The Witch King

by H. E. Edgmon

  I have always been more feral than not, but in that moment I lose any semblance of civility. Hands tightening around Emyr’s horns, I use them to push him back, off his knees and onto his ass on the floor, dropping on top of him with my thighs on either side of his hips. He still towers over me like this, but it doesn’t matter. I feel powerful.

  There is a power in being seen and wanted as you are, a power I hadn’t grasped until tonight, here, with Emyr’s eyes, and hands, and mouth. It’s a better high than the morghira was.

  Our mouths crash together again and my fangs sink into his lower lip, gently enough not to do any real harm but not so gently to be considered anything other than a bite. I open my mouth to swallow the cry he lets loose. I like the way it tastes.

  At some point, Emyr must shrug out of his shirt, because the next thing I know my belly is pressing into bare skin. Only then do I release my grip on his horns, my hands trailing down the sides of his face, his throat, sweeping over his broad shoulders to wrap around his back. My curious fingertips find the spot where his wings meet his back, that delicate muscle and bone where skin turns into velvet. Emyr shivers and rolls his hips up underneath me. He earns a growl and another bite to his lip in reply.

  When his hands dust up along the edges of my binder, an unspoken question hanging in the air between us, I pull back enough to shake my head before sliding my mouth to the notch of his jaw. Immediately, his hands skirt away, pressing into my hips instead, pulling me down as he rolls up again. This time it’s his neck that my teeth find themselves buried in.

  My fingers slide back to his front, running over his chest, slipping lower until they reach the hem of his pants, and then—

  “Wait.” Emyr sucks in a breath, pulling back enough to put some cool air between his chest and mine, to pause the moment.

  I freeze, hands exactly where they are, eyes meeting his. “Hmm?”

  “I, um. Well, I don’t have any protective tonic.” A witch concoction, old fae birth control. “Or a condom.”

  “I do.” Tucked in my phone case, a little emergency what if. Don’t come unless you’re prepared, or however that saying goes.

  “Oh.” Emyr’s eyes shift from my face to my mouth to the floor.

  A beat passes. “But we also don’t have to. We can be done.” I shift in his lap, pulling back slightly so I’m resting closer to his knees than his hips. “Do you wanna be done?”

  “No! No, I just... Not that. Not yet. That okay?”

  It occurs to me that I’m the first and only person Emyr has ever kissed, and this night has already probably been a lot for him, going from zero to a hundred in a few strokes, so: “Of course that’s okay.”

  I reach up to press my hand to his neck, thumb brushing at his jaw, nail scratching gently up behind his earlobe. “What do you want to do?”

  Emyr’s tongue trails against his lower lip. I watch it slide between his fangs. He looks like he’s about to say something, lips parting wider, then sliding closed. Finally, he lets out a heavy breath. “I want to do something neither of us has ever done before.”

  Oh.

  Oh.

  Emyr must take my blip of hesitation as something it isn’t, because he quickly starts to add, “We don’t have to. I know you said—your scars—it’s just—”

  “You’ve already seen my scars,” I remind him, and I roll off his lap.

  One of his knit blankets finds its way beneath my head. His mouth finds its way to the scars on my rib cage, my belly button, lower, lower. My hands find themselves on his horns again.

  I can’t see his face when Emyr whispers, “Fuck,” but I can feel his hot breath against my skin.

  And this moment is all there is.

  This night.

  This cabin.

  Emyr’s mouth.

  * * *

  After, his claws scrape little white rivers up and down my belly while I stare at the ceiling and try to remember what breathing normally feels like.

  “I’ve been thinking about what you said this morning,” he says quietly, thumb claw circling my naval, scratching the edges without hurting. “About giving up the Throne for you.”

  “Not right now, okay?” I mumble, reaching down and pressing my mouth to his palm.

  Somewhere across the room, Emyr’s phone dings. He ignores it, watching me kissing his hand, eyebrows tugged together.

  “We’re going to talk about it. I just want to pretend everything’s okay for another minute.”

  He looks like he’s thinking about saying whatever it is, anyway. His phone dings again. Then again. He growls, glancing in its direction.

  “Go talk to whoever that is instead, Your Highness,” I mumble, swatting lightly at his hip.

  Emyr rolls his eyes, pushing himself to his feet and loping to the counter.

  I find my discarded boxers, tug them back into place, then go in search of my own phone, shoved away with my hoodie. There are three missed texts from Briar.

  Just seeing her name is enough to bring me crashing back down to reality. The door to Faery is out there standing wide open. Anyone could accidentally crawl through it at any time, could end up in that same desolate wasteland that killed Leonidas’s soldiers. There are plenty of awful people in Asalin, but there are just as many, maybe more, who are just trying to live their lives and do their best. We have to close the door. And if Briar can’t figure out how to fix it, I’m going to have to tell Emyr, even if she hates me for it.

  Although, with all his interest in Faery, he may not be so keen on closing it right away, either. In which case, I have no idea what I’m going to do.

  The content of her messages, though, is possibly even more concerning.

  MY GIRL

  Wyatt, I know you’re angry at me, and you have every right to be, but I need to talk to you. It’s important. Meet me in our room and bring Emyr.

  I AM NOT KIDDING. WHERE ARE YOU?

  We’re coming to the cabin. You better be there. If Emyr is with you, DO NOT LET HIM OUT OF YOUR SIGHT.

  Something inside my body jolts forward. It’s like I’ve had the air snatched out of me, like someone’s just reached into my body and yanked something free from my skin. I yelp, jumping and shaking my limbs out to try and rid myself of the overwhelming feeling of weirdness that’s suddenly all over me. It isn’t really painful so much as surprising and...odd.

  “Hey, what—”

  A crash interrupts me, and my head shoots up.

  Emyr is back on the ground, only this time he’s barely holding himself up on one palm. His wings have shot straight back, their protective spikes ejected, each one convulsing. Blood mingled with black sludge begins to trickle from his mouth. He turns his eyes to me—gold magic has spilled into them, but it’s now spilled out of them, too, leaking down across his cheeks.

  The world narrows down to nothing but his body on the floor. I race to him. I think I’m screaming but I don’t know what I’m saying. I don’t know if I’m making any sound at all or if the words have been snatched from my chest. My knees hit the floor at his side.

  Maybe I’m screaming his name.

  His golden eyes widen as he looks up at me. One hand reaches for my wrist, curls around my fragile bones, and squeezes. His claws dig into my skin until I’m bleeding over the both of us. I reach out with my other hand, curling my fingers around his neck.

  Maybe I’m still screaming his name.

  I think he tries to speak, but only more sludge bubbles out.

  The cabin door flies open. We aren’t alone anymore. Bodies are suddenly filling the space, crowding in all around us.

  But it doesn’t matter. Beneath my touch, Emyr’s pulse slows and slows until the rhythm ends altogether. His heart stops beating.

  He’s dead.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  THE UNDERBELLY OF PREY BEFORE
r />   A PREDATOR STRIKES

  From the moment I first set eyes on Emyr after all our years apart, that split second in Texas with garden shears stabbed through him, when my heart tried to claw its way out of my throat and throw itself into his arms, I’d known I didn’t actually want to hurt him.

  Love, this kind of love, the kind that grows up and out of your bone marrow like roots curling in tight, isn’t that easy to get rid of. It doesn’t always mean it’s healthy. Love can cleave to your insides, envelop and consume you, overwhelm you, and still be bad for you. Sometimes you gotta take a knife to love, you gotta cut it out, cauterize your wounds, and move on.

  That’s what I thought I was planning to do. I was going to cut Emyr out of me, and cut out whatever part of me had to go in order to do it.

  It took remembering who Emyr was, seeing that the boy I knew still existed, for me to realize I was wrong. Cutting him out of me wouldn’t be like removing bone rot with a scalpel; it’d be like amputating a perfectly healthy limb with nothing but a pocketknife.

