“Antony and I have spoken, and we’ve come to an understanding!” She rubbed a hand against her eyes, praying desperately that Peter would let the offense go, even if just for now. “You are going to return to the castle and warn your uncle. Tell him—”
“You’re coming with me.”
Katy shook her head. “I wish I could.”
“Oh no!” Peter took a step forward, but his knees gave out, and Katy barely caught him as he slumped against the wall. Still, when he looked at her, his glare was no less determined. “I haven’t come all this way to lose you again. I am not leaving without you.” With a shaking hand, he gently ran his fingers through her hair.
Katy closed her eyes and the tears began to fall as she soaked in the touch that she had imagined for so long. Despite the heat created by her magic, the warmth in his fingers brought her a new kind of longing and sorrow at the same time. “If only it could be so,” she whispered. “But I have to stop Tearlach, and remaining behind is the only way.”
“And why is that?”
Before she could answer, they heard a shout come from somewhere outside the fort. Katy turned back to Peter, searching his face, memorizing it for one last time. When she died, she wanted to remember exactly the way his nose was slightly arched and how his eyes could pierce her soul, like a sword through the heart or moonlight through water. She would remember the way his sharp cheekbones balanced the line of his chin. But more than anything, she would never forget the way he looked at her now. It was a look of longing. Of desire and heartache and adoring and need. It was all she had ever wanted to see on his face and more. And deep down, she knew that that look would sustain her until her dying breath.
“Katy, there’s something I haven’t told you. About that day at the waterfall—”
But she shushed him and gently wrapped her arms around his torso, careful not to disturb the dozens of raging bruises covering his skin. “You are good and brave and true.”
He stared at her miserably. “You wouldn’t say that if you knew the truth.”
“Peter, look at me.” She softly took his face and tilted it to look down into hers. “Tearlach is going to use my manifestation to kill you…to kill everyone.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I have to get away if everyone we love is going to be spared. You have to tell them so they can stand a chance.”
Peter stared at her in horror. Another shout went up from outside, closer this time. They didn’t have very long left. Katy glanced out the window. There was still no Antony.
“But my promise,” he whispered. “I still haven’t fulfilled my promise.”
At this, Katy gave him a sad smile. “Then give me your blessing, and all will be made right.”
“My blessing?” He stumbled back a step. “No. Never. I won’t be blessing any sort of death wish for you, today or anytime else.”
“But don’t you see?” She tried to smile again, but it was getting more and more difficult. “If you can help me stop this, you will have saved my heart from knowing I was being used to kill. And I won’t be afraid anymore! If we can save the people of this isle together, that will be enough for me. It was all I ever wanted. To keep people safe.” She touched his right temple gently with the tips of her fingers. “Go back to the castle. Find a woman, one that actually deserves you. Get married, have children, and rule this isle the way it was meant to be ruled.” She could no longer do any more than whisper. “Be happy. That’s what I want for you. Trust Atharo and be happy.” As she spoke, two horses pulled up outside the dirty window. Katy ran over to wave Antony away from the wall. Peter caught her arm as she ran back to him.
“I won’t let you do this.” His hand shook as he gripped her arm. “I won’t leave you behind again.” And before Katy could respond, he had wrapped both his arms around her and pulled her to him, pressing his lips against hers.
Katy couldn’t remember the last time she had been kissed, even as a child, aside from Peter’s quick goodbye at the castle. Emma had never kissed her, and she couldn’t remember if Sir Christopher ever had, either. But this kiss was far more than any goodbye could ever express. A new kind of heat rushed through her blood and bones, and against her better judgment, Katy found herself kissing him back. All too soon, he gently pulled away.
“I need you,” he whispered. “I’ve only survived all this time because I knew I would see you again. Everything I did was for you.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I don’t know how to live without you.”
“And that,” Katy choked through her sobs, “is why I have to do this.” And with that, she pushed him backward against the door and pressed her hand up against the outer stone wall.
The ease with which her power made the entire wall crumble was somewhat frightening, and she noticed a few new spots of blood on Antony where there hadn’t been any before, but Katy didn’t have time to dwell on it. Instead, she ran back to Peter, and with Antony’s help, they dragged him out to the horse. Despite his beatings, Peter was surprisingly strong, and with Antony’s shoulder still healing, it took all of their strength to force him outside.
“We won’t be able to get him home like this,” Antony puffed as he struggled to put Peter in a stronghold.
“Bloody right you won’t!” Peter did his best to shove Antony’s arms off.
Katy opened her cloak and pulled out the little bottle. As he had been instructed, Antony held his breath and closed his eyes. Katy dipped a finger inside the bottle and placed it on Peter’s lips. Immediately, he stopped fighting and slumped against his friend. From there, it was relatively easy for Antony get him upon the horse. Then Antony remounted and turned to Katy.
“You’re sure you must stay?”
Before Katy could answer, Tearlach barreled around the corner.
“Go!” Katy screamed. She slapped Peter’s horse on the rump, and Antony grabbed its reins and took off for the nearest gate. Tearlach immediately raised his hands to the sky, but Katy raised her hands as well. Four of the large trees standing nearby began to shudder. Well, she meant to pull four. Just as Tearlach looked up, twelve trees crashed to the earth around them. Katy prayed she hadn’t just killed Peter and Antony.
