Instantly the Hunt soldiers surrounded me protectively and between their bodies I could see the Bergresar step out into the open away from Morgan.
“I need you all to hold him and the others off while I deal with Morgan,” I ordered in a hushed tone as I released the smoke barrier around us.
Lochlan locked eyes with me. For a moment I thought he would argue, but instead he tipped his chin down in acknowledgement. He barked a soft command to the others and all but two pulled away to face the Bergresar, leaving me to address Morgan with my two bodyguards.
The Bergresar unsheathed the Sword of Light and the nine members of the Hunt arced around him menacingly. What would have been a battle fought entirely with magic was instead a physical fight of nine against one. I would have thought our men had the clear advantage in numbers, but the Shadow Fae creature leapt and parried with dizzying speed, striking out at the men between moves so quickly that he could hardly be seen. Their advantage seemed to be nullified by the bregresar’s skill and physical abilities.
Focusing my attention back on Morgan, I reached out and summoned the smoke that still lingered in the air, wrapping it behind me and my guards to help keep any ambitious creatures from trying to interfere. I stepped forward toward Morgan, but I hadn’t gone far before she issued a sharp whistle and unleashed a blindingly bright light that seared into my sensitive eyes. Along with myself, hundreds of Shadow Fae screeched in pain and covered their eyes to protect themselves. As my eyes struggled to recover, my mind grappled with how she could have accomplished light magic when Lochlan and the others had not been able to do the same.
“What…how…” I stuttered unintelligibly.
“You assumed I had no magic here?” Her voice was dripping with giddy delight.
With my hands held firmly over my eyes, I was caught off guard yet again when her hand took hold of my necklace. I squinted open my eyes and wrenched myself backwards, both to free my necklace from her grasp and to distance myself from the sheer insanity that peered out at me through her eyes. My attempts to back away were made in vain as she stood rooted to the ground, the pendant of my necklace firmly in her grasp. Her blue eyes began to glow and she murmured a chant in a foreign tongue.
“Stop!” I yelled using the magical command that had worked so well with the Sluagh. Morgan merely shook her head with a smirk.
“I assure you, one of the first things I learned when I made it to this realm was how to utilize my magic when here.” She lifted her chin haughtily and resumed her chant.
Summoning all my dark power, I slapped my hands over hers and prepared to press darkness into her but nothing happened. She began to laugh and that’s when I realized she wore fine leather gloves. I hadn’t noticed because they were a flesh tone, but it was just enough of a barrier to prevent my magic from working. My killing touch required skin to skin contact.
A horrific wave of nausea nearly took me to my knees, and would have if it hadn’t been for Morgan’s death grip on my necklace. Glancing behind me, I could see my two guards pounding on what appeared to be an invisible wall separating Morgan and I from everyone else. Behind them the horde of Fae were no longer spectators in the Hunt’s fight with the Bergresar. One-by-one they entered the melee, causing the huntsmen to fight back-to-back for protection.
My magic swirled the air around me, but I was too late. Right before my eyes, my necklace disintegrated into dust and scattered like ash on the wind. I stumbled back from her in horror and the two essences that had been bound to my necklace, one dark and ominous and the other ethereal, lifted into the twinkling twilight sky.
We had hardly been there any time at all and nothing had gone according to any plan we had constructed, but that didn’t mean I was out of options. I would not give up and I would not lose myself to panic. I wracked my brain for ideas, assessing my powers for potential maneuvers.
Along with disorienting nausea, the loss of my necklace also crippled my powers. Despair grappled for control inside me and my breathing became shallow and labored. I wasn’t ready to die, but without my necklace I could see no way to defeat Morgan. She was protected from my touch unless I could get to her face, my combat skills were much improved but with access to her magic, there was no way she would reduce herself to a physical fight. We were surrounded by thousands of vicious Fae seething for an opportunity to tear us apart and I stood there practically defenseless. The only way I would have a chance was to outwit her.
Morgan stepped back a few feet and relished as I floundered in desperation. I could practically feel the hatred radiating off her in waves. In fact, I realized now with the loss of my necklace, that I could feel a vast sea of negative energy from the hordes of Unseelie and Shadow Fae. The emotion crackled and buzzed around me and where normally I would have to touch someone to feed from their turbulent emotions, the sheer immensity of negativity pulsing around me allowed me to simply reel it in like a fisherman pulling in his nets.
I gasped as the power surged in my system, making my skin tingle and the hair on my arms stand on end. When I focused my attention back to Morgan, her brows were creased and jaw clenched in frustration—my guess was she had no idea what had just happened to me but knew I had done something.
“Your hatred has blinded you for too long, Morgan. You have wallowed in misery, oblivious to anything but your plans of vengeance, and your weakness has warped your reality. You thought you could take down Guin, but you never had a chance.” My tone was purposefully condescending and I stood tall, my arms down at my sides.
Morgan’s eyes narrowed and she bared her teeth at me. “How dare you pretend to know anything about me. You who are nothing but a child playing in the affairs of gods vastly more knowledgeable and powerful than yourself.”
