The Renegade Son (Winter's Blight Book 2)

by K. C. Lannon

  “Aye,” Alvey said, beginning to wheel her way down the cavern, clearly getting a bit bored with the discussion.

  “Wouldn’t one have won by now?” Deirdre asked as she began to follow Alvey.

  “Oh? Humans have been fighting each other for ages too. Would they not have wiped themselves out by now?”

  “Well, that’s… No. We—I mean, they—haven’t.”

  “Why not?”

  Deirdre laughed. “Because more humans are born!”

  “This doesn’t matter,” Walker said a bit tersely, walking in front of Alvey, determined to lead the way again. “All that matters is that faeries kill humans often. And this long war between them…” He looked at the piles and piles of weapons around them. “I can’t guess how many humans have died on the sidelines as casualties.”

  “Why are they fighting?” James asked enthusiastically, coming right behind Alvey.

  She frowned, then stopped wheeling her chair, saying, “Push me along and I shall tell you. Some.”

  James hesitated just a moment, his pride and curiosity clearly at war. But his curiosity won out, and he began to push her chair, asking, “Where did the fighting start? Was there a huge first battle? Where was it?”

  “Down in what you call the Middle East. Somewhere warm.”

  “What weapons did they use then? What type of magic did they fight with?”

  Deirdre walked behind the two, unsure whether to cut in or not. She was a bit curious herself, but James’s enthusiasm to learn about war and death was a bit unnerving. Realizing Iain was walking nearly beside her, she glanced over to see a similarly uncertain expression on his face as he watched his brother ask Alvey questions like she was a celebrity of some sort.

  “James is really interested in faeries,” Deirdre stated, smiling a bit.

  Iain shook his head. “That’s an understatement. I don’t know why or where he got it from.”

  “I know! Especially with your dad and everything.”

  “Yeah. Though my mum, uh, used to tell us stories and folktales about creatures and faeries. That’s probably a factor…” He slowly trailed into silence, his brow creasing.

  “Still…” Deirdre looked ahead as James was excitedly asking Alvey to rank some faery weapons from most lethal to least. “I don’t know if this is something to be so… happy about.”

  Iain nodded in agreement. “I guess it’s only exciting when you’re not living the reality of it yourself.”

  “Maybe I should have a talk with him.” She hissed through her teeth, rubbing the back of her head. “I really need to talk with him about that stupid plan earlier anyway. I need to make sure he doesn’t try a stunt like that ever again…” She noticed Iain looking at her and hurriedly added, “Unless, of course, you want to do that. You are his brother.”

  “You know,” he admitted, “it might be good for you to talk to him. He’d actually listen to you. You— You’re really good with him.”

  Deirdre smiled.

  “So, when we get out of here”—she lowered her voice—“what about Commander Walker? I mean, I guess we could just run away from him?” When Iain didn’t reply immediately, she asked, “You’re not thinking of going back to the army, right?”

  “No, no.” He smiled grimly. “I’ll officially be seen as a traitor now that everyone knows I didn’t just go missing.”

  “Oh. That’s bad, isn’t it?”

  Tilting his head, he replied in a strained voice, “Deserters aren’t exactly praised in the army, let’s say that.”

  Deirdre pressed her hand to her forehead, then jerked back and hurriedly pulled it away, having forgotten she was holding the crystal rock in that hand. When Iain gave her a perplexed look, she quickly said, “I’m sorry. I mean, if you hadn’t found James and me… I mean, if I wasn’t the one James was with… your father wouldn’t be so hard on you.”

  “That’s not really true.”

  “But still! I know you also left because you wanted to look for your mum, but you could have explained that, and your father and everyone else would have understood!”

  The corner of Iain’s mouth twitched. “That’s… also not really true.”

  “But still… here you are now.” She gestured at the cave around them. But when her eyes fell on the thousands of rocks now shining to her, friendly and familiar, she couldn’t help but add, “Though I guess this place isn’t all too bad.”

  “None of this is your fault, Deirdre,” Iain assured her. “I made all my own choices, and I… I actually think I’ve finally made some good ones. I’ll just have to deal with the fallout of those choices on my own.”

  “Well, you don’t have to deal with it completely on your own.”

  “Right. You’re right.” Iain stared ahead, quiet for a moment. “A good soldier, I’ve been told, follows orders without question. And I… I don’t think I could do that… not with the way they’re running things now anyway.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Commander Walker was informed you’d been framed, but he wouldn’t even consider the possibility that a faery might be innocent or that he ought to listen to someone of lesser rank.”

  “Oh…” Deirdre sighed, hanging her head.

  There really is no going back…

  Iain continued, emboldened and speaking without mumbling, “Someone like Boyd’s operating in the Iron Infantry. All this mess happened either under the noses of his superiors or with their permission—either way, the whole system’s rubbish. And if you look at the state of things in Neo-London, or anywhere else in the country most likely, it paints a poor picture of what the Iron Guard believes help is. So maybe deserting isn’t as awful as I thought, now that I know the truth.”

  “So…” Deirdre looked up at him curiously. “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know exactly,” he admitted rather sheepishly. But then he smiled faintly and added, “But I know I’ve got to do something.”

  He seemed determined and more energized than she’d seen him before.

  Maybe once I know the truth too, I can feel the same way…

  Deirdre bit her lip, contemplating confiding in Iain about her hesitation to find the Summer Court, to find her parents. But she still didn’t want to think about or face it just yet, so she stayed quiet.

  When they caught up to the others, James was asking, “Alvey, why did the two Courts start fighting in the first place?”

  “Probably over land,” Commander Walker muttered.

  “Sort of,” Alvey replied in an airy, noncommittal manner, clearly aware that both the boys’ attention was on her and enjoying it. Deirdre rolled her eyes.

  As James began to pepper Alvey with questions about what the battlefields were like and where they were, Iain fell back, looking thoughtful.

  “I don’t think they fought about land,” Deirdre supplied.

  “Yeah. Maybe…” Iain hesitated a moment before continuing, “Maybe it’s like how it is now. The Winter Court is threatening humanity with the warnings and the monsters they’ve sent, like that… Fachan. But it’s just because they want to fight the Summer Court.”

  She tilted her head, not entirely understanding. “So… you don’t think these weapons were used on humans? I don’t either.”

  “I don’t think faeries need weapons either. I bet”—Iain gestured at the weapons around them—“these were made by the Winter Court for humans, and they pressured humans into helping them fight the Summer Court.”

  Deirdre gaped at him. “Really?”

  “It’s what they’re doing now.”

  “But we’re not helping the Winter Court! Right?”

  Iain glanced forward at Commander Walker. “The Iron Guard might decide to, and soon.”

  “Why?”

  “They’ve been threatening to unleash more monsters on humans if we don’t. Another reason is to prevent another Cataclysm. Faeries did that, after all. What’s stopping them from doing it again?”

  Deirdre fo
lded her arms, frowning at the ground for several moments; something wasn’t adding up. “But… wouldn’t the faery who did that be an Unseelie faery, a bad one from the Winter Court?”

  Iain frowned thoughtfully. “That’s likely, but my dad always said it could have been any faery from either Court. Personally, I don’t think a Seelie faery would be capable of that kind of cruelty…”

  There was a moment of silence before James asked Alvey, “What makes a faery go bad, Alvey?”

  “What?”

  “You, um, said earlier the dwarf had turned bad, rotten.”

  “Aye, I did.” She said nothing more.

  “How does that happen?” Iain prompted.

  Immediately Alvey sat up a bit straighter, replying with a smile in her voice, “There are several steps. The most well-known are the faery utterly abandons the Summer Court, in every way possible, acts against its nature in one way or another—commonly by eating a human—”

  “Did you say eating?” Deirdre interrupted, her voice hitting a high pitch.

  “Aye, though I suppose sometimes they may just get a hand or a head or some blood. By the by, this is related to what I asked you earlier today about having a taste for human blood.”

  “Ugh.”

  “And then,” Alvey continued, “they eat Unseelie faery fruit.”

