He looked far more massive this morning than he had the previous one. Button took his time tucking in his large bat-like wings tight to his body.
“Miss me?” he asked in his sibilant and throaty growl.
She glowered. “Hardly. Is it time already?”
He nodded his regal neck. “Mm. Indeed, it is, fair queen. But I must warn you, Baba has planned most exceedingly well for this meeting. To be honest, I hardly think you stand a chance.”
His laughter caused the ground to shake.
Fable clenched her fists tight. Owiot hugged her to him.
“Relax, Fable.”
“How? How can I? I was a fool, Owiot, a stupid, silly fool who lost her head and thought only with her heart instead of focusing on—”
He kissed her. Stealing the very breath from her lungs. When he was done moving those sexy lips over hers, she could hardly think straight anymore.
“Uh,” she exhaled heavily, swaying into his body, “what was I—”
He grinned, showing off his straight white teeth. She framed his face lovingly, the time for pretending how she really felt for this man was long overdue.
Rubbing the tips of their noses together, she breathed against his mouth. “I’ll protect you, Owiot. With my life.”
“It’s not me I worry about, my darkness.”
~*~
On the ride over Fable had asked Button to make sure Baba felt his landing. The dragon had laughed, but promised to do his best.
And when they’d finally sailed through dimensions, and she spied a world full of sandy islands, and waters overflowing with predators, she’d grinned. Good as his word, when Button landed, he sprayed the Magic Queen with large blasts of sand.
It wasn’t easy sliding off of a dragon’s back, even one that was willing; Button was easily two stories off the ground. But he crouched low and with the help of Owiot’s waiting hand, she managed to slide off without looking too awkward about it.
She turned, and that’s when she finally spied the infamous child eater herself.
Baba was dressed in boots, a thong, and a ridiculous looking vest that covered an exceedingly lumpy chest.
Fable frowned, idly curious, but then Baba Yaga was known as the crone too and certainly the three breasts could be an extension of her more unpleasant form. She shuddered.
Baba was having a conversation it seemed.
With herself.
She was laughing, snorting, and swearing. She was a gorgeous woman—three breasts aside—with long, flowing brown hair and such pale white skin with nary a mar to it that she was like the yin to Fable’s yang.
The witch was also clearly mad as a hatter and Fable didn’t think it could have been possible, but she grew even more nervous. Where was the witch’s mate?
Try as she might, Fable couldn’t see hide nor hair of the male. The humid, and horribly hot land they were in was nothing but a flat stretch of interspersed islands with no trees, animals, or otherwise. If he were here, she’d have seen him by now.
Gritting her teeth, she tried to reason with herself that Baba’s male had to be around; it was in the terms of the foolish games. Each cycle gave each combatant a chance to permanently end the other’s mate. Which seemed a silly way to go about making a love connection, but it was what it was.
And she’d be damned if she let Baba steal Owiot from her now.
Owiot slid up to her side, grasping hold of her hand. “He is here somewhere. I can sense another male’s presence.”
Whipping around to look at her own male who made her heart tremble with the powerful stirrings of love and lust, she shook her head. “Yes, but where? Owiot, I won’t let her harm you. I have to find him first.”
“Ssh. Ssh.” He rubbed a soft curl of her hair between his thumb and forefinger, and she felt the touch of him roll like magic even across her scalp.
She sighed, beginning to lose herself to his calming influence.
“If you’re done playing kissy face with ugly over there, let’s get on with this already,” Baba yelled, practically cackling it in her pretty, grating voice.
Already wound up far too tightly, those words caused Fable’s energies to explode. She snapped.
“I will end you!” She twirled toward the witch, feeling her darkness begin to gather and coil like a tight band around her.
Terrified of losing Owiot. Upset that she hadn’t prepared more thoroughly, Fable became a living ball of power.
“I’d like to see you try!” Baba chimed, cackling like all witches were prone to do, and that was it.
Fable didn’t feed off the black magick. Instead, she tapped into the power she’d been born with. She was the daughter of the Sea King and the granddaughter of the Water Elemental, Calypso.
Calling to the seas surrounding them, she beckoned them to heed her cry. Instantly the waters began to thrash and roil. The skies above grew thick with black clouds and jagged streaks of lightning and rolls of thunder. And then she pulled at the shadows from her dress.
Obscuring both her and Owiot from that damned witch’s sight. Baba could not kill what she could not see.
“Owiot,” she called, holding out her hand to him.
The sounds of nature blasting itself apart concealed their voices from the crazy witch on the opposite island.
Owiot’s hand slipped into hers easily. “I’m here, Fable.”
Assured by his touch, she again tried to ground and focus herself and not get lost to the rage. What she was doing, she knew wasn’t going to be good enough. Not against a witch of Baba’s caliber.
Fable might stand a chance if she tapped into her black arts, but she wanted to prove to herself that she was different. That she wasn’t the same awful woman she’d once been.
That she could be a better person. So she’d fight this fight handicapped by her own dubious desire to prove herself as worthy and good. Damn her black soul.
She growled, causing a bolt of lightning to strike the island where Baba stood.
“Missed me!” cried the witch, and Fable lost it.
