in what sounded like pure, incandescent relief. The fire sliced through Aiden’s first wave of attackers, finding its mark with unerring precision. Aiden’s most powerful warriors fell, including Marta and Niall, paralyzed in some sort of thrall. Without thinking, without barely breathing, I ordered the witches to a return assault. Not to join the battle, but to heal the fallen warriors to get up and fight again.
I reached Marta first. Her skin was lax, her eyes going ice cold. Ice being the operative word, as the Fomorian king’s magic seemed to be freezing her from the inside out. I thought of how my hands were always so cold unless I put them to work, and I shook her.
“Burn, Marta,” I ordered. “Burn with the Light that is the strength of the Fae.”
I placed my hands on her and she convulsed, gasping with pain, but alive and fighting. Following my lead, the witches around me did the same with their charges, as Aiden thrashed his way to the Fomorian king.
“How dare you,” he shouted at Lyric, his words carrying like thunder over the clashing swords. “You have no right to be here.”
“I was invited,” King Lyric reminded him with equal force. “At long last, I have come to claim the life that Fomorians have long been denied. You should keep a closer eye on your people, rather than leading a chosen few of them so freely to kill mine.”
While the kings clashed, another portal opened beyond Marta’s shuddering body, and Alaric stumbled through, a long bloody gash down one arm and another across his temple. He jerked oddly, and a second later, I understood why as Magnus stepped out of the portal directly behind him, his hand knotted in the boy’s tunic at his nape. Behind Magnus, Lena appeared, and I reeled back in a new round of surprise.
Lena was dressed like a warrior queen. Garbed in silver, her long hair plaited behind her, she wore a silver crown fashioned to look like a half helmet on
her head. She carried a silver shield in one hand and a blade in the other that looked far too ornate to be used for true battle. Was she going to wield magic? How could she?
Then I focused on the shield and the symbol it bore. The seal of King Lyric.
She wasn’t alone either. To my growing horror, marching out along with her were several witches I recognized from the coven of the White Mountains, led by the dark-haired, silk-suited Cassandra Montebatten. The witches who fought with her were garbed far more simply, but I didn’t think for a moment that meant anything other than they were focusing their power on what mattered—the devastating magic they would wield using implements made of Fomorian gold.
The women swept up their hands, and I saw the blades flash, felt the magic rise. Aiden’s warriors wouldn’t survive a second assault.
Everything crashed into place in my mind at once. And it was too late.
“The Fae alone shall rule among all the realms,” Lena cried. “Now and ever more.”
“Back off, Queen of the Damned.” The strange human warrior who was not a witch but allied to them appeared at my side, her hands streaking up. A portal appeared between Lena and the warriors, and the woman turned and grabbed me roughly by the shoulders.
“I picked this little skill up from your King of Light and Goodness over there—portal magic is a pretty neat trick, but I don’t know how long it’s gonna hold. So we’ve got to roll.”
Shoving a couple of knives at me by their hilts, she waited only long enough for me to grab them, then thrust me forward, and it was as if I carried the portal with me. My one-woman stagger toward the witches was joined by a second witch, then a third, until there were nearly a dozen of us galloping across the field, portal intact. Cassandra’s witches turned and held up their shields, but then we were on them.