The Mad Queen (The Fae War Chronicles Book 5)

by Jocelyn Fox

  Trillian cleared her throat and sucked her lips under her teeth, suppressing a smile. “Niamh has been flying with her quite often, actually.”

  “She was up with her during the fight against Mab,” said Calliea with a nod. Now that she thought of it, Niamh and Selaph had been flying a bit slower than usual – not anything that had given her pause in the heat of the moment, but now that she ran over her memories of the morning she saw it. She looked at Trillian. “I still don’t understand.”

  Trillian laughed. “Sometimes you are very dense for one so fierce, my lady Commander.”

  For an instant, Calliea felt a flash of anger at Trillian’s pert answer, followed by a blinding realization. She stared at Selaph, her hand pausing in its rubbing of Kyrim’s nose. Her faehal snorted in protest and bunted her fingers. “I…did Niamh know?”

  Trillian shrugged. “Does it matter?”

  “Yes, it matters,” Calliea retorted. “That would be like a woman with child going into battle.”

  “I would posit that it isn’t quite like that,” undaunted Trillian replied. “And it’s actually good for mares with foal to continue their activity. It helps them not to get too fat.”

  “When?” Calliea asked faintly.

  “Hard to say, because if the foal has wings that could add time,” Trillian said with a practical air. “At least seven months more, I’d think.”

  “Seven months?” repeated Calliea. She hadn’t paid much attention to breeding faehal at the Seelie stables.

  “As I said, it could be longer if the little one has wings.”

  Calliea narrowed her eyes at Kyrim. “Was it you, you magnificent beast?”

  Kyrim snorted and pressed his great head into her chest. She laughed and combed her fingers through his forelock, looking again at white Selaph.

  “Life goes on,” Liam said quietly.

  She nodded, feeling hopeful for the first time since the battle. “Indeed it does.”

  Chapter 45

  “Even if you aren’t going to talk to me – which is completely childish, by the way – it would make me feel better if you’d at least let one of us look you over and make sure you aren’t too badly hurt,” Vivian said. She pushed aside her rising frustration, which she knew was also a product of the long night and adrenaline crash.

  Tyr sat silently in his corner of the bedroom, cross-legged, resting his back against the wall. Vivian had tried to offer him blood after she’d eaten breakfast, knowing that his strength must have been depleted by the battle at the warehouse. But he hadn’t acknowledged her. She’d thought about asking Niall for help, but the two Sidhe, while they’d reached a tentative peace, didn’t seem close enough to warrant that kind of interaction.

  Vivian took a deep breath. She visualized a few runes in her mind’s eye. Over the past week, that had become her technique to calm and center herself. She mentally sketched the rune for creating fire, stopping short of the final stroke because a completed rune even held in the mind of a Paladin could be dangerous. Walking over to her bed, she settled herself cross-legged in an imitation of Tyr, fluffing her damp curls, still drying from her shower. Her sword leaned against the headboard where she’d carefully set it after cleaning the blade and sliding it back into its sheath.

  “Tyr,” she said, gentling her voice. “I don’t know what you’re going through if you don’t talk to me. I’m not saying that I feel what you feel, but I am saying that I’ve lost people too.” She swallowed. What if Tyr never talked to her again because she’d killed Corsica? A raw sense of loss clawed deeply into her chest. Their silent connection had been a new part of her life, but just like everything with the Fae and her newfound role as a Paladin, she had embraced it wholeheartedly. Now the silence echoed in her head, and she felt inexplicably alone even though she sat in the same room with Tyr.

  I should have been the one to kill her.

  She almost didn’t hear Tyr’s low words over the noise of her own thoughts, but her heart leapt and she leaned forward on the bed. Why do you feel that way?

  One of his hands drifted to his leg where Corsica had stabbed him in the thigh and nearly killed him when she’d escaped with the bone sorcerer.

  Four hundred years. Tyr still hadn’t moved. The afternoon sunlight caught the edges of his silver hair, encircling his head with a luminous halo. He stared into the distance. But he was talking to her, and that was enough for now. We rebelled. We fought in a bid for our freedom. Corsica was Seelie.

  And you were Unseelie, said Vivian, barely daring to breathe, her irritation forgotten with this new window into Tyr’s history.

  She traveled to Darkhill with the delegation on Midