by Bonnie Lamer
“Then I suggest as soon as the girl returns you ask her very specifically if this is what she plans to do,” Isla instructs. Gee, that won’t be an awkward conversation at all.
“She has already claimed she does not want to hurt the child,” Kallen points out. “What benefit would she gain if she started a war? She has not been mistreated by the Fairies.”
I shrug. “It was just a suggestion.”
“I would still like you to pose the question to her.” Isla stares after Whysper who is about to round the bend of the beach where she will be out of our line of vision. Kegan and Alita rise to go after her. “Our relationship with the Elves has always been strained,” Isla continues. “War is a distinct possibility if Addylyn believes we have harmed the child she has asked us to keep safe.”
“I will ask her. I just wish we could speak to Addylyn about all this,” I sigh.
“Do you feel that?” Kallen asks suddenly. He stands and holds a hand out for me. I take it and awkwardly stand up holding Lielle. I manage not to drop her.
“Yes.” Isla’s voice is a lot colder than the ocean water is this time of year. “Elves.”
I really need to pay more attention to the sensors in the back of my mind, I think, as I realize I feel them, too. “More than one. What do we do?” I ask.
“Take the child inside. Give her to Alita whether she wants to go to her or not. Meet Kallen and me in the driveway,” Isla instructs over her shoulder as she walks back into the house.
“Come, let us do as she says,” Kallen says gently tugging on my arm.
I follow him into the house. He keeps going toward the kitchen door that leads to the driveway while I stop and call out for Alita. The panic in my voice must be loud and clear because it only takes a second for Alita to be tearing down the stairs. “What is it?” she asks.
“Elves,” I tell her. “I need you to watch Lielle. Take her into the most secluded room you know of because she is probably going to cry when I leave.” Lielle is already pushing her bottom lip out in a pout and her eyes are getting watery.
“Of course,” Alita says and she accepts the baby when I hand her over.
As soon as Lielle is out of my arms, I am running toward the kitchen despite her crying. I feel terrible about it, though. I pull the door open in time to see a line of Elf warriors approaching. They are walking in perfect step with each other like the armies back home do. Except, the armies back home don’t have synchronized glamour. The warriors are sending out bucket loads of glamour trying to make us too happy to resist whatever they want us to do. All it does for me is piss me off. There are eight of them in total. Each of them is dressed identically in dark brown leather pants and vest. Their arms are bare, probably because they couldn’t find enough leather to cover their massive biceps. Each has a belt around the waist with several weapons attached to it. A whip, a sword and a dagger. They do come prepared.
I join Isla, Tabitha, Garren and Kallen where they are standing in the middle of the long driveway. When the warriors are close enough to speak, they stop and one steps forward from the perfect line they formed. He is taller than the rest but not by much. I put him at Kallen’s height of six feet six inches. He has red hair and freckles which I believe greatly diminishes his threat factor. Freckles are too cute to make someone look scary. “We have come for the child,” he says in a deep baritone. His words roll over us like a warm blanket. Damn glamour.
“Has Queen Addylyn sent you to retrieve this child you speak of?” Isla asks.
The warrior’s face hardens. Okay, even with freckles he’s a little scary looking. “The mother of that abomination has been dethroned. The King Consort has put a new Queen on the throne. The child was taken from the palace unlawfully and we demand its return.” His words are spoken in a monotone as if he has practiced this speech.
“So, you believe Queen Addylyn snuck the baby out before she was dethroned?” I ask.
The Elf warrior turns his cold eyes toward me. I am amazed to find there is no light in them whatsoever. It’s like he’s dead inside. “The former Queen would not have been capable of doing so.”
“What will happen to the child when you find her?” Kallen asks, his tone as hard as the warrior’s.
“It is an abomination under our law and will be disposed of accordingly.” Ouch. That’s harsh. Every protective gene in my body has been switched on now. But, the warrior is saying the words mechanically. He is also lying. I know because of the creepy crawlies on my skin. “Why is she an abomination?” I ask.