  “There are types of faery fruit?” James asked, his voice quieting.

  “Aye.”

  “What’s the difference? How can you tell if it’s Unseelie?”

  Alvey considered and then replied, “The most common thing I’ve heard is that it resembles the pomegranate fruit. Seelie fruit is most often a golden apple.”

  “So,” Iain said a bit abruptly, “is the faery who dropped the bomb Unseelie?”

  “Oh, not anymore.” She was quiet for a moment before continuing in a lower tone, “No, he turned Seelie, even before I was born.”

  The boys both froze while Deirdre asked, “Really? That’s—”

  “Nothing I’ve ever heard of,” James said. “Are you sure that’s accurate?”

  “Aye.”

  “That sounds a bit, uh”—James chuckled briefly—“impossible. And kind of wishy-washy, really—that they can change, I mean.”

  Iain was quiet, seemingly lost in thought at the idea.

  “Oh, ’tis impossible, is it?” Alvey asked with one of her cat smiles.

  It should have warned James to stop, but he continued, “Yeah, I mean, I’ve read loads of books about faeries, a lot of them banned, but they never mentioned a faery changing Courts.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, see”—he stood up straighter as they continued, warming to his theme—“faeries are born Seelie or Unseelie. And that’s it. They belong to either Court, for all their lives. Right?” He looked around at Deirdre and Iain for confirmation, clearly expecting it.

  “Ahhh, I see,” Alvey drawled. “A young human boy who has lived inside a human city all his life somehow, in truth, has better knowledge and a more in-depth understanding of the heart and soul of faery life and potential than I, a half elf raised in the heart of the Summer Court, could possibly have. I see it now!” She clasped her hands together to her chest. “I was so ignorant and misguided!”

  James was unsuccessfully stammering comebacks.

  “How was that, Iain?” Alvey asked, talking right over James. “Was that attempt at sarcasm effective?”

  Iain grinned, letting out a low chuckle. “Yep, I’d say you nailed it.”

  Not long after, the tunnels began to incline, and Alvey said they’d be out soon. Deirdre hardly heard her; she was engrossed in a new rock, apparently a kind of flint she’d picked up. By this point, most of the rocks in the cave all around her felt like new friends, and she no longer was in any particular hurry to leave. She almost found herself wishing they had more time to spare; she wanted to see exactly how it would feel to know every single rock in the entire cave.

  Especially when she closed her eyes, she could sense how they were currently falling loose or being dripped on by water or being shifted by something in the tunnels behind them…

  She stopped, opening her eyes, looking behind them. They were at an area where several tunnels met, all heading up toward the surface.

  “We’re nearly there,” Alvey said as James began to strain to push her up a steep incline.

  “That dwarf was the only one here, right?” Deirdre asked Alvey.

  Alvey ignored her, and Iain asked, “What do you mean? Do you hear something?”

  “I just—”

  A gunshot rang out; Alvey shrieked. Commander Walker staggered forward and then slumped to the ground. Deirdre rushed forward to him, just stopping from touching his back when she spotted a dizzying amount of blood streaming out from underneath his unmoving body.

  “Nobody move!”

  Boyd rushed out from a side tunnel right behind her, a gun in one hand and a club in the other that looked like it had come from a treasury.

  Her lower jaw trembling, Deirdre choked out, “Why did you shoot him? He was—”

  “I said don’t move!” he barked, aiming the gun at her, just a meter away. “You have those iron cuffs—put them on! Now!”

  Before Deirdre could even react, Iain brushed past her, stopping to stand directly in front of her, blocking her from view. Boyd’s mouth twitched at an awful smile as he did so.

  Beside her, James was gaping at the unmoving corpse of Walker on the ground, letting out a shuddering breath, his face pale and his hands clutching his head.

  “Don’t look, James—” Deirdre instinctively reached out for him, startled by the terror on his face.

  “You should look, James. It’ll prepare you for what’s about to happen,” Boyd said, aiming his gun at Iain instead. “Your stupid brother’s just made things easy for me, and now he’s about to die right in front of you—”

  “He’s out of bullets!” Alvey screamed, slamming her hands down on her armrests. “I don’t smell any others in his gun!”

