by Brindi Quinn
“The child within her is a conjurer. Their blood is connected, and therefore she may no longer wear the Crown.”
If I weren’t in the presence of a goddess, I would have cursed.
Beau was freaking pregnant?! And Rafe her unborn’s father?! The scandalousness of a guard impregnating a queen aside, I was overjoyed for her, shocked for her, fearful for her, and I thought back to when she had told me about losing the echoes. There was one sentence she hadn’t finished:
‘It happened right after…’
She and Rafe had conceived a child, apparently.
“You must let her go! I implore you! Please do not keep a pregnant queen imprisoned!”
“That is not my wish either. The moment she releases her hold on his heart, I intend to set her free.”
I didn’t expect the one who took Beau to be so even-tempered. She even sounded sorry for the circumstances.
“Forgive me, Goddess, but does that mean they would no longer love each other?”
“One cannot love without a heart,” she said.
Meaning Beau would still love Rafe, but he would no longer love her back. I couldn’t bear the thought of that. It would be no life to live if the one you loved could not love you back. When I acknowledged this, it was as if an arrow had hit the dead center of my chest.
Because I realized that was how Windley felt.
With a new sense of urgency, I clutched my neck and entreated: “Goddess Luna, is there anything that can be done to undo this deal made by Rafael?”
“A heart for a heart,” she said. “Are you willing to offer yours in exchange? Although you would have to get it back from the one who has stolen it first.”
A symphony of cords plucked in my chest. Even the moon knew what I refused to say.
“May I have a moment to consider your offer?” I said.
“You may.”
I turned from Luna and stared out over the night sky dotted with stars. Was I willing to give up my heart so that Rafe could keep his?
‘Ah, Queen Merrin, you never disappoint.’
‘I would never harm you, Merrin. Never.’
‘It feels good to hold you, my queen.’
‘Calm your soul, take a breath, and try again, lion queen.’
‘I want you, and I would give up everything to have you.’
No. I wasn’t willing to sacrifice that.
Maybe I’m not the kind of person you were hoping for. Turns out, I’m not a martyr.
What I am is a warrior.
With the goddess still to my back, I closed my eyes, and beseeched the only other being I could turn to. Never had the swarm of hands felt so welcoming, comforting, calming. I steadied my breath and focused my mind.
“MeRrin.”
Legions of fingers cradled my body.
“merrIn.”
Obscurity curled around me.
“MErrIn.”
“Are you there?” I pressed into the darkness, sifting through the swell of voices and searching for one who was different from the rest. “I need your help.”
“I am here,” said a voice distinct from the others. “Are you ready to learn my name?”
“I am.”
“If you do this, your true self will come to light. You may not return from this path.”
“I have no choice. Give me all the power you have,” I whispered into the darkness. “Enough to subdue a god.”
“Learn my name, and speak it when you need it.”
A single word bred into my tongue, and I understood what I had to do.
I opened my eyes and turned to face the silver giant. “Goddess Luna, I do not wish to make you an enemy, but if you will not offer another option, I must take Beau by force.”
“It will only prolong the inevitable, little royal. I will send more moonbeams after them.”
“Then I will take away your means to materialize in this world.”
“It is your prerogative to try. Though be warned, should I fall, the girl will fall too. I have put her in the heart of the mountain, in a bubble of my breath.”
But I wasn’t waiting for an invitation; I was already leaping off of her palm and into her open mouth, propelled by the winds of darkness.
I spoke the name the darkness had told me, the one bred into my tongue:
“EXITIUM!”
I felt more power course through me than I ever had before, as if the whisper of the wood had become one with the breath in my lungs. More than the blood stags, more than reviving Rafe, more than parting the waters, a mountain-toppling blast erupted from within the moon goddess’s mouth as I sent the power of the Nemophilist out in every direction from me, like a porcupine shuddering its spikes.
All at once, the pale metallic skin vanished from the giant’s frame, dispersing into the air like stars dying out, as the bones themselves collapsed on top of the mountain below.
I fell downward, hearing distant cries that I didn’t have time to acknowledge, for Beau would not have long once Luna’s bubble popped.
Just before making contact with the Necropolis, I again released the darkness on my tongue:
“EXITIUM!”
And as I crashed into them, the bones flew away from me, splintering from the impact of the darkness’s fury. Shards flung away from the water onto the land in large splintering pieces impaling the shore around the lake. But I continued to fall through them pushing away all physical matter as I submerged below the water level, down deeper into the mountain and into its very heart where a body lie floating, having been released from the breath of a goddess.
Beau.
Beautiful, charming, freckled Beau.
At last I had found my lost queen!
My heart wept as I took her in my arms, as darkness enveloped us both, filling our lungs in place of water and buoying us up to the surface. My body shook because using the name of the darkness filled me with adrenaline and because so much had happened in such a short time.
It was shock, but this time a good kind of shock.
When we emerged from the water, the mountain was no more, the lake circled by shards of bone sticking out from the shores like teeth. Luna was returned to her celestial shape. Only her face remained, casting sorrow down on us.
