by Brindi Quinn
From behind, Windley made a strange noise.
Yes, this is exactly why it was necessary for him to be present. The moment was feeling dangerous again. Those words weren’t meant for me. They were meant for Beau. I was merely a proxy.
This time, Rafe knew what to expect, so there were no theatrics. Suppressing himself, he closed his eyes and released a shivering exhale as the last of his cold heart melted.
After, he freed me and took his head in his hands out of frustration. “Goddess damn it.” He looked past me to Windley. “Not one word out of you. Ever.”
“I’m on your side, chap.”
“Well, apparently not, because you kidnapped the Queen and put me in a position where I had to follow you, jeopardizing my station out here. How would you feel if it were her up there instead?”
It took me a moment to realize he was talking about me. Was he insinuating that our relationship was the same as theirs? Ridiculous. Rafe and Beau were lovers. Windley and I were mere flirts.
Windley didn’t respond.
Rafe knelt at my feet. “Forgive me for what I did, Your Majesty. While I am sworn to protect you, I am also sworn to follow the command of a senior knight like Sir Albie. I worried that if I defied him, he would not allow me to stay.”
“Rise, Rafe. I understand why you did what you did, and I absolve you. I am glad Beau found someone that treasures her as you do. Will you partner with us to rescue her?”
He pulled his fist tight to his chest, startled. “You would allow me to?”
“Of course.”
“That was the plan, after all,” Windley chimed. “So long as you don’t turn us in; however, before we continue, you need to tell us the truth about that hex seeded in your heart.”
Rafe rose to his feet. “What are you talking about?”
“Your ailment,” I said. “Windley believes it to be a hex. Have you done anything to warrant the ire of something big and powerful?”
Rafe touched his fingertips to his collar. “I don’t…”
Truly, he looked confused.
“Think on it, chap. I’m sure it’ll come to you.” Windley fanned him off.
With hands still to his shirt, Rafe turned his attention to the rubble of bones across the water, wherein awaited his damsel. “What’s your plan to cross the lake?”
“Oh.” Windley’s voice fell like one who had just been caught. “Haven’t thought that far yet.”
Rafe gave him a dead-eyed stare. “So really, you have no plan.”
“If you want to be pessimistic, I suppose you could put it that way,” Windley retorted, haughty.
I stepped in: “You mentioned there was a cave. Take us there. We’ll devise a plan together. With Rafe’s moon magic, my echoes and Windley’s… sex power, there’s got to be a way.”
Rafe raised an eyebrow. “Sex power?”
Windley shook his head. “She’s got it in her mind that I’m some kind of scheming incubus.”
“And how exactly are you different?” said Rafe.
The corner of Windley’s mouth curled deviously. “For one, incubi aren’t real.”
As night flooded the sky, we three fugitives absconded to the lakeside cave Windley had scouted out. While Rafe did a lap of the area, Windley and I stood at the lake’s edge, gandering at the mount before us built of fingers and limbs. It was unfathomable that creatures of that size once roamed the land. I wondered if they were beast-like or intelligent or a cross between the two. A shiver ran through my body, though it was unclear whether it was due to the chill of the air off the water or the skeletons themselves. Maybe both. Overhead, the sky was dotted with winking stars of silver, gold, and rose.
“I feel like I was involved in voyeurism tonight.” Windley’s tone was curious. “Rafe doesn’t usually call you ‘My Queen,’ does he?”
“Not really.”
“He did when you healed him.”
“Yeah, I think that was more geared toward Beau. I’ve gathered he likely calls her that,” I said.
“That doesn’t bother you? He’s your subject, not hers.”
The lap of the water was a calming sound.
“Queens and guards… we’re all just people at heart,” I said. “I could have been born to a different life. Rafe could have been recruited for Beau’s court instead of mine.”
“Yet it bothers you if I speak against my queen?”
Once in a while someone asks a question that makes you question much more.
Windley’s question struck me because he was right, and I didn’t have an answer to give him or myself. Beau was his queen, not me. How many times had I told it to myself? And why did it bother me so much when he called me his?
“You’re right,” I said in the absence of something better to say. “I’m not sure why.”
He chuckled softly. “I believe I know why… but I’ll let you figure that out for yourself. Let me know when you do. I’ll be waiting.”
He turned and left me on the pebbly edge of the lake. I didn’t understand what he meant by that. Or if I did, I refused to recognize it. Inside, something ached, but I couldn’t pinpoint it.
Instead, I closed my eyes and leaned back into the swarm of hands that reached out to catch me.
“MerriN.”
“You can see everything I can see, right?” I spoke into the darkness.
“We see everything.”
“I have something you can destroy. Whatever took Beau and whatever killed the cavalry. They may be one in the same.”
“We will rip them asunder! We will shred their bodies and extinguish their light!”
The darkness pushed into me with excitement and hunger.
“Yes, but first I need to find a way to across this lake. Do you know a way?”
The cradling hands and whispering darkness felt chaotic, like it was searching for an answer that didn’t exist, until one voice called out—unique from the rest and more defined, as though belonging to a tangible being.