“She is the child of prophecy. The child destined to bring an end to all Elves.” The warrior’s voice is flat as he says this. Almost as if he doesn’t believe it. Curious.
I really hate prophecies. Being the product of one, I know for a fact that there are many ways to interpret them depending on the outcome one is searching for. “What is the prophecy?” I ask.
The warrior recites it for us. “There shall come a babe born of noble birth, brought forth on the shores of the firth. Fair of face and eyes filled with mirth.” That doesn’t sound so bad, I muse. The warrior continues, “With her she brings destruction, devastation and pain.” Okay, hard to misinterpret that line. “Leaving in her wake the souls of the slain.” That one either. “Glamour stronger than every other, she will seize the power of her mother. Conscious of mind, body and soul, she leaves the womb at the final bell’s toll. Under the morning star she comes into the world, destiny’s destruction of the race finally unfurled.”
My mind is racing, trying to figure out alternate meanings for the lines in the prophecy. I’m drawing a blank. I gaze up at Kallen who seems to be doing the same thing. There must be another explanation than Lielle being destined to obliterate the Elf race.
“If she is the product of this prophecy, why has she been kept alive this long?” Kallen asks, earning a glare from me. What, the Queen should have killed Lielle at birth?
“She has been kept alive to torture my ears and my nose,” Taz grunts from my ankle. He and Felix accompanied me when I came outside. Taz talks a good game, but he always has my back when I need it.
“The Queen…former Queen,” the warrior corrects, “chose not to believe in the prophecy.”
There is a shadow of something in his eyes, but I can’t figure out what it is. “Do you believe in the prophecy?” I blurt out.
His cold eyes find me again. “I believe what my new Queen tells me to believe.”
Now, that’s loyalty. Or stupidity. Yeah, it’s stupidity. “You aren’t allowed to think for yourself?”
Before he can answer, another warrior steps forward. His voice is sharp as he tries to keep his expression from showing how pissed he is at his fellow warrior. He fails miserably. “It is our choice to believe or not to believe, but it is our duty to obey our Queen.”
A question has been wiggling in my brain and I can’t keep it from sliding out of my mouth. “Which Queen sent Lielle to us?” I ask, even though my words confirm Lielle is here with us.
The first warrior flinches at the name. Odd. But, this is why I need to learn to question people more thoroughly. It occurs to me that Dagda asked Whysper if the Queen sent her here with Lielle. He never said Queen Addylyn.
“That is for the King Consort to worry about,” the second warrior informs me snidely. “We have come to retrieve the child, not to answer your questions.”
I honestly do not know which one of us is more pissed – Kallen, Isla, Tabitha or me. “Want me to chomp on his private bits?” Felix snarls. I think maybe he’s the most pissed. He and Taz are both foaming a bit at the mouth as they bare their teeth to the warriors. More than one set of nervous eyes move in their direction.
“Not yet,” I say out of the corner of my mouth.
“Bring us the child so we can be gone,” the second warrior demands. “And the traitor.”
“The traitor?” I ask. Oh, they must mean Whysper.
“We do not respond well to demands,” Kallen informs him.
/> All the warriors step forward to fall in line with the first two. “Then we shall take the child through force.”
I snort. “Do you really think you’re capable of that?”
The second warrior growls, “We know who you are, Witch Fairy. But even you cannot stand against the forces we wield.”
“Do you mean glamour?” I can’t help but ask. “Because I’m not really afraid of glamour.” Except Lielle’s. Hers is pretty darn scary. I keep this fact to myself, though.
As if on cue, the warriors combine their glamour and the sky turns dark all around us. Their eyes begin to glow an eerie yellow and they snarl with teeth I didn’t realize were so sharp. Their skin takes on a greenish tone and their muscles seem to writhe underneath it like they are trying to get to the fighting part. All in all, I give them a nine out of ten in creepiness. But, being creepy is not the same thing as being scary.
I clap my hands. “Nice show, guys. What else can you do?” Kallen tries to hold his chuckle in.
