The Mad Queen (The Fae War Chronicles Book 5)

by Jocelyn Fox

  She pressed the release on her holster and drew her weapon, the familiar weight of the Berretta a tangible reassurance. She followed Ramel, stretching her legs to keep up with his pace, refusing the break into a jog. One of the Glasidhe whirred past her head. She jerked in surprise when she felt a slight weight land on her shoulder and small hands grasp her ear for balance.

  “I apologize,” Farin said in a low voice. “I forget that you have not long been a Fae-friend.”

  Ross wanted to retort that she wasn’t sure she would call herself a friend of the Fae, but the words died in her throat as they reached the front entrance of the warehouse, the great wooden doors reminding Ross of a carriage house. The warehouse had been built in an era when horses pulling wagons had been the primary mode of transportation for materials. She scanned the shadows and adjusted her grip on her weapon, keeping it pointed at the ground as she flicked off the safety with her thumb, her right forefinger straight along the trigger guard.

  Ramel surveyed the main entrance. An accordion-style gate stretched over the wooden doors. Ross let her eyes travel along the brick. Often these old buildings had a secondary entrance built for workers to enter and exit without impeding the flow of goods into the building.

  “Smaller door to the right,” she said quietly to Ramel. It irked her that he didn’t have his weapon in his hand…but if they were only there to talk, why would they need weapons? A voice in the back of her mind whispered its argument. She shook herself and turned to check their six, scanning the darkness behind them before following Ramel toward the smaller door.

  “We went in through a broken window,” whispered Farin into her ear.

  Ross realized she should have properly debriefed the Glasidhe scout when they’d been sitting in the comfort and relative safety of her truck. “Where are they in the building?” she asked softly as Ramel approached the door.

  “It is not the same inside as it looks outside,” replied Farin, patting the curve of Ross’s ear.

  Ross didn’t have much time to wonder at the Glasidhe’s cryptic response, because Ramel put out a hand toward the wooden door. It opened before he touched it, swinging soundlessly inward.

  “That’s not creepy at all,” muttered Ross. She checked behind them again and scanned the windows of the warehouse. Her heart jolted as she thought she caught a flash of movement behind the glass of a window in the top row, but she wasn’t sure.

  Ramel looked at her over his shoulder. “You can still turn back. Go back to your truck and drive away.”

  Ross swallowed hard, even though that option sounded really attractive, with the eerie darkness of the warehouse yawning beyond the open door. Maybe it was time she started believing in ghost stories, if she was going to let this affect her so much, she reprimanded herself. She drew back her shoulders and shook her head. “No. We need to talk to Corsica.”

  Without another word, Ramel stepped over the threshold. The darkness swallowed him completely. Farin gripped Ross’s ear a little harder than necessary and she thought she heard the Glasidhe suck in her breath as Ross walked forward.

  Ross stepped over the threshold, and then she was falling.

  The darkness enveloped her. She didn’t have time to try to shift her body to land correctly, because her foot hit the floor and it was as if someone flipped a light switch. She staggered dizzily, her body unable to process the fact that she hadn’t really been falling. Farin pinched her ear hard. The small bright pain helped dispel her disorientation. She blinked and automatically checked her weapon. She still held the Beretta pointed down at the rich wooden floorboards, gleaming golden in the flickering lamplight. Drawing in a deep breath, Ross looked up and took in her surroundings.

  She felt as though she had just stepped into some fantastic combination of a pirate king’s cabin and the interior of a gypsy’s travelling wagon, with hints of a sultan’s palace here and there. Lanterns made of colored glass hung suspended from rope twined about the massive beams that crossed the ceiling; sumptuous rugs and furs covered the wide planks of the lustrous wood floor, and on every surface rested collections of gems and jewelry, gold and silver and copper, interspersed with polished carvings in ivory and jade.

  The many faces of the mortal world’s deities stared at Ross from every corner of the sprawling, cavernous space. A crucifix made of pure gold gleamed on one of the support beams, the tortured body of Christ cast in exquisite detail down to the blood running down his face from the crown of thorns. A jade Buddha rested its hands on its plump belly, smiling benignly over the hoard of treasure and gazing at an Egyptian sphinx that stood nearly as tall as Ross, her stone lion’s paws draped with strings of pearls and rubies. In another corner, a trio of what looked like Mayan carvings depicted gods with the tail of a snake and the head of a man, a woman with the head of an eagle, and a man wearing a skull on his head. A shudder convulsed through Ross as she saw the real human skull resting on a fur at the base of the Mayan carvings. Her throat tightened.