  Because he was good. He was good and he was gentle and he was kind in ways I have no idea how to be, and he made me feel things no one else ever made me feel, and even if it meant giving up on everything I’d ever wanted for myself, there was a part of me that wanted to say yes.

  But it doesn’t matter. In the end, none of it meant anything. Not his goodness. Not my bleeding, naive, feral heart.

  Because now Emyr is dead on the floor in front of me. He’s just dead. He’s never going to make coffee again or tend to his flock or take a long nap in his hammock. He’s never going to travel the world with me like he wanted, seeing human sights and reading human books. He’s never going to smile again so wide that dimples etch themselves into the corners of his mouth. His energy is never again going to glow so brightly it outshines the sun.

  I know there are others in the room, people trying to pull me away, people trying to check on Emyr, but I can’t comprehend what’s going on. I don’t see them, I don’t hear them. There’s only Emyr’s lifeless body, still warm and soft but covered in blood and bile and black muck.

  Am I still screaming?

  “Wyatt.” A choked whisper cuts through the static in my ears. A familiar warmth drapes across my back, Briar pressing herself into me from behind, holding me as tightly as she can. I can feel her energy overtaking me, pressing past the boundary of my body to sink into my very skin. Like the strength of her love might be enough to keep me together, to keep my bones from coming undone. “Oh, Wyatt.”

  How is Emyr dead? How is he the one lying on this floor, lifeless, when he’s the good one? He’s soft and radiant and kind and he would have made a good king. He was a beautiful boy with a beautiful heart and a warm soul and he didn’t deserve to die. And I’m nothing. I’m just an asshole with a violent streak who’s never cared about anyone except myself. And I’m here, breathing air I don’t deserve.

  I would do anything to trade places with him.

  And then the world goes black.

  At first, I think I did it. Somehow, I did trade places with Emyr, and now I’m dead and he’s going to come back to life. But I can still hear Briar whispering my name. And there are other voices, too. The king and queen crying out for their son. Tessa, Wade, Clarke. Derek? All of them are here with me, in this cabin, in the dark.

  I’m not dead. The blackness surrounding us now is the same darkness that settled over us the night of the riot, the darkness that ripped Unicorn Boy to shreds. A magic I don’t understand, that feels even more impossible to control.

  Is it going to kill me this time?

  Maybe it should. Without Emyr, what good is Asalin? Without his light and strength, without his sharp mind and tender heart, what is there in this kingdom that’s worth saving?

  Maybe this magic should take me out before I make good on my threat to burn it all to the ground.

  Beneath my skin, Briar’s energy shifts and tugs, pulling at the ventricles of my heart. I can feel her breath against the back of my neck. In my arms, Emyr’s body is still warm.

  No.

  No, I’m not going to do that.

  I don’t want to destroy anything else.

  Slowly, the darkness all around me is joined by something new. Flecks of light begin to appear, tiny specks of gold weaving themselves into the fabric of my black magic. One or two at first, then a dozen, then a hundred, then hundreds of tiny stars lighting up the darkness like constellations. Hundreds of little suns warming up my personal midnight sky.

  Just as it did the first time, it recedes into my skin, black and gold disappearing together into my body.

  And Emyr lies in my arms, his pulse even against the palm of my hand, his big brown eyes blinking up at me.

  “Wyatt?”

  Behind me, Briar pulls back and whispers, “Holy shit.”

  My universe tilts.

  “Emyr.” I lean down to press my face into his throat, dragging in the smell of him, the warmth of him, the alive-ness of him.

  Kadri hits her knees beside us, brushing her fingers through Emyr’s hair, kissing his face. “Sweet boy. Beautiful boy.” She whispers the words through tears. “How did you do this? How did you bring him back?”

  I don’t know. I don’t know anything about my own magic. I never have.

  I do know that Healing magic is the rarest and most complicated of all the fae skills. Even Emyr struggled to heal Clarke when she was close to death’s doorstep, and she was still alive.

