The Mad Queen (The Fae War Chronicles Book 5)

by Jocelyn Fox

  When she drew away, he kissed her on the forehead. “T-shirt and shorts are laid out on the bed for you. Do you want me to tell the others to just use Vivian’s shower so you can sleep?”

  Ross thought about that for a moment. As soon as he mentioned the bed, exhaustion dragged at her. “I think I’m going to sleep regardless, and I don’t think it’s really fair to expect everyone to tiptoe around all day.”

  Duke smiled. “That’s my girl.”

  This time he did watch her as she pulled off her towel and pulled on the loose shorts and soft t-shirt, but his eyes were evaluating, watching her movements and assessing any unseen injuries.

  “I’m fine,” she said. And she was, she told herself fiercely. She felt like she’d gone ten rounds with Rocky, but she didn’t think there were any broken bones. No sharp pain…not physically, at least.

  “I’ll get you some ibuprofen and a glass of water,” said Duke.

  Ross climbed into bed with a groan. “Typical corpsman. ibuprofen and ice.”

  “Special operations medic is my preferred title,” Duke corrected her with a grin.

  She threw a pillow at him as he exited the room. He deftly caught it and tossed it back to her. Sliding under the covers, Ross luxuriated in the feel of her bare, newly washed skin against the coolness of the sheets. Terrible experiences amplified the small pleasures that came afterward. Ross fought to keep her eyes open as she waited for Duke to come back with the medicine. By the time he handed her three pills and a glass of water, she just smiled at him sleepily, downed the pills with a slurp of water, and rolled over, falling instantly and deeply asleep.

  The dreams that wrapped her like dark fog didn’t pull her from her slumber, her body too thoroughly exhausted to heed her attempts to wake herself up. So she watched again as Corsica killed the boy with the dark eyes, bloodied her hands as she pressed them against his slit throat, and watched the light extinguished from his youthful face. She watched again as Molly slowly slid a blade down Ramel’s chest, collecting his blood in a little golden goblet embossed with rubies. The hungry look on Molly’s red-runed face turned her stomach even through the haze of adrenaline and discomfort. Her wrists ached as she fought against her bonds when Corsica sliced through the bonds holding Ramel to the pole. The silver haired woman grinned when Ramel aimed a blow at her, stepping neatly aside. Her fist glittered as she punched Ramel in the side of the head. In her dream, Ross remembered watching in horror as Corsica raised her fist with the cruelly gem-studded brass knuckles – though these looked to be made of gold – hideously beautiful with sharp stones peppering the curved metal bar across Corsica’s knuckles.

  She’d known with a sickening feeling that they were going to kill Ramel. That was when they gagged her because she wouldn’t stop shouting at them, using every curse word she knew and inventing new ones, desperate to somehow distract them from their deadly intent. All it had earned her was a sharp blow to the bridge of her nose that sent her vision plunging into blackness for a moment and the feel of a rough cloth shoved into her mouth and tied tightly at the base of her skull, stretching her lips into a painful parody of a grin.

  In the warehouse, Ross hadn’t been able to stop them. She hadn’t seen what they’d done to Ramel, but when they dragged him away she’d felt a certainty that she’d never see him alive again. The air had flexed and hummed with strange power and she’d heard what sounded like the low beat of a drum, though it could have been the pounding in her own head. In her dream, Ross felt her bonds suddenly loosen. Farin hovered in front of her with a little dagger, gesturing for her to be quiet and follow. Though she knew it was a dream, Ross still somehow felt the aches and pains of the blows she’d taken as she stood. She glanced quickly around the piles of treasure and grabbed a dagger with an ivory hilt.

  “Not much use against them, but good for your own mindset,” whispered Farin, tugging on one of Ross’s curls. “Come on.”

  Ross followed Farin through the dream-blur of the lair. A skull leered at her from its nest of golden coins. One of the tiger pelts scattered across the floor came alive, its yawning jaws snapping shut an inch from her foot as she stepped across its orange stripes. Then a wolf pelt came alive and locked jaws with the tiger. Ross stared for a moment in fascinated horror and then shook herself. Follow Farin. Even if this was a dream, she wanted to know what happened to Ramel.