  “Stay close,” said Ramel, his words almost a reprimand.

  Ross stepped closer to him as they began to walk down the length of the massive room. She blinked. She couldn’t keep track of landmarks; all the objects seemed to shift when she looked away. The trio of Mayan gods were nowhere to be seen anymore, and the Egyptian sphinx now sat to their left instead of their right. She fought against another wave of dizziness.

  “Grab my belt,” instructed Ramel firmly. She heard him say something about lack of preparation and inscribing counter runes, but her head was starting to hurt. Obediently she gripped his belt with her left hand, keeping the Beretta in her right. She focused on the ground immediately ahead of them, and that seemed to help, but she was caught by surprise when Ramel stopped. She looked up.

  Corsica stood in front of them. The silver rings that bristled down each of her ears glinted in the lantern light. The Exiled woman looked at home among the hoard of treasure. She wore delicate silver chains around her neck and Ross caught the fiery glint of dark gems in her white hair, which flowed down over her shoulders in a cascade of pale ringlets. When she smiled, her pointed teeth gleamed.

  “Never thought I’d see the day when I welcomed the Unseelie Vaelanbrigh to my humble abode,” she said with a flourish, her gloved hands gesturing to the strange and sumptuous riches around them.

  Ross tightened her grip on Ramel’s belt. The floor rolled under her feet like the deck of a sailing ship. She tried not to stagger.

  “And the South Sea girl,” continued Corsica, her pale eyes transfixing Ross. Her voice dropped to a purr and she slid closer. “I see you got my message.”

  Corsica seemed in control here, very different from when Ross had met her under the tree what seemed like ages ago. Ross tightened her grip on the Beretta and tried to slow her pounding heart.

  “Ah, now you feel as I do when I am outside these walls,” said Corsica, grinning nastily. “See how difficult it is to think when your senses are constantly assaulted by a world that is not your own?”

  “I wish to see the fendhionne,” said Ramel steadily.

  Ross lost the thread of the conversation. Were they really in the warehouse? What was to say that their step over the threshold had not spirited them away to the belly of some galley on the ocean? Or had they fallen through a portal into the Fae world? Her mind scrambled to refute the possibilities and her head began to ache. She grimaced. Farin pinched Ross’s ear again, using her whole hand to clamp down and give Ross something to focus on other than the swaying room and the whirl of questions in her head. Corsica’s voice came into focus again.

  “…must warn you, Vaelanbrigh, she is different from when you last saw her,” the Exiled woman said.

  “What have you done to her?” Ramel’s low voice carried a subtle threat.

  “Oh, I have done nothing.” Corsica smiled and cocked her head. “Why do you think she chose to come here? Why do you think she chose to stay? It has all been her choice.” She nodded. “And she has learned m
uch from Gryttrond.”

  Ross had been focusing her mind on what she came here to say. The air coalesced around her. It was hard to breathe, hard to think. Ramel did not reply to Corsica, though she felt him tense.

  “You can’t just kill people,” she said into the silence, her pronouncement a bit slurred. It had taken an eternity for the words to go from her mind to her lips, and even then, she panted like she’d just finished a sprint.

  Corsica laughed, the sound as gorgeous as chiming bells. “Of course I can, my sweet South Sea girl.”

  “Not here,” gritted out Ross. She raised the Beretta. “Not in my city.”

  Corsica raised an eyebrow scornfully at the weapon. “Don’t embarrass yourself, dear girl. You can’t hold that gun straight, much less hit me.” She tossed her hair over her shoulder and shrugged. “You mortals are so sentimental sometimes. Why do you care if a useless leech died? He served a far better purpose in death than he ever did in life.”

  Ross couldn’t get the iron sights to line up as her arm began to shake. She clenched her jaw and lowered the weapon. “And what purpose was that?”

  “Feeding me so that I may feed Gryttrond,” Corsica replied. Her lips peeled back from her teeth in her shark’s grin. “His blood fuels the greatest revolution of our world.”