Half a minute later, she heard Antony’s shrill whistle. Relief flooded her, and she began to run in the opposite direction, but she didn’t get even halfway to the gate before Tearlach grabbed her by the arm and yanked her backward so hard her shoulder popped. She lay on the ground panting as he stood above her and glowered down. His dark hair was mussed, and his eyes were as crazed as one of his animal’s.
“So you remembered.”
Katy glared up at him, allowing all the anger from the last few days to gather in the look she sent him. “I never forgot.”
“You’re stronger than I thought.” He sniffed as the dust continued to settle. “But that’s a good thing. You’ll be all the more powerful on your birthday.” He reached down and snatched the little bottle out of Katy’s hand. And without hesitation, he pulled the cork off and dumped the entire bottle over her.
Katy didn’t even remember falling asleep.
52
We’ll See
“I don’t know where you thought you were going.”
Katy cracked her eyes open a slit and tried to blink the sleep from them as she looked around. She was back in the bed of her blackened room.
Tearlach continued, his voice unruffled. “Loosing the animals was clever, I’ll give you that. But the ocean is farther away than you think, if that was your goal. And it would have done nothing to stop your manifestation from reaching the isle.”
Katy finally managed to open her eyes enough to glare at him from across the room. Then she looked down. Her arms and legs had been bound with not one or two or even three chains, but as many chains as the lengths of her limbs would hold. Two, maybe three dozen. She turned to glower at him once more where he was standing at the edge of her chamber, scribbling on a parchment with a quill. She wondered how she had ever thought him handsome. Now the
dark of his eyes seemed menacing, and the way he held himself reminded her of the way Odhran had once walked around Downing, self-righteous and confident, as though he held the keys to the world.
“Why are you doing this?” She struggled to sit up, but the chains made it difficult. “This isn’t the only way!”
“If you had seen the kind of destruction that I’ve witnessed, you’d understand.” He spoke calmly, as though explaining a simple concept to a small child. Then he finally turned and put the parchment down. “It’s not just here, Katy. It’s on all the isles. Discord, enmity between the humans and the Fae.” He walked toward her and knelt by the side of the bed, cupping her bound hands in his.
If Katy had possessed the strength, she would have struck him for such a touch. In fact, she tried to do a whole lot more. Squeezing her fists shut, Katy pushed her strength outward until she trembled. But the blachn root he’d used on her still held her power captive.
“One day you’ll see,” he said in a soft voice. “This will not simply be a new beginning for the Third Isle. It will be a place of hope for those who wish to begin again. We will lead the way for all the isles to regain their equality and balance, and we will do the work of Atharo.”
“I hardly think mass murder is the kind of work Atharo would bless.”
“Well, it’s hardly as though He’s deigned to give us any sort of direction in recent years. But that doesn’t matter now.”
“If it doesn’t matter, why the facade?” She leaned forward against her shackles. “Why pretend to be one man when you’re really the other?”
He stood and walked out onto the balcony. “I never wanted you to see me as a monster.” His voice was sadder than she’d ever heard it. “I’d hoped that one day, when you’d truly learned to love the side of me that’s the most human, you might have grace for the side of me that’s not.” He turned and looked at her, his green eyes wounded.
But Katy refused to be moved. Not after what he’d done to Peter. “You say you know me, but in acting as you just did…as you’re doing now…” She shook her head. “Anyone who knew me would know this is exactly what I wouldn’t want.” Then she was struck with a revelation. “You created that lightning storm, didn’t you? The one they blamed me for in Downing!” She was shouting now. “They hunted me!”
He paused again, his shoulders freezing momentarily before he stood and went to the door. “You were getting too close to your birthday, and without a little push, I was afraid you wouldn’t leave until it was too late. I just didn’t expect your prince to waltz in and steal you away again.”
Rage filled Katy, and she sought her power only to realize she was growing tired again. Far too tired to even summon the great strength that was writhing inside her.
“What have you done to me?” Then she looked down at her hands. Pink powder coated them. She must’ve breathed it in by accident. “You can try all you want,” she promised as the powder began to take effect. “But I won’t let you do this.”
“Just so you know,” he said. “I meant it when I said I would take you to the other isles.” He gestured at the brown, brittle trees towering dangerously above them. “I had planned to take the crown from the day my parents died, but once the humans were gone and the isle was ours, I really was going to take you to see the others. I promise.”
“I’m not your puppet!”
“Let me make this very clear.” He strode back to her side and looked down at her with an infuriating calm. “You will manifest in three days. We are going to wipe this isle clean and start anew. I will be king, and you will be queen. Now, if you don’t do as you’re told, I will make sure to tell everyone on the other isles that you were responsible for the death of every human on this isle, and none of them will want anything to do with you ever again. Do I make myself clear?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she managed to mumble before her eyes closed. “I’m still not going.” Just before she moved back into unconsciousness, she heard him reply.
“We’ll see about that.”