  Farin led her to a door standing next to a headless Greek statue. Ross glanced on the other side of the door. It would open into nothingness. She pushed at the door anyway, driven onward by that strange momentum that pulled her along in this dream. “It’s locked,” she said.

  Farin peered into the keyhole for a moment. With her dagger in her hand, she plunged her arm into the opening, her aura flickering and sparking as she worked intently. Ross heard the tumblers fall into place. Strange, that there was a door that had to be opened by a key in such a lair. She would have thought that an incantation or a magic word would have opened it. With a hiss of triumph, Farin used her entire body to heave back the latch and shove the door open.

  Ross swallowed down sudden nausea as she peered through the door down an ominous stone staircase spiraling into darkness. What good was it to be nervous in a dream? It wasn’t real, she chided herself. She shifted her grip on the ivory-handled dagger and stepped through the doorway. The stones of the steps were slick with a slimy dark moss. Ross placed her weight carefully. She didn’t want to tumble down the steps and alert the two maniacs. Farin’s aura was the only light she had, but the Glasidhe realized her necessity and stayed close, hovering just in front of Ross’s right shoulder.

  They rounded a corner and suddenly the staircase ended. Ross hurriedly stepped back, feeling sickeningly exposed. She crouched down and peered around the edge of the wall. The room before her flexed and shifted with shadows. She couldn’t get a sense of its true size, but it could only really be described as a dungeon, a dirt-packed floor and stone walls enclosing a staggering variety of arcane equipment. In the warehouse above, Corsica had collected beautiful objects from across the world. In this dungeon below, she had collected instruments of torture spanning all human history. The sickly-sweet scent of decay hung in the air, accented by a sharper, coppery smell.

  Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong, Ross realized as bile rose in the back of her throat. This didn’t feel like a dream. It had the strange elements of a waking nightmare, but she couldn’t wake herself up. Was she back in the warehouse? Had she never left? Panic rose to choke her. What if Corsica and Molly had just drugged her to believe in her rescue? Was she really sleeping or was she still bound to the pole. She stared down at the dagger in her hand, fighting the impulse to cut herself with it just to see if she’d bleed or if it would wake her up.

  “Steady,” whispered Farin in her ear. “You are here to watch.”

  Ross wanted to ask what that meant. She pushed down the urge to shatter the dream with the sharp edge of the glimmering blade. If this wasn’t a dream, if this was reality, she couldn’t afford any more injuries. She crouched against the cold, slimy wall of the staircase and took in the scene.

  Amidst the varied instruments of pain, a set of chains ran to two rings driven into the hard-packed earth. Ross recognized the bone sorcerer. Even her brief encounter with him was more than enough to sear the likeness of his cruel face into her memory. She remembered the hapless gas-station clerk that he’d cursed and Duke had shot when the possessed man had attacked the house late one night. That night had helped to convince her that Duke’s story was true, that there really were magic and dark forces and things unseen in every shadow of their world.

  Here in Corsica’s dungeon, the bone sorcerer looked smaller. Defeated. He sat with his legs folded beneath him, staring into nothingness. His only movement was the rise and fall of his shoulders as he breathed. Ross frowned. The bone sorcerer’s blood-red eyes were sunken into his skull. Deep creases lined his face where before he had smooth, youthful skin. He wore nothing bu
t a cloak wrapped around his torso. Ross tried to square this image with the memory of the bones sorcerer raging murderously against the glowing bars of the rune trap.

  A low chanting drew Ross’s attention to the center of the dungeon. Farin pulled on her ear hard as she stepped forward involuntarily, raising her dagger.

  “You cannot do anything, you do not know how!” Farin hissed into her ear. “They will hurt you. Watch and witness.”

  Ross sank to one knee, the cold seeping through her filthy pants into her skin. Corsica and Molly stood at opposite ends of a low table on which they’d bound Ramel spread-eagled, the bonds for each limb going to separate legs of the table. It looked like they’d drugged him with something. Dark blue blood slid over his bare torso from where Molly had cut him. Ross couldn’t remember whether it had been minutes or hours or days before this moment. She could see the rise and fall of Ramel’s chest, but he wasn’t struggling. His copper hair still gleamed red in the dimness of the dungeon. Her heart squeezed with terrible guilt. She’d done this. She’d brought him here.