  “And what revolution is that?” Ramel asked.

  Corsica’s eyes flashed with a manic passion. “Overthrow of the Sidhe queens.”

  “Your vendetta is against Mab,” said Ramel. “It was she who banished you.”

  “And my own sweet summer queen did nothing to save me,” hissed Corsica, centuries of hatred dripping from her voice.

  As if from a distance, Ross tried to follow the conversation. She felt light-headed. Even Farin’s helpful pinches didn’t do much anymore. The floorboards rolled beneath her and she almost fell. Ramel caught her under her left elbow, dragging her upright.

  “I am Unseelie,” said Ramel, “and I can see the cruelty of Mab. I understand the desire for revenge against her. But you speak of chaos.”

  “Better chaos than the yoke of servitude,” spat Corsica, her eyes aflame with righteous fury.

  “What makes you different from Malravenar?” demanded Ramel.

  Corsica laughed again. “If you cannot see that, then I will not explain it to you, whelp.”

  “Try me,” Ramel said coolly.

  Ross wondered disjointedly who exactly this Mall-Raven person they were talking about was. And for that matter, what exactly was she doing here in this strange place with thick air and the floor shifting beneath her feet and a bird’s delicate skeleton hung overhead? She tipped her chin up, gazing at the little bones put together so skillfully, mimicking flight. Emeralds studded the bird’s skull.

  Skulls. Death. She had come here to talk about that. But everything seemed so far away. Why was she holding someone’s belt? Had she breathed in toxic fumes or somehow been dosed with a strange drug? Her thoughts were like wisps of smoke, impossible to grasp.

  She heard something clatter to the ground. Her hand felt lighter. Something fluttered near her ear but her arm still felt too heavy to brush the moth away. A shrill voice drilled into her head but she couldn’t understand the words. The smooth black stones set into the eye sockets of the bird’s skull gleamed sightlessly at her.

  The floor pitched beneath her feet and then rushed up to meet her as the world disappeared, swallowed by blackness.

  Chapter 36

  In that first moment, Calliea felt nothing.

  She stared at the blue sky where just a moment before her cousin had flown astride her winged faehal. Now not even the threads of smoke remained. She heard the other Valkyrie cry out in rage and sorrow. The suddenness of it left her breathless. She heard herself panting, trying to draw air into lungs that quivered with shock.

  And then the nothingness in Calliea’s chest crystallized into a hard, cold fury that she had never experienced before. She felt the side of her face with one hand, her skin hot with a burn from the explosion that had so brutally torn Gray into oblivion. Mab had murdered one of the High Queen’s Three. She had killed the cousin that Calliea had always admired, adored and envied, brilliant at everything she ever tried and beautiful as the rising sun. And for that, Mab must pay.

  Calliea felt her lips draw back from her teeth in a snarl. The sky shook with something other than thunder, some silent force that roared through Calliea’s bones. A fierce wind rose from the east, the Valkyries’ faehal trumpeting as the zephyrs bore them up with uncommon speed and ease. And then Calliea sensed a different presence, a seeking power riding the wind, tinged with anger and sorrow but strong with purpose and necessity.

  Mab had killed one of the High Queen’s Three, and the Vyldretning sought another to baptize with her power.

  Without a second thought, icy fury coursing through her veins, Calliea threw her arms wide and opened her mind, offering herself, if the High Queen would have her. She wanted nothing more than to be an instrument of revenge against the Unseelie Queen, a weapon in the service of the Vyldretning.

  The joining happened instantly and without fanfare. There were no glowing orbs of light or a thunderclap sounding through the sky. Calliea felt the Vyldretning’s power slide into her chest like a blade. And then she was herself but more, herself but now them as well, Liam and Finnead and then in the distance the Queen. She felt their grief and rage at the loss of Gray.

  “I will avenge her,” she growled, turning Kyrim’s head back toward the ruined wreckage of the trebuchets.

  Make it so.

  The Vyldretning’s words vibrated through her, tight with anger and violent intent. All Calliea’s aches washed away in a tide of power. The other Valkyrie circled around her, the whites of their wide eyes glinting.