“The bloodlust writhes in you now, Merrin. It is branded to your soul. Together, we will kill everything.”
Oh yes, I had all but forgotten about that voice.
“I have no interest in destroying the world, but I do mean to serve justice. I will avenge those who cannot avenge themselves.”
“You can only hide behind us so long. Your true self will come to light, and then you will rewrite the world.”
False. I knew myself well, or at least I thought I did. I had no undue malice, no desire for more power than I already had. “If you have nothing that can help me retrieve Beau then I’m leaving.”
I opened my eyes to propel myself from the darkness but not before the voice whispered one last thing:
“The mountain is huger than expected… Where lies the base?”
I didn’t necessarily trust that lone voice, more wicked than all the rest, but I, too, had found that piece of Beau’s message strange. Hearing it again made me look at the mountain in new light. True, the mountain didn’t rest upon an island; rather, it stuck up out of the water. Did the base of the mountain lie deep within the lake? If so, was the voice implying that Beau was being held under the water?
Before I could think on the theory further, there was a gasp behind me. Rafe, who had finished his patrol, was pointing at the righthand side of the mountain. “When did that happen?”
I followed his finger and realized that at some point while I was floating in the other world, the mountain had shifted. I hadn’t noticed in the darkness, but I saw it now, with the moon coming up, and it ran a terrifying tremble through me.
That one giant’s skeleton, intact and larger than the rest? It had shifted position and was now partway around the bend.
As Windley had told us, it was prone to moving.
That wasn’t the only thing worthy of concern. Rafe didn’t seem to notice, but I saw it clear as day. The rising moon—I could have sworn I faintly saw a woman’s eyes, nose, and full lips painted on the surface, and I wondered,
was the moon watching us?
But it was too outlandish to ask aloud.
I should have asked it aloud.
Uncomfortably, Rafe rubbed his chest.
When I blinked, the face was gone.
Chapter 23
Those Words
There was urgency in the air. Crisp and cool, the lakebed seemed to warn us runaways that our time was limited. Lo, it was only a matter of time before Albie would arrive at the cavalry camp and let everyone know that we three were on the loose. Phylo and his lady friend would let everyone know they had seen Windley in the woods. Albie would assume we were somewhere nearby. He would send the others out to look for us, and we would be easily found. The best course of action was to press on while we still had time.
Before that, though, I need to take a moment to clear my conscience and let you know that I took no joy in disobeying Albie through all of this. As you may have guessed, it wasn’t normal for the captain of a guard to have so much influence over his queen, but there’s a reason our relationship was a distinctive one.
You see, my mother, whose simple necklace I yet wore around my neck, had died at a young age, leaving me to the throne before I was old enough to rule. My mother was beloved by many, but maybe Albie most of all. When she passed, he stepped in to care for me, more than any handmaid or nurse. He wiped my tears when I cried, bandaged my scrapes, drank tea with my dolls, and tucked me in at night. I loved Albie as if he were my own father, and Albie adored me back.
But this meant he wouldn’t blindly follow my command as others would. It meant he cared about me more as a person than as a queen. It meant he would defy me to keep me from danger.
I usually treasured these qualities, but not now. Not when there was another queen’s life at stake.
At the mouth of the musty cave, I told Rafe and Windley what the darkness had told me and my theory around what it meant.
“Below the water. How can that be?” Rafe said, pensively twisting at a curl of his hair.
“What’s more, this intel came from a disembodied voice that seems more malicious than all the other disembodied voices?” said Windley. “Charming.”
“I think we should try it. It’s our only lead and we’re under time constraints. Albie or the cavalry could come find us at any moment. Rafe’s already proven that our trail was easy to track.”
“Try what, exactly?” said Windley.
Actually, I had a plan. I had thought of it moments earlier while Rafe was charging his blade against the faceless moon.
“I’m going to use the darkness to summon another wind, like I did with the blood stags, and use it to blast a path through the water. Last time, it moved the grass, so it should be able to move water too, right? I was hoping Rafe might use his ice enchants to freeze the lakebed so that we can walk across without sinking into the mud.”
Rafe frowned. “My power isn’t strong enough to do that, Your Majesty.”
“Even for a moment? The trail doesn’t have to last behind us—you can release it as we go.”
He drummed his fingers against the hilt of his weapon, visualizing it. “Maybe.”
“I don’t know that I’m content with maybe,” said Windley.
“Do you have a better idea?” I asked.
He folded his arms. “We forget this whole thing and turn around?”
“But your queen may be down there!” I beseeched. “You should be doing everything in your power to find her.”
I didn’t understand. What had happened to the frantic Windley who had entered my bedchamber, freaking out that his queen was missing?
“Relax. It was a poorly timed joke.” Windley let out a sigh. “Let’s give it a shot. Worst case, the cavalry sees the upset water and apprehends us. I won’t be killing any of my countrymen, but I can at least scare them off.” He drew one of his hatchets and gave it a spin.
No, the true worst case was it actually working and us getting partway across before my powers failed and we were lost to the depths of the lake, but Windley wouldn’t say it, even if he thought it.