I pulled Beau’s unconscious body back to shore, through mud and sand, and knelt over her, praying for her to awaken. Who was I praying to, though? I had just defied a goddess, and heaven surely had no favor for me.
My hair dripped around my shoulders; my clothes weighed down with water.
We were both muddy and wet and shivering.
But none of that mattered because Beau’s long lashes gave a flutter before exposing her doe-like eyes.
“M-Merrin?”
“Hey lady.” My voice shook. “Were you waiting long?”
Chapter 25
Exitium
I helped Beau stand, and together we limped along the far shores of a lake now circled by skeletal fragments. Beau clung to my shoulders, burying her face in my neck. “You came for me.”
I held her around the waist. “Not just me. Rafe, Windley and Albie too.”
She lifted her face from me, looking off in the distance where the wall of bone shards separated us from the others. “The guards are here?” She wore an expression that could only be called pining. Beau pined for the magician whose heart she held.
“Yes, naughty. Your LOVER is here. You have SO much explaining to do. I know everything. Or at least, as much as I could get out of Rafe.”
Which, come to think of it, likely wasn’t much.
She stiffened, moisture glistening at the corners of her lovely eyes. “Oh Merrin! Forgive me! I wanted to tell you so many times, but I didn’t want to hurt you. It’s just so unconscionable. Rafe is sworn to you and your court.”
And to a goddess, as it turned out.
“Don’t worry about that,” I said. “I just want you to be happy. Your love won’t have many allies, but I assure you, I will be one of them.”
She let out the girliest sniffle. “Really?”
“Beau, of course really. And besides, Windley and I… kind of… have a bit of a thing happening.”
“Truly?” She gave a twinkling smile. “Well, that only took a decade. He must be glowing.”
“Did everyone know but me?!”
She let out a dainty laugh in reply.
“Goddess damn, though,” I said. “He can be so much hotter than you’d ever imagine.”
…I couldn’t wait to see him.
Because I was finally ready to set our monster free.
“Beau, we fell for each other’s guards. What kind of queens are we?”
She shook her head, digesting the satire of what we had done, the difficult path we had paved for ourselves. “Only time will tell,” she said.
“I am going to need advice, you know. Of the two of us, you’re far experienced.”
She smiled to herself. “It’s easier than you’d think.”
“What is?”
“All of it. And also more painful than you’d think.” Beau glanced over her shoulder to the water lying still. “By the way, how did you blow up the mountain and retrieve me. Was it explosive powder? You must have needed quite a lot.”
“Not explosive powder, exactly.” There was simply too much to go over. “I’ll have to give you the short of it for now.”
I recounted to her that I had found the echoes… or that they had found me, and that I had learned to become a conduit for their power.
Beau’s response was not as I expected.
It was far more troubling.
“Oh no! I’m so sorry, Merrin. I was wondering which royal they would attach to. I wouldn’t wish that burden on anyone!”
“Burden?”
She nodded. “There are secrets that go along with the oracle’s power. Only my family knows them, for if others knew the truth, they would fear the one who hears them. I know there’s much to discuss, but if you truly have them in you, then you need to hear this first without anyone else around to hear it.”
“Beau.” I released her waist and turned to face her. “You’re scaring me.”
Illuminated in moonlight, beautiful Beau took my shoulders, eyes wide. “You need to be fearful. I am fearful for you.” She bored her eyes into mine and swallowed. “The echoes can’t bring calamity on their own, and the true job of the oracle is not to subdue them. It is to bear them so that another does not need to. The echoes can’t just exist out in the world; they need a host. They will attach to someone, and my family has always ensured that they attach to the next born of our lineage. We train to learn how to calm ourselves under their influence. When I whisper my intention into the forest, I’m not doing so to quell the echoes; I’m doing so to quell myself. You need to be very careful with them, Merrin. They are dangerous.”
“Dangerous?”
“That’s why I was so upset when I lost them; I feared who might find them and what they might do with them. I should be glad it was you.”
I felt as though a weight had been strapped to my ankle and I thrown into the sea. I backed away from her, looking at my own hands as though the shadow ones may slip over them at any moment.
Did that mean I had been the wrong to give in to them?
But each time there had been no other choice!
“I will take them back from you if we can find a way to do so,” she said. “I have many tactics for calming my spirit under their influence. This is not something you want to live with.”
“I’m afraid that’s impossible,” I said. “At least for another nine months or so.”
Judging by her expression, she didn’t know yet, and I wouldn’t get a chance to tell her.
The others found us, emerging through the bone wall and riding the stretch of the lake.
And while the remaining cavalry swarmed us with Albie at the front, there were two who hung back from the rest. Two who could not show their emotion in front of the others.
Yes, it was a difficult path we had chosen.
As Beau’s cavalry surrounded her, kneeling, she held her heart and stared lovingly over them to Rafe, who waited at the edge of the tree line for her to be done with the others so that they could find a moment alone. Only then would he embrace her, only then would he scoop his damsel into his arms.