  Kadri was brought back once, and it took a congregation of the most powerful Healers in Asalin.

  Seriously...what the hell did I do?

  “I died?” Emyr asks, still staring at me.

  I brush my fingertips against the base of one horn. “You died. And it was a real dick move, I gotta tell you. Talk about hit it and quit it.”

  The joke might’ve been funnier if I’d managed to stop myself from breaking into a sob halfway through.

  Emyr swallows. “Sorry. Won’t happen again.”

  I curl myself around him, holding on to him as tightly as I can while not shoving his mother away. Every breath he takes feels like a gift. I can’t lose him.

  How did I ever think I could cut this boy out of my chest?

  “That Wyatt brought him back is irrelevant,” Derek says, shaking his head. He waves a hand at a small fleet of Guards at his back, fae I hadn’t even realized were here until now. “When we know he’s the one who killed him. Take the boy into custody.”

  Wait, what?

  “It wasn’t him!” Briar jumps to her feet and flings her whole body in front of the Guard who takes a step toward me, yellow energy exploding out in every direction.

  I can’t seem to make myself let go of Emyr, but my black flies forward to twist itself together with her yellow, our energies weaving into each other.

  “He was the only one here, was he not? And we know his motives. We’ve all seen the video.”

  “What video?” I ask, glancing around the room, hands tightening on Emyr’s bare skin.

  Tessa makes a face at me. “Derek has shown us all a clip of you...in the maze garden. Telling him you would do whatever it took to get out of this engagement.”

  “You were recording me?” Only the part of the conversation that made me look guilty, it would seem.

  “I was.” A hint of a smile, cruel as a blade, teases at Derek’s mouth. “It would appear Emyr’s modernizations are useful, after all. I never would’ve had the phone to make the recording without his upgrades.”

  I can only blink at him for a long moment.

  You could have avoided what happens next. Remember that.

  Derek did this. Somehow, he’s the one who killed Emyr. And now I’m being framed for it.

  “Take the boy into custody,” Kadri growls, reaching up to slam her hands against my shoulders,
trying to shove me off her son. “Now!”

  “Wait.” Emyr groans, struggling to sit up, to push his body between his mother and me. “It wasn’t him. I know who it was. It just...doesn’t make any sense.”

  The Guards look to Derek. Derek is glaring at the floor, pale face mottled with furious red splotches, nostrils flaring.

  “Who?”

  Emyr shakes his head. “Jin.”

  “Jin Ueno?” Kadri demands, eyebrows shooting up. “How is that possible?”

  “They sent me...a document... I downloaded it, and...” He frowns, voice trailing off, eyes sliding across the floor to that magicked iPhone-knockoff.

  The dings right before he...temporarily died.

  Me, refusing to talk to him about our future, telling him to go talk to his phone instead.

  “Jin Ueno is long gone from Asalin by now.” Leonidas claps his hands together with authority. “We will gather a search party to find them. They cannot outrun this.”

  “With all due respect, Your Majesty,” Tessa says in a way which conveys she believes absolutely no respect is due, “we have been trying to explain to you that Jin Ueno is no longer in possession of their phone.”

  The messages in Briar’s phone.

  Hey, dollface. (: It’s Jin. Clarke finally managed to smuggle my phone out to me. Can we talk?

  Why are you ignoring me? :(

  Where are you?

  Derek growls. “You can prove nothing.”

  “We can, though,” Briar snaps. “Jin and I have been in contact since they left.”

  “A crime for which you will be sentenced to death in ways far more unpleasant than you would in a human court,” Derek responds, shaking his head.

  “Eat me, knockoff-Nazi.” Briar rolls her shoulders back. “Jin was wrongly imprisoned to begin with. And it wasn’t them who was trying to hunt me down today.”

  And then, in her usual fashion of overdramatics, Clarke sighs. “Oh, give it up, Derek. They have all the pieces put together. It’s over.”

  Every eye in the room turns to her. Her shoulders straighten, her chin tilting up. And her energy...