My eyes are drawn back to the first warrior. He is going through the motions, but his heart is most definitely not in it. His skin is a lesser green and his eyes barely glow compared to the others. He wants to be anywhere but here. I wonder why? I guess not wanting to kill an innocent child could be on the list. As I continue to stare at him, he holds my gaze as if trying to communicate something to me.
Out of the side of his mouth, Kallen suggests, “Perhaps we should speak privately with that one.”
My thoughts exactly. First, I need to take care of his brothers in arms. “Hey, guys, I need a minute with your leader here.”
The second warrior begins to protest both the fact that this one is not their leader and the speaking in private part. Since I don’t really care about his opinion, I take his voice away. “Not as satisfying as chomping on his balls would be,” Taz grumbles. I try hard not to laugh which earns me concerned glances from both Kallen and Isla.
“Sorry, Taz said something funny.” I begin to draw magic to isolate the warriors I don’t want to speak to from the one I do, when Kallen puts a hand on my arm. “Wait,” he says.
It doesn’t take me long to figure out why. There are people coming. Fast. And they are all Fairies. All fifty or sixty of them. Leading the way is Dagda. His troops surround the Elves who have formed a circle, their backs to each other and ready to fight. Dagda holds his troops back instead of charging forward. Turning to Kallen, he asks, “Have they come for the child?”
“Even I don’t want to give the odoriferous thing to these wankers,” Taz grumbles. Shocking considering how much he dislikes Lielle. Or, I should say, how much he wants us to believe he dislikes her.
“They have. It seems Addylyn is no longer their Queen, the child fulfills a prophecy and they plan to kill her,” Kallen sums up.
Dagda’s brow scrunches up. “Prophecy?”
“All doom and gloom like most prophecies,” I tell him. “With about a million ways to interpret it, like usual.” At least, I hope there are. I don’t miss the guilt flashing over my biological father’s face. He misinterpreted the prophecy regarding me.
Dagda turns back to the Elf warriors. “The child will remain here until we can safely deliver her to her mother.” His tone implies this is not a debate.
“Then we fight,” the second warrior says.
“Yeah, about that,” I say. I pull magic and place the Elf warriors in a bubble. All except one. For the first time, his dead eyes show a spark. Is it hope I see trying to come alive inside him?
The Elf warriors explode into action. They attack my magic any way they can. They punch it and kick it, they use their daggers and swords and whips. They even try their glamour against it. I don’t know what they think is going to happen, but whatever it is, it doesn’t. My magic doesn’t care about their weapons or their glamour.
“Why have you left this one free?” Dagda asks.
“He does not appear to be of the same mind as the others,” Isla answers for me. So, she picked up on it, too.
After taking a long moment to assess the warrior, Dagda finally says to one of his Fairies, “Bring him inside.” The Fairy warrior takes the Elf by the arm and yanks him forward. The Elf does not try to resist. He steps forward eagerly while his fellow warriors shout curses at him. All except the one whose voice I put in time out. He does some mighty fine hand gestures, though.
Turning our backs on the caged Elves, we follow the warrior inside. Once in the kitchen, Dagda instructs, “Bring him to the ball room.” The ball room? That’s an odd choice.
Noticing my confusion, Kallen says, “To give us more room if there is to be a fight.”
“Oh.” Considering I just encircled his comrades, I’m not really concerned about the guy being able to get the better of me in any room.
Reading my mind, Kallen says, “It is simply a precaution.” I shrug. I don’t really care where we talk to the guy. I just want some answers.
In the ballroom, Dagda creates a plain wooden chair and instructs the Elf to sit in it. He starts right in. “What do you want to say to us that you did not want to say in front of your comrades?”
“I am loyal to my King and Queen. I have nothing to say.”
“Good line but we’re not buying it,” I tell him. “You don’t want Lielle to be killed, do you?”
Once again, he flinches at the baby’s name. After a long moment, he exhales loudly and says, “No.”
“Why?” Kallen asks.
The Elf’s words are carefully chosen. “I simply do not believe the prophecy to be true.”