“Where’s your male!” she demanded, shielding Owiot as best she could behind a thick screen of smoke and shadow.
But already she could sense the witch gathering her arsenal together.
“Find him if you want him so badly. I’m sure you’d be his type. Anything’s his type. Probably even your male would be his type.”
She said it without rancor, which caused Fable’s lips to twitch, liking the damned witch a little bit better for it. That didn’t mean she’d be deterred.
And then she felt the dark sucking pull of powerful magick shoot like a bolt through her shadow and landing square in Owiot’s chest.
Fable’s eyes grew as she imagined all sorts of horrors. Owiot imploding, exploding, turning against her, or simply just dropping dead to the ground.
Owiot grabbed at his chest, grunting.
“What have you done, you witch!” Fable cried, voice choked with terror and rage.
“Now, now. Temper. Temper.” Baba wagged her finger.
And though Fable knew that the witch was inciting her to rage purposefully, no doubt to get her unhinged and unbalanced enough to screw up, she couldn’t stop from walking right into that trap anyway.
Owiot meant too much to her now.
Everything really.
She should have bloody told him how she felt before this damned game started and spared them both this nonsense, but she’d always had a hard time owning up to her true feelings. And something of this magnitude was just a wee bit harder for her.
Angry, Fable directed another bolt of lightning to strike at the witch. But Baba was spry and jumped clear just in time so that the deadly attack only barely grazed the heel of her boot instead.
“Well, shite!” she snapped.
And that was the first time that Fable had put the witch back on her heels that she decided to go with the same attack again. More lightning, and more, and more, until the black land was lit with silvery-
golden sprays of it.
“You will show me your male!” She cried again, assured for the time being that whatever spell the damned witch had tossed on her male, it wasn’t a killing blow.
Not yet anyway.
Using a wee bit of magic to amplify her voice through the howls of the roaring winds, she said it again. “Show me your male, Baba Yaga!”
Flicking her wrist, she called yet more fog from her gown, swirling it tight around the witch. Without finding the male, though, this damned cat and mouse game could last for at least twelve hours, twelve hours she had no intention of being a part of.
Maybe the witch had hidden him in plain sight. Transfigured him somehow to appear as something else. A witch of Baba’s capability could easily perform a spell like that.
“You seem to really have a hard on for my male, what’s the matter, ryba, Owiot not man enough for you?” Baba taunted.
And despite herself, Fable growled. The first time it had been funny, but she was growing enraged by the witch’s antics. And there was a strange chiming of bells in the breeze that couldn’t possibly herald anything good.
Owiot stood just off to her side. Safe for now. But she knew Baba hadn’t yet begun to fight back, and that was a scary thought.
She needed to end this now. If she was Baba, and she’d transfigured her male, the only smart thing to do would be to keep him as close to her as possible. Which meant, she had to get her and Owiot across this deep channel full of sharks.
Again tapping into her innate powers, she solidified a small bridge of water. She was nowhere near as powerful when it came to controlling water as her father or grandmother, but she was a Serenite and was at least capable of creating a bridge.
“Owiot, come on. We have to find her male. I know Baba is hiding him, which means the male has to be close to her.”
Grabbing his hand, she tugged on him so that he’d follow. Which he did without a word.
Owiot in no way seemed nervous for himself, but he was constantly strumming her back with his fingers, letting her know that his worry was for her alone. It was sweet and wonderful and if she had more time she’d thank him in a very carnal way for being so wonderful, but there was absolutely no time for anything other than praying to the gods that they’d escape this wretched place in one piece.
The bell-like ringing of chimes had begun to grow louder.
Fable bit her lip when they finally stepped foot onto Baba’s island; her gut instinct was screaming at her that she’d made a mistake in forcing Owiot to follow her. And yet, if she left him behind he’d be exposed and defenseless against Baba’s magick.
In these spelled realms all males were stripped down to the very merest threads of magic inherent to them. Basically, they were as powerful as a level one witch, which was to say, hardly at all.
“Owiot,” Baba called out, and she was close. Very, very close. “I think that maybe you and I have gotten off on the wrong foot, don’t you think? I don’t hate you. I just need to kill you. It’s nothing personal, really.”
Fable blinked, squashing her desire to slam her fist through the witch’s nose for threatening her male, and instead choosing for once to be smart and think first rather than simply react.
Pointing to her left, she gestured at Owiot that she thought Baba’s presence was just over there; they were going to get her. End her. Kill her and the male. She and Owiot were going to be free; they were going to—
Somewhere a baby cried.
Fable and Owiot froze, a greasy ball of terror slid down her throat into her belly as the child cried harder. The infant bellowed in terror.
Had the witch really brought a child into the games as a pawn? She wouldn’t dare, even Fable wouldn’t be so cold as that. She broke out in a cold sweat, thoughts churning with an almost overpowering need to save the baby.
Fable was praying and hoping she’d simply misheard, but the next cry struck terror into her own soul. She could not condemn an infant to death.
“A child, Fable! She’s hidden a child!” Owiot cried, and Fable’s heart sank because she knew that he’d just given away their position to the witch.