  Iain didn’t miss a beat; he rushed forward and slammed his shoulder into Boyd before the other soldier had a chance to ready himself. Deirdre skidded back as they began to fight, Boyd quickly recovering from the initial hit and sloppily hitting his shoulder with the club.

  Deirdre scooted over to where James was frozen behind Alvey, who was leaning forward and listening to the fight with excited interest like she was at a boxing match, and whispered to him, “What should we do? Iain doesn’t have anything to fight with!”

  James seemed unable to speak. He looked down at Walker’s corpse and shuddered, then looked back at the fight, his eyes wide.

  Crack.

  Deirdre gasped and jumped up, fearing the worst from the splitting sound, only to see it was the club hitting the cave wall. Boyd had lost his grip, or Iain had managed to get it away; either way, it was out of their grasp.

  That didn’t faze Boyd, who nailed Iain solidly in the face with his fist; before Iain could recover, Boyd slugged him in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him.

  Iain was losing.

  Deirdre was biting her nails, noticing her hands were beginning to get warm again. She took a deep breath, trying to suck it all in, scared to death of making the roof fall on top of Iain and crushing him. She looked up at the now-familiar rocks of the cave surrounding them, thinking, Please don’t do anything. Please, please, please…

  To her surprise, her hands began to feel a bit cooler but without the usual sick feeling that came along with it.

  She was jerked back to reality as Boyd managed to knock Iain down to the ground; the left side of Iain’s face was bloodied, and he struggled to his knees.

  “I’m going to kill you here,” Boyd growled. “But not before”—he leveled a kick at Iain, who barely managed to catch it—“you tell me how Philip died! How did he die?” Boyd tried to land another blow. “Did you run away while he fought? Did you shoot him in the back? Did you help a faery kill him? Tell me!”


  Iain raised his head. “A Fachan killed him. He—” Iain winced, though Boyd had stopped attacking him. “We were attacked at night. Neither of us saw it coming. He… he protected me.”

  Shaking his head, Boyd replied, “So you pushed him in the way?”

  “Are you listening—?”

  “He’d never risk his life for a Gypsy rat junkie like you!” Boyd lunged forward, but Iain dodged this time, managing to pull himself up to his feet. “You’re betraying General Callaghan! He never should have trusted you! Philip would never die for a traitor!” Boyd hurled another punch, which again missed, but he kept advancing, each word more strangled with pain than the last. “He was a good soldier!”

  “You’re right.” Iain this time caught Boyd’s punch and didn’t let go, meeting Boyd’s glare. “He was. That’s why before he died, he told me he was going to stop whatever you and General Callaghan were doing even if he didn’t know why.”

  “He knew everything”—Boyd pulled his fist back from Iain’s grasp, taking another swing and just barely missing—“about the general, about the barrier around the Summer Court and bringing it down—he knew everything I did!”

  “The barrier?” Iain backed up, nearly stumbling over a rock in his path. “You can’t bring the barrier down. Nothing can.”

  Boyd stopped hurling blows for a moment, barely breaking a sweat, his mouth curling into a wan smile. “General Callaghan knows how, and he’s going to use her”—he jabbed a finger in Deirdre’s direction—“that little faery girl you defied orders for—to do it. He’s going to drain her magic dry.”

  Deirdre felt herself sway on her feet, too aware of her pulse quickening as her heart began to thunder in her chest.

  Me… He’s going to use me? My magic?

  Iain had slumped over slightly, looking exhausted. But at that, his eyes narrowed and burned. Advancing toward Boyd, he furiously parried another blow, managing to slam Boyd’s arm against the wall of the cavern and causing him to pause and take a step back.

  “General Callaghan thinks it was her that made you betray him,” Boyd said, gasping. “He thinks there must be something about her that made you weak. But I know better. You’ve always been weak.” Boyd took a step toward Iain, who was forced to take a step back as Boyd prepared to strike again. “Won’t matter in the end though. He’ll take her, and the barrier will fall.”