I shut out the men fighting the Bergresar, the thousands of Fae seething around us, and the weight of the consequences I would face if I failed. Instead, I narrowed the focus of all my concentration on Morgan. “Yes, I’m newer to all this than you, but I’ve been given guidance by someone even more knowledgeable than yourself.”
“If Merlin had been able to stop me, why isn’t he here himself?”
“He isn’t here because you would have run from him. You wouldn’t have had a chance against him and you know it.”
She sneered at me and when she spoke again, her tone had dropped to a low, menacing growl. “Has he told you how he killed my mother? He didn’t just kill her, he allowed her to be driven mad over a period of years before he tried to rescue her. But it was too late, just like it will be for you,” she ground out, her otherwise pristine features screwed up with hatred.
She lifted her hand and lashed out to send a hailstorm of energy blasting my way, but nothing happened. Her head tilted slightly, eyes wide with confusion, and again she flung her arm toward me with no results.
I released her mind from my hold and she returned to the scene around us, her two guards pounding on my wall of smoke shielding us from any distractions. Extending my hand, I dangled her broken amulet before her, cracked down the center.
“No!” She hissed, eyes blazing at me. “What have you done? This cannot be.”
I turned to where the Hunt still fought for their lives and infused my voice with power as I yelled out over the cacophony of sound, “Stop your fighting.” Like a well-orchestrated dance, fists froze in midair and bodies lurched to a halt as the mass of violent bodies responded to my command. Without their own magic to overrule my command, heads swiveled in my direction waiting their next instruction. Now that I didn’t have to worry about Lochlan and the others, I turned to address a bewildered Morgan.
“It’s called dream walking. I pulled your consciousness into my dream where we talked so that I could distract you while I removed and disabled your amulet. It’s over Morgan—only Twilight magic works in this realm. Without your amulet, you have no power here, nor can you return home.”
“I have no home to go to, Merlin and his bitch sister took care of that,” she roared at me as th
e reality of her situation sank in.
“My dear, Morgan.”
We both gasped as Merlin stepped up between us. Had he been present to witness the entire exchange? How had he known the precise moment to appear?
“I did everything in my power to keep you from this fate, knowing how challenging it had been when you lost your mother. You were the only one who could comprehend the depravity of the loss we suffered, so I have tried to be kind through the years. But this cannot go on. I want to help you find your way back.”
“You don’t want to help me, you want to kill me,” she shot back at him.
“You’re very wrong. You may think me the monster responsible for your mother’s death, and while I was responsible for her capture, her death is not on my conscience. After I killed Mab, I located your mother, who had suffered dearly at the hands of my sister. She was not the same woman, lost in her mind where the torture could not reach her. I did not have the heart to end the life of someone I cherished so dearly, even out of mercy. You and everyone else were under the impression that she had been killed, but that was not accurate.”
Morgan stood, eyes wide. “It’s not so,” she said, her voice just a whisper. “Had she been alive you would have told me, I would have known.”
Merlin’s lips thinned and he dropped his gaze to his feet before looking back at Morgan. “She was not well, and I had no idea if she would ever recover so I did not wish to offer false hope.”
“Lies!” she screamed and surged toward Merlin who lifted his hand and instantly Morgan’s eyes rolled back into her head and she dropped to the ground in a heap. He bent down with a sigh and placed a set of iron cuffs around her wrists.
I looked at Merlin in horror. “You’re not going to kill her?”
“She is lost in pain and grief—that should not condemn her to death.”
“Not alone, but think of all those deaths that have resulted from her actions.”
“None of us are perfect, Rebecca. One of these days, perhaps you will have a child of your own and you will understand the lengths to which we go to protect them, even when it means protecting them from themselves.”
“What happens when she gets out and tries to incite another war?” I argued angrily.
“Where I am taking her, she will not get out. Please try not to worry.” He smiled softly. “I could not do on my own what you have accomplished here today, and I will always be in your debt.” His head dipped in a bow and I bit my tongue, holding in the flippant response I wanted to give.
Merlin turned toward the hordes of Fae, who were watching with uncertainty. The woman who had brought them there and offered promises of absolute freedom had been defeated. Not only had her promises not been fulfilled, she had left them without a way home.
“I should leave you all here to suffer the consequences of participating in this rebellion.” He spoke in a commanding voice, his words magically amplified to the mass of Fae. “But I am not heartless, like some of you who would kill on a whim. We will open a portal to the Shadow Lands and you will return to Faery peaceably or you will be left here to rot,” he said with finality.
Murmurs spread across the crowd along with distinct grumbling, but Merlin ignored the chatter and turned to me. “Together, we should be able to open a portal large enough to get these cretins back where they belong.”
I followed his instruction and within minutes the mob of vicious Fae were gone, including the Bergresar. Prior to allowing the ancient Shadow creature to return home, Lochlan had forcibly removed the sword form his hands and Merlin had offered a staunch warning against ever participating in an uprising again. The begresar was not fond of being reprimanded, but he also was reticent to get stuck in the Twilight Realm so he kept his protests to a menacing growl.
Lochlan now possessed the sword as he oversaw the care of his injured men. The men of the Hunt were alive, although several had been badly injured. My eyes were repeatedly drawn to Lochlan for reassurance that he was whole.
Only once we had returned to the stone circle did the men whoop and holler in celebration. My eyes immediately sought out Lochlan in the cool darkness of that Irish night. His gaze was already locked on me, lips lifted in the hint of a smile. I threw myself into his arms and he lifted me, pulling my legs around his waist.
“Jesus, you two, can’t you wait until we get home?” Michael grumbled good naturedly.
I smiled as I nipped at Lochlan’s bottom lip and slowly lowered my legs to the ground.
He kept his hands in my hair, his face inches from mine. “I knew you could do it—you’re the most amazing woman I’ve ever known.”
“I wasn’t so sure when I realized she still had use of her magic.”
He took my hand and we followed the other men toward our cars. “Your necklace is gone.”
I pulled down the neck of my shirt to reveal my chest. “She pulverized it into dust—does that mean I’m fully Fae?”
When his eyes cast my way they were alight with a hungry fire. “That’s what it sounds like to me.” His voice was a touch more guttural than it had been moments before, and I had to clear my throat before I could continue.
“Ronan had told her about my killing touch so she was prepared for that and with the use of her magic, everything I tried she brushed off like I was an annoying mosquito. Lucky me, she didn’t know about my dream walking. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to focus both inside the dream and outside, it was like having double vision, but I managed to fool her. I took hold of her amulet and instead of pressing darkness inside, I harnessed my light magic and battered the amulet with it until the containment spell gave way and the dark essence was released.”
“And once she couldn’t use the dark magic of the amulet, her light magic was useless in the Twilight Realm.”
“Exactly. I just wish Merlin had killed her, I hate knowing she’s still alive.”
“If she causes trouble again, Merlin’s daughter or not, she will be killed. For now mankind is safe.”
“Watch, I bet Guin claims none of this ever happened.”
“If you were able to best Morgan, I have no doubt you will sort out Guin as well.”
I would say it was a long hour and a half ride home until we could be together, but we didn’t make it that long. Thirty minutes into the journey Lochlan pulled the car over on the side of the road and we started the celebration early.
25
The next morning as I lay with my head on Lochlan’s chest listening to his even breathing, I came to a decision on how I would handle my issues with Guin. Since the day she first took a stand that I would have to live in Faery I had been mulling around my options in the back of my mind. Now that Morgan had been defeated and my amulet had been destroyed, the grounds that I had relied upon to keep Guin at bay were moot. I would have to assert my new argument and hope that it was enough to win my case.
“Morning, handsome. Sleep well?”
Lochlan made a rumbling sound in his chest and rolled to his side, pulling my back to his front and holding me snugly against him. He wasn’t exactly a morning person so I didn’t hold out for a response.
“I have a favor to ask—I need you to take me to speak with Guin today.”
He was quiet and I started to wonder if he had fallen asleep until he finally spoke. “Why would you want to do that?”
I rolled to my back so that I could see his face and he leaned up on his elbow, head resting in his hand. I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but he was even more stunning first thing in the morning with his ruffled hair and beard scruff. “I need to settle things with her, I can’t leave it hanging over my head.”
“I think it’s a bad idea, you need to wait and see if she even makes the move to force you to Faery before you go instigating a fight.”
“I’ve been living for months with the frustration and worry about Morgan weighing on me, I’m not going to escape that problem just to take on a new one. I want it all done—no, I don’t just want it done, I need it don
e. This isn’t negotiable, I have to do it.”
“You know, no matter what she says you’re with me. If I need to move to Faery, I can do that. Mine, remember?”
What had I done to deserve this man? He was everything I could have asked for, and he was all mine. I lifted up and pressed my mouth to his full lips, holding him to me in a kiss that I hoped conveyed how much I appreciated him. Then he rolled above me and demonstrated just how much he appreciated me.
Wanting to be as respectful as possible, I wore a navy sheath dress and did my hair and makeup for the full effect. Guin could be agreeable and seemed decently rational, but at heart she was a monarch and respect was critical. I didn’t want to piss her off by being disrespectful before I even had a chance to plead my case.
My palms were drenched in sweat as I made the long walk toward the queen stationed upon her ornate throne. I had no idea if my plan would work, but it was my only option, aside from living a life on the run.
I offered a deep bow in greeting before addressing the queen in the now silent room. “Your Majesty, we have apprehended Morgan and ended her rebellion. Tens of thousands of Fae were set to be transported onto Faery and Earth through a place called the Twilight Realm. Morgan’s use of this location was the reason you were unable to detect her uprising.”
The queen raised a single brow as she lifted her chin but she did not speak, so I continued.
“While I learned what I would need to know to defeat Morgan, I discovered that my powers are unique to me. I am a Twilight Fae, with magic derived from both light and dark magic.”
A host of whispers broke out among the crowd lingering in the throne room and the queen narrowed her eyes at me. “You think to play me for a fool?” she hissed as she stood.
Twilight Siege: A Dark Fantasy Novel (The Fae Games Book 2) Page 24