But they had to look for the baby.
And the only way to do that was to obliterate the one thing that was keeping them safe.
The veil of shadow.
With a sinking heart, she sucked the darkness back in, and she and Owiot immediately began searching for the little one. Baba was a witch. A powerful witch. One strong enough to create an illusion so real that she could trick a witch as powerful as Fable herself.
The more they searched, the more she knew her fears were valid, there was nothing and no one. The sound of Baba’s cruel laughter rolled through Fable’s veins like ice water.
“Oh, there’s no child.” The witch chuckled.
She stood before them, tattered, and bleeding, with lightning burns on her flesh and her hair a rat’s nest that had tangled around her trim shoulders, but gloating and full of hubris and Fable knew they were in big, big trouble.
In Baba’s hand was a small pewter vial of black death. Fable instantly recognized the dark roll of black magick.
“There is, however, death in here. I’m sorry, Owiot, I’m sure you’re a perfectly nice—”
Ribbit. Ribbit. Ribbit.
An ugly frog poked its head out of Baba’s vest, the source of that third breast and Fable wanted to smack herself senseless, disgusted that she hadn’t put two and two together from the beginning.
The witch had transfigured her male. Into a frog. And she was harboring him.
She would kill him. With one strike. And she’d use black magick if she had to. Yes, it would stain her soul and probably kill Owiot’s faith in her—the thought of which wounded her deeply—, but she’d be damned if she let the witch hurt her male.
Gathering her power to herself, ready to hurl it at that damned frog’s head, Fable barely caught a glint of silver before Baba Yaga flicked it with unerring accuracy at her.
Or rather, at the spot just behind Fable.
At Owiot.
She heard Owiot’s roar of pain a moment later, and Fable stopped thinking about the damned witch or her male, terrified that Owiot had been mortally wounded, she turned.
Only to note a moment later through the heart-pounding terror that he hadn’t been dealt a deathblow. Instead, the ten-inch blade had been impaled into his foot.
Running to her male’s side, Fable dropped to her knees, trying to pull the knife out, but she knew the moment she touched the hilt that the blade had been spelled to hold fast.
Owiot was stuck.
Furious, but refusing to leave his side, she wrapped her arms around his shoulders. Wanting to kill both witch and her mate if they dared to try anything now.
But rather than attack. The frog—who was no longer a frog but a handsome blond-haired, blue-eyed Viking male—floated in the air, laughing and crowing as he tossed a small leather pouch into the air.
That small pouch changed into a ship and with a hearty cry of, “To me, wench!”
He held out his hand to Baba, who happily took it and with her final parting words of: “It’s been fun, kids, but my carriage awaits.” The witch and her Viking sailed off into the clouds.
Owiot sat down, grunting and biting down on his back teeth; his face contorted in a tight mask of pain. The gloomy skies vanished the moment Fable muted her powers.
She was heartsick and upset that in the end Owiot had been hurt, and she’d been unable to stop Baba’s attack.
“I’m so sorry, starlight.” Her voice was a broken whisper. “It’s all my fault. I failed you. I failed us. I should have—”
And even through his pain, he comforted her. Touching his thumb to her jaw, he pressed in lightly. “No, you didn’t, darkness. She tricked us.”
“I shouldn’t have fallen for it. I knew it was a trap.”
“Yes, but you still choose to save the child anyway. Fable, we’ve won a victory today.”
She wan
ted so badly to pull the blade out but knew that trying anything would only increase his pain. There was a time limit to these things, the only thing they could do was wait it out. Which was less than ideal, but there was literally nothing more she could do for him other than sit beside him and hold his hand.
Which is just what she chose to do.
“I don’t see any of this as a victory, Owiot.”
His look was a mixture of pain and love, and it made her heart swell.
“I felt your call of black magick, felt your desire to use it, but you didn’t, Fable. Not once did you battle with that darkness. And your eyes are bluer than ever.”
His thumb lightly grazed the corner of her eye.
I love you...
The words were just there, on the tip of her tongue and ready to be breathed to life, ready to be spoken. But she was scared. So very scared. Not because she thought he didn’t care for her, she knew he did.
But because the ghosts of her pasts taunted and mocked her, telling her she’d done this once before and was only setting herself up for yet more pain. That George had seemed like an angel until he’d turned back into his true demonic form. That she might be doing the very same thing with Owiot.
And just as doubt would threaten to suffocate her, hope would rear its bloody head and tell her just the opposite. That George had never taken such care of her. That George had never taken the demons from her. Taken a knife wound for her. That George had never shared any intimacies with her...and on and on and on it went, the battle for whether to tell him or not raged like a tsunami inside her heart.
Hope, however, was stronger than almost any emotion in all the worlds; hope gave her heart wings and told her to “just try one more time,” that Owiot was someone worth fighting for.
She was going to do it. Just rip it off and say it and put it out there and if he didn’t return her affections she’d understand, but for once in her life she wanted to be brave. She wanted to—
“Just hold my hand, Fable. That’s all I need right now. Is just for you to hold my hand,” he said softly and with a thread of pain laced behind it.
The Dark Queen (The Dark Queens Book 5) Page 19