I believe this is one of those cases Dagda was talking about earlier. Lies by omission. And nope, my internal lie detector isn’t going off even though I know darn well the guy is holding something back. “That’s not the only reason,” I challenge.
He doesn’t meet my eyes. “What other reason could there be?”
“You could be her father,” Kallen suggests and I look at him in surprise.
The Elf warrior’s eyes shoot up so he is meeting Kallen’s stare. “Even if that was true, it would be a foolish thing to admit.”
So, that means yes. “Why is it foolish?” I ask.
“Because if the child is not born from the union of Addylyn and her King Consort, it should not have been born,” Isla explains matter-of-factly. The pain in the Elf’s eyes when he hears her words is proof enough he is most likely the father of the child.
“Are you one of Addylyn’s husbands?” I ask.
“No longer,” he says sadly. “When she was dethroned, all marriages were annulled.”
“So the King Consort would be free to marry a new Queen,” I state, already disgusted by the guy and I haven’t even met him yet. Yet. I suspect I will in the very near future.
I can barely hear his response. “Yes.”
Regardless of the fact he is one of five husbands, he truly loves Addylyn. It is grief giving him his cold, empty eyes. I don’t get it myself. Why would you want to be one of five of someone’s spouses? I would be jealous and resentful, not madly in love.
“Are there plans to kill Addylyn?” Dagda asks.
The warrior’s eyes are too heavy with pain now to look at anything above the floor. “She is to die with the child for her treachery.”
I’m confused. “Her treachery?”
“It is against Elf law for the Queen to bear children by any other than her King Consort,” Kallen reminds me.
“Well, that’s a stupid law,” I grumble.
The warrior’s lips try to form a smile but miss the mark completely. “I agree.”
“So, if the Queen is the true ruler, how can the King Consort depose her and put a new Queen in place?” I ask, trying to fit puzzle pieces together in my brain.
Because the warrior is having trouble forming coherent words due to a sudden onrush of new grief, Dagda explains for him. “Because Addylyn committed treason under Elf law, she could rightfully be deposed. The next in line to her throne will take her place and t
he King Consort will become her primary husband.”
“Wouldn’t Lielle be the next in line?” I ask. That’s how things worked in my realm.
“Not if she was born through treason,” Kallen says roughly. He is as disgusted as I am by all of this.
“So, even though there is a chance the child could be his, he wants her dead so he can rule with the new Queen,” I infer from what they have told me.
“There is no chance Lielle is his,” the warrior intones.
“Oh.” I don’t know what else to say to that.
“Does he know you are the father?” Kallen asks.
There is so much hatred in the warrior’s eyes, I feel like I’m being poked with big sticks in mine. “I am here to retrieve my child so he can kill her and the one I love. Does it seem like he does not know?”
Is that a trick question? I mean, if the guy is in the Elf army, maybe this falls under his duty. But if the King Consort knows, what better punishment for the betrayal he feels. I suppose it doesn’t matter either way. The King Consort is an ass and there is no way he is getting his hands on Lielle. “What happens if we don’t give you Lielle?”
There’s that glimmer of hope again. It is quickly doused. “There will be war.”
“Why did you and Addylyn do it?” I ask. When the double entendre hits me, my cheeks become molten lava. It doesn’t help when Kallen is shaking in silent laughter. “I mean, why did you choose to have a child together if it was going to be so obvious that it wasn’t the King Consort’s?” That might be a little personal, but we need the full picture to know what we’re up against.
“You must understand, the King Consort is truly evil.” The warrior pauses before continuing. Clearing his throat, he finally says, “We were plotting to kill him but we did not get the chance. Someone must have told him. Then, he found out Addylyn was pregnant and he pretended to be ignorant to the babe’s true parentage. He even claimed her as his at her birth. It was not until he put his own plans in action that we knew he had been plotting Addylyn’s demise. Her sister sits on the throne with him now.”
Nice sister. She makes me glad I have a brother. “Well, that’s a sordid tale.” Sounds like something from a soap opera back home.