And there was another like him, hanging back from the others, stag-less and waiting his turn. His expression was blank, his eyes shadowed.
Albie smothered me. “My Queen! Are you harmed?”
“I’m fine, my knight. Better now to see you are unharmed.”
He lowered his voice so that the rest couldn’t hear. “It almost looked like that spell came from… you. But that can’t be right, can it?”
A warning.
“Don’t be silly, Albie. That was the moon goddess’s doing. I don’t know who took Beau, but the moon goddess stepped in and opened a way for me to find her. She said our queendoms are to remain protected. And that is the story you will command Beau’s guards to repeat, yes?”
Because a queen who could keep nature peaceful was a treasure, but a queen who could bend it to her will was a threat.
Albie knelt low. “As you wish, My Queen.”
I dropped to my knees into the moist ground to hug him. “We found her, Albie.”
“You found her, My Queen.” He met my eyes in earnest. “I was wrong to confine you. You have more strength than I knew. Aye, I’m ashamed of what I did. I promised your mother I wouldn’t let harm befall you, but you aren’t a child anymore, and a knight has no right to defy a queen.”
Was it just me, or was he more wrinkled than when we first set out? Was each one of those lines a new memory formed of the joys and pains we had experienced together?
“You know you aren’t just a knight to me, Albie.”
He smiled a fatherly smile and tucked my hair behind my ear. “And you aren’t just a queen to me, my dear.” He kissed me lightly on the top of the forehead with his mustache, as he had so many times when I was a child.
We shared a moment and my heart was warm, but it wasn’t long before it was pining for another.
Albie followed my gaze that was focused on the devilish guard standing off in the distance. “I wish you wouldn’t,” he implored.
“I know, Albie, but I can’t help it. It’s been there a long time, and it won’t listen to reason.”
Our monster.
He sighed. “The kin of the Cacti’s a good lad, you know. You’d like him. Handsome boy. Good bloodline.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But this is something I need to do. I won’t command you not to follow me, but I ask that you don’t.”
Albie studied me with melancholy, understanding that I would likely never be tamed. I was the same wayward queen I had been all those years ago when falling out of trees and sneaking through the night-lit castle.
“Then a final word of warning, My Queen.” Albie’s grizzled voice admitted defeat. “Be careful. His past is more troubled than you know.”
But I didn’t care. Eight years was long enough to know the truth of someone’s soul. I gave Albie one last squeeze before pushing through the crowd of Beau’s fawning guards and running to him where he stood, at the edge of the lake between two shards of broken bone speared into the earth. He was beat up, his face cut, his clothing torn. When he saw me coming, he slipped around the other side of a piece of splintering, out of sight from the others.
Because this conversation was not something Beau’s cavalry should see.
I peeked around the shard, only to snatched.
“I thought you were dead,” he said into my hair, arms wound around me, inhaling the scent of my neck. “I thought the giant crushed you. When you survived it, I thought you blew yourself up. When you survived that, I thought you drowned. It was one thing when that rebellious soul of yours was locked up in a castle, but out here… it’s too much. To love you is torture.”
“Windley.” I gripped the back of his shirt and
breathed into his chest.
He released me, sliding into a crouch with his back against the shard and his face shadowed. He placed his mouth to my knuckles. “Just put an end to my torment.”
“How would you like me to do it?” I said.
“Spear me through the middle. That should be quick enough.”
“I haven’t a spear,” I said.
“Then use a pointed stick.”
“Are you sure?” I said. “If I do, you’ll never hear my response to what you told me.”
He pulled me down to his level, between his knees and searched my face, neck flexed and pain evident in the corners of his mouth. Even like this, all beat up and drained and in torment, he was good to look at.
“You’ve turned scarlet again.” I reached for a lock of his hair, and he snatched my wrist.
“Don’t toy with me, lion queen.”
But I wanted to tease him, banter him, torture him, comfort him, hold him, cry for him.
I wanted to touch him, kiss him, tackle him, lay with him, let him steal all the energy from my body.
I wanted to drink with him on the veranda of the forest fortress and sneak with him through the wood doing things no queen should do with another queen’s guard.
“I’m sorry, Windley. You’re another queen’s guard and one of my best friends, and that’s why…”
He scowled.
“It took so long for me to realize.”
His scowl fell, replaced by an odd, contained sort of smile.
“I’m… pretty sure I’m in love with you back. I mean, I never have been before, but… yeah, this seems like it. Is it sort of a soul-burning feeling? Is it like if I could only ever touch one person again, I would want it to be you? Like I would rather not go back to the queendoms at all than have to go back to the way things were?”
His adam’s apple bobbed before he nodded. “That sounds… accurate.”
This time I was the one to kiss him, wrapping my arms around his neck, body awakening against him, heart welling next to his. The taste of him spread throughout me, sending a zinging sensation through my pumping heart.
When I was finished, he wore the widest jester’s grin I had seen on him yet. He took my waist and hoisted me onto his lap. “You’ve made a terrible mistake,” he said.