53
More than Ever Before
“Take hold of his arm! He’ll break open the stitching!”
A third man made a grab for Peter’s arm, but Peter was able to dodge his hands. It was a small, windowless room, but before they were able to restrain him again, he’d maneuvered enough to snatch a knife from the physician’s table and slam Antony up against the wall, the knife pressed upon his throat.
“Why did you leave her?” he shouted, his voice oddly hoarse. “Why did you take me and leave her?” When Antony paused, he pressed the knife even harder. “Tell me, or I’ll kill you!”
“She told me to!” Antony closed his eyes and didn’t try to fight back, which angered Peter even more. “She wanted us to warn the king! I wanted to take her, but the olc—”
Rage tinted Peter’s vision and made him tremble. “I could kill you for—”
Before Peter could continue, someone grasped his shoulders and jerked him backward. Another person snatched the knife from his hand. He fought them, kicking and struggling to stand once again, but his limbs tired far too quickly, and the three men were able to pin him back onto the bed.
“If you don’t stop fighting me, sire,” a man’s voice said, “I’ll have to tie you down. Please don’t force my hand.”
“I order you to let me go!”
“And I’ve told him not to listen to you.”
At the sound of that voice, Peter stopped struggling.
His uncle surveyed the mess Peter had made in his attempt to drag an answer from Antony. The physician’s tools and tray had clattered to the floor, and rolls of binding cloth had unraveled and lay in piles around their feet. The king set his mouth in a grim line.
“Since you’re well enough to attack your own knights, I expect you up and dressed and in the war room in a quarter hour.”
“Sire!” the physician called out as he frantically tried to rewrap one of Peter’s smaller arm wounds. “I still have several injuries to bind!”
“Half an hour then!” the king roared, turning sharply and stomping out of the room.
Antony looked sick as he followed the king out. He paused once to glance back at Peter, but Peter refused to meet his eyes, focusing instead on the smaller gash the physician was hurriedly preparing to stitch.
“How long have I been unconscious?” Peter asked.
The physician, a tall, heavyset man with dark eyes, gave him a nervous glance. “The better part of a day. Sir Antony nearly killed the horses trying to get you back, or so I’m told.”
Peter gritted his teeth at the mention of Antony. The better part of his day remained hazy, flashes of light as he’d tried to open his eyes but hadn’t succeeded for more than a minute or two.
But Katy he remembered. The way her lips had melted on his as he’d crushed her against him, desperate not to let her go again. The heartbreaking tears that had run down her face as she’d pushed him to his horse. The way her thin shoulders had squared as she’d turned away from him to meet her captor. No longer cowering and meek, she’d been frightened, yet she’d been strong.
Sending Peter away might have been Katy’s idea. In fact, it probably was. But Antony’s part in leaving Katy behind was crystal clear, and in no way was Peter about to treat him as innocent. Especially not after he had been the one to drive her to the monster in the first place.
Soon after, Peter was all stitched up, or at least stitched up enough that he was able to walk himself to the war room without bleeding as he went. His muscles felt as though they might never heal, and he tried to ignore the great splotches of purple and blue all over his skin. But the pain only strengthened his resolve.
That bastard was going to die.
When he arrived in the war room, the sky was dark though the windows, and Peter guessed, from the lack of servants and courtiers in the halls, that the hour was quite late or even quite early. He glanced around the war room to find it full with the exception of three seats
, one of which was his own.
“Where’s Benjamin?” He looked at Tomas.
“It appears he never returned.” His uncle’s mouth was set in a grim line.
“It’s worse than that, I’m afraid,” Antony said quietly, refusing to meet Pete’s gaze. “According to Katrin, he’s the one who knocked me unconscious and turned me over to the olc.” He ran a hand down his jaw. “He must have found me while I was camping by the creek while I was out looking for Katrin.”
“And while we’re on the subject,” the king frowned at Antony, “why exactly were you looking for young Katrin out in the woods? She was supposed to be here!”
“A long story, I’m sure, Uncle.” Peter glowered at Antony. “Unfortunately, one that will probably have to wait until we have more time.” As much as he wanted to beat Antony senseless, there were more pressing issues for his knights. He would simply have to satisfy himself in the meantime with imagining ways to punish Antony. The king gave them both a long look before finally nodding with a grunt.
“Benjamin must’ve moved out quickly.” Domnhall studied the map that lay in the center of the table. “He only had a seven-hour start on us. To make it through the tunnel that fast and then to find Antony and discover the olc’s home so fast...”
“Why exactly was he on his own to begin with?” the king asked.
“It’s my fault.” Peter picked up a quill from the pile on the table and began to fiddle with it. “I cut him loose after he continued to disobey me. I told him to return here, but apparently he had revenge on his mind.”
The king rolled his eyes. “Has everyone lost their minds?”
Peter wandered over to his seat and finally sat down with a thump that made him wince. “What I would like to know is what we’re to do with this olc. Antony.” He said the knight’s name like a curse. “Perhaps you could shed some light on the situation, as you and Katy decided to become fast companions while I was being tortured.”
The Autumn Fairy Page 39