  “Do not let them follow,” Calliea ordered, signing the words as well. She took two of the remaining incendiary devices that Thea had crafted, slipped them into her belt pouch, and tossed the rest in their satchel to Trillian, pointing at Queen Mab and her two Knights.

  Trillian signaled for Niamh and Moira to form up behind her, and the three Valkyrie arrowed down toward Mab and her Knights. Trillian and Moira dropped two devices close to Mab and her Knights in quick succession, the explosions small and quick after the massive detonation of the Unseelie weapons. But it was still more than enough to kill a fighter, Calliea thought in grim satisfaction. Niamh shot three silver-tipped arrows down at the Knights in quick succession. The Knights protected the Queen with their shields, but it wasn’t Mab that Niamh aimed to hit. One of the Knights went to one knee, a silver shaft glinting from his thigh.

  “Let’s go,” Calliea pointed Kyrim toward the edge of the city and let him have his head. Mab’s scream of fury echoed behind them as Kyrim pumped his great wings. The fierce cool wind pushed them along until they flew faster than Calliea ever remembered. She gripped her icy fury like a talisman, the need to avenge Gray pulsing through her with every beat of her own heart.

  There would be time enough later to grieve. Now was the time for action. Now was the time for revenge. And what better revenge than to single-handedly steal the Unseelie Princess from Mab’s stronghold?

  She crouched on Kyrim’s back and peered down at the city flashing below them. Her warhorse snorted in delight at the tendrils of wind pushing him along, every stroke of his wings propelling them faster and faster. She remembered running through the streets under cover of darkness, following the other black-clad raiders. There would be no runes of disguise this time…only an avenging Valkyrie dropping out of the sky, blazing with fury and new-baptized as one of the High Queen’s Three.

  Calliea stood in the straps of her harness, levering herself closer to Kyrim’s ears so that he could hear her voice over the rush of the wind. His silky mane swept over her face and shoulders. “After I dismount, take off again and stay out of range until I whistle!”

  Kyrim snorted his understanding as the broken tower came into view. Calliea unclipped her coiled
whip from her belt, ready to unfurl it at a moment’s notice. She’d draw her sword from its sheath after she dismounted. Part of her wanted to use one of Thea’s devices to announce her arrival in spectacular fashion, but she knew it was more prudent to save them.

  Two sentries looked up sharply as Kyrim’s shadow passed over them. Kyrim banked into a tight spiral. Calliea kept her gaze focused on them as the ground rushed up toward Kyrim’s hooves. One leapt forward with a spear but he misjudged Kyrim’s alacrity as he jabbed. The faehal neatly avoided the thrust of the spear and struck at the sentry with his forelegs, catching the Unseelie fighter with a vicious blow. Calliea felt nothing but satisfaction as the Unseelie crumpled to the ground, dark blood staining the stones beneath him. She quickly loosened the straps of her harness as Kyrim wheeled for one more turn.

  She leapt from Kyrim’s back before his hooves touched the ground. The impact of the added height jarred her knees, but she pushed it aside. The second sentry raised his blade, trying to watch her and Kyrim both, his wide eyes wary. Part of her recognized that he looked young, perhaps even not a full Knight yet. But she coolly uncoiled her whip with a flick of her wrist and then sent it snaking out to wrap around the sentry’s throat. He dropped his sword and clutched at the coil around his neck with both hands, his face purpling. With a sharp jerk, Calliea neatly snapped his neck. His shocked eyes stared up at her as she quickly untangled her whip and recoiled it in her hand. She took the ring of keys from his belt, glanced up at the sky to check that Kyrim had obeyed her instructions, and opened the door to the long passageway into the Unseelie dungeons.

  The two sentries at the inner door presented a bit more of a challenge. At least they had the sense to attack her both at once, and the close quarters made her whip less effective. She was sweating despite the frost crawling up the walls by the time she spitted the first one on her blade. The Unseelie woman choked on her own blood as Calliea wrenched her weapon free and kicked the woman into her watch partner. They both crashed into the wall. The second fighter dropped his sword and Calliea kicked it away, the blade skidding down the rock floor of the passageway with a clamor. She pressed the point of her blade into his throat. A drop of blood slid down his white skin. He stared up at her, confusion and anger warring on his face.