While I prepared to conjure more darkness than I ever had before, Rafe released his stag to graze and then practiced freezing sections of sand at the edge of the lake with the tip of his sword. Windley was his test subject, and it wasn’t going well.
“It shattered. Try again.” The sheer coating hadn’t been able to hold Windley’s weight.
With eyes turned frosty, Rafe muttered a different string of enchants before drawing a new circle in the sand around Windley’s feet.
“Better,” said Windley, “but it won’t hold the weight of all of us. What else have you got?”
“Not much, we don’t usually transfer our magics onto solid objects like this.”
“Come on, chap. Think of Queen Beau out there. She called for you specifically, didn’t she? Because she knew you would be able to reach her. Concentrate.”
This time, Rafe managed to produce a thicker sheet of ice. “That might do,” said Windley, jumping up and down on it. “Slippery as hell but better than getting mired down in the mud. If there are rocks and other debris, we’ll use those first. You should save your magic if at all possible.”
Rafe replicated it twice more to be sure he had it down.
“I think we have a winner,” said Windley.
I motioned to them over my shoulder. “Ready?”
With both guards standing behind me, and with the moon approaching the tip of Giant’s Necropolis, I edged up to the lake until the cool water was licking at my boots. The breeze of night tossed the edges of my cloak around my ankles. A second moon reflected on the polished lake. I drew in a deep breath of southern air before tipping my head back and dipping into the other world.
“MerriN.”
“MERrIn.”
“Is it time? Time to rip them asunder? Time to destroy those without merit?”
The darkness was eager, lurching, about to pounce if given the command.
“It is time,” I said.
Swathed in a fury of bodiless hands, I summoned the echoes closer until they were ringing in my head and all around my body like a cyclone. They opened for me, allowing me to intervene on behalf of those who had no voice to give. I interjected my vengeful intentions into the intentions of the forest, feeding it all my negative emotions over Beau’s capture.
The thought of her wrenched from bed.
The thought of her stored in a cold, damp place.
The thought of her fallen cavalry as they tried desperately to reach her.
“They had no right to take her!” I pressed into the darkness. “Lend me your strength so that we can destroy the one who took Beau!”
The darkness was airier than liquid and slithering like a serpent. It was dense and milky yet cool and wispy. It grazed over me like the thickest, darkest fog.
I opened my mouth, my pores, my very soul to it, and it bled into me from every direction.
“NOW!”
Opening my eyes to reality, I threw forth my hands and pushed the dark wind at the lake with all of my strength. As before, I felt the hands sliding down my arms and coaxing the magic out of me. With a blast, the spell hit the water, creating a tidal wave out in either direction and rocking toward the shore like breakers.
At that a moment, several things happened.
Rafe and Windley swore in unison, for the blast was large enough to be seen from across the lake. Shouts emitted from the direction of the cavalry camp—an indication that scarlet-clad guards would soon be at our location. And I gave a gasp, for the gust had exposed the lakebed, but the area below the water was not at all what I had expected.
The strand went in only a short distance before dropping off steeply. The darkness was right; the mountain of bones extended far below the surface of the water, so deep down that I couldn’t see the bottom. The mountain was huger than expected. Rafe whispered into his sword, and it illuminated. He stepped into the sand and made his way to the edge of the drop-off.
Meanwhile, my arms shook as I continued to spread the water with the otherworldly wind I had summoned. I felt the force of the water pushing against me. I wouldn’t be able to keep it up for long.
“What do you see?” Windley called between apprehensive glances over his shoulder. The hatchets in his hands were on the defensive, ready to fend away any who dared enter into the loch.
“The mountain continues way down below the surface,” said Rafe. “I can’t see the bottom. It’s dark down there, and the Queen is only pushing the upper portion of the water away—” He suddenly gave a shout and swatted at something with his sword. “Look out!”
I ducked, for a black bird with a humorously long tail had just flown up from somewhere below. “A widowbird!?” In my surprise, I released my hold on the echoes slightly and the walls of water surrounding us shook.
Rafe jumped back. “Careful, Your Majesty!”
“Oops! Sorry!” The bird landed on my shoulder, but I couldn’t check its leg myself for fear of releasing the spell. “Can you get that, Windley?”
With one hatchet still at the ready, he dashed over and busied himself with the tiny roll of parchment attached to the messenger’s foot. “Come on, you little bastard,” he swore at the parchment, though his own shaking fingers were to blame. After, he scanned the message: “What?” He gave a start. “Shit! RAFE, GET OUT OF THERE NOW!”
It was too late.
We didn’t know it, but Rafe setting foot in that lake was a catalyst for something massive, starting a chain of events that would end in the death of one of our allies.
I pray you get this in time! I didn’t know before! Her goal is Timber. Don’t let Timber anywhere near the southern mountain! Especially not at night!
Windley read it aloud as Rafe came running back to shore, and as I released the spell behind him, allowing the water to crash back into place and wash over our feet.
Rafe looked just as confused as the rest of us. He snatched the parchment from Windley to read it himself. “What? Who is the ‘she’ Beau is talking about?”