  As Molly and Corsica chanted, their voices weaving in an entrancing, terrible rhythm, shadows coalesced beneath the table, writhing on the floor like a nest of black snakes. Corsica held the little goblet with Ramel’s blood, and Molly held a sword across her flat palms. Ross recognized the sword that Ramel had worn at his hip. It had something to do with his connection to Mab. The ruby in its pommel flashed crazily, like the rolling eye of a terrified horse.

  “The Brighbranr,” groaned Farin.

  Molly and Corsica walked with mesmerizing precision to the center of the table, their movement exactly mirroring each other. It was like a terrible dance, choreographed with dark and beguiling grace. The chant continued unbroken, though Ross wasn’t sure she could see their lips moving. Molly held the sword over Ramel’s chest. Corsica poured the contents of the goblet over the sword. The viscous black fluid coated the blade, swallowing the silver in a dark tar. A sense of dread seized Ross as the chant increased in pitch and tempo. Beneath her sense of actual hearing, she felt the screeching of the serpentine shadows as they coiled up the legs of the table, wrapping Ramel’s limbs. The ruby of the Brighbranr, the only part untouched by the black tar, pulsed frantically. Ross felt her own heartbeat speed up as the tentacles of shadows wrapped around Ramel’s throat, coiled across his mouth and nose in a smothering grip.

  “I have to do something,” she breathed helplessly. She couldn’t just crouch here in the shadows and watch them kill Ramel.

  “This has already happened,” said Farin into her ear. “Watch and witness.”

  Ramel arched against his bonds, trying to fight the deadly black coils. Corsica pressed one scarred hand against his chest, holding him down. She placed her other hand on Molly’s chest.

  “They’re…transferring something,” whispered Ross. Corsica was the conduit, and Molly was the receptacle. The incantation reached a fever pitch. The dungeon reverberated with more voices than just Corsica and Molly, dark voices that hissed and slid and shrieked just beyond Ross’s perception. The bone sorcerer rattled his chains. Ramel jerked once, twice and then lay still. The ruby in the hilt of the Brighbranr went dark.

  A silent explosion rattled Ross’s teeth. She put out a hand against the slick stones to steady herself. Corsica threw back her head, her body stiffening as though an electric current ran through her. The shadows screeched. As whatever power they had extracted from Ramel passed into Molly, her dark hair rose in a nimbus about her head and her red eyes gleamed bright as the now dark ruby of the Brighbranr. She tightened her grip on the bare blade of the sword that had once marked Ramel’s bond to Queen Mab. The black tar sunk into the blade and wrapped the hilt in delicate, beautiful dark filigree that reminded Ross of bird’s bones. The ruby darkened, shadows swirling within it, and then it pulsed once, twice, its light now contained in a gem the dark scarlet of dried blood.

  Corsica staggered back unsteadily, gripping the edge of the table. The shadows retreated, slithering back down the legs of the table. Ramel lay pale and unmoving. Molly raised the black Brighbranr, pointing it toward the ceiling and gazing down its length rapturously. The bone sorcerer rattled his chains again. Corsica looked over at him and snarled. He fell silent.

  Molly slid the black Brighbranr into the sheath at her hip. Then she leaned over Ramel, gazing at his slack face with a strange hunger. She kissed him deeply, then drew back and slapped him across the face, a command in a strange language ringing through the dungeon. Ramel gasped, dragging in a huge breath like a man who’d been held underwater.

  “He was dead,” whispered Ross. “They killed him, and then they brought him back.”

  Corsica snarled. “That was not the plan.”

  “It was not your plan,” replied Molly with chilling calm.

  Ross expected Corsica to say something else, to provoke Molly or to fight her, but to her amazement, Corsica merely growled again and then slunk across the dungeon toward the bone sorcerer, her posture reminding Ross of a reprimanded dog.

  Molly stroked Ramel’s copper hair as he panted and fought against his bonds. “There, my love. Now you are free, and I have my weapons.” She smiled, touching the dark stone at her throat and then the hilt of the sword at her hip.

  “What have you done?” Ramel demanded hoarsely.

  Farin cursed under her breath, hovering again in front of Ross. Molly’s scarlet gaze snapped over to the staircase. Ross felt her heart skip a beat at the coldness of Molly’s eyes. It was like staring into the eyes of a snake.

  Without breaking her stare, Molly stroked Ramel’s face with her fingertips. “Back in just a moment, my love. There seems to be a moth problem down here.”

  “Time to go,” whispered Farin into Ross’s ear.

  Ross blinked in confusion. Farin was still standing on her shoulder, but Farin was also hovering close to the wall, her aura dampened. The colors of the scene bled together and objects blurred as the dream dissolved, dissipating like smoke around her.

  Ross woke with a jolt, feeling something tumble down her chest as she rocketed upright in bed. She automatically checked the pillow beside her; Duke wasn’t there. Farin, however, flicked her wings and tidied her hair after her unceremonious removal from where she’d been sleeping, curled against Ross’s collarbone.

  “Sorry,” croaked Ross as Farin’s aura flickered and sparked into life. The Glasidhe didn’t reply. Ross thought that maybe she’d offended her. She reached for the glass of water on the bedside table, careful not to shift too much and displace Farin again. After a couple of swallows of water, she felt a little better. She sat back against the headboard and looked down at her lap. Farin perched on one of her knees, hugging her own knees to her chest, wings moving idly like those of a butterfly on a flower.

  Ross swallowed hard. She remembered everything, as clearly as if she’d experienced it herself. That most certainly had not been an ordinary dream. “Farin,” she said quietly. “That was what you saw, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” answered Farin gravely.

  “Why…why show me? Why not Tess or Vivian, someone who could…well, someone who’s better at dealing with all this?” Ross asked. She winced as one of her bruises on her ribs protested as she shifted her weight.

  Farin regarded her solemnly. “You were there,” she finally replied.

  Ross thought about this answer. “I was. But I still don’t remember everything.”

  “You will,” replied Farin simply.

  They sat silently for a moment, the quiet darkness of the bedroom a counterpoint to the memory of the voracious shadows in Corsica’s dungeon. “Are you going to tell the others?”

  “I will, or you will,” said Farin. “Just the part about the weapon. And the bond.”

  “The bond?”

  “I think that Molly transferred Ramel’s blood bond with Queen Mab to herself. To make it more difficult for the Mad Queen to kill her,” Farin whispered, shivering. Then the fierce Glasidhe colle
cted herself. “The Bearer will know what to do, but it will be difficult for her to do it.”

  Ross took a deep breath, the image of Molly with the black blade rising in her mind’s eye. She had thought the bone sorcerer and Corsica to be their most dangerous foes, but now she thought that the half-mortal girl who had once been Tess’s best friend and Ramel’s lover had eclipsed them both.

  And if what she’d seen through Farin’s memory of the scene in the dungeon was any indication, Molly was about to release a tsunami of wrath on the Unseelie Court.

  Chapter 44

  Perhaps the strangest thing about the day after the attack on the Vyldgard, the restoration of the Unseelie Princess and Gray’s death was its normalcy. Calliea still couldn’t shake the disorienting, dream-like feeling that descended on her when she remembered at odd moments that her world had been shifted on its foundations. Gray was dead, and she was one of the High Queen’s Three. Despite these life-altering facts, everyone went about the business of the Vyldgard, went about the business of living – eating breakfast, beginning the cleanup work in the training yard, washing the dead and preparing them for their funeral pyres. It certainly wasn’t an ordinary day, thought Calliea, but in their time of war, all these things could be considered normal.

  She woke up in a nest of furs in the High Queen’s secret tower room. As she stirred, she felt the sensations of other minds touching hers, of Finnead and Liam and then, in the distance like the peak of a mountain, the High Queen. She yawned and stretched, feeling a few sore muscles from the previous days’ fighting and riding. The long hot bath had soaked away much of her aches and pains. She’d spent so much time in the tub, delighting in its enchantment, that Vell had awoken from her nap and asked drily if she had any siren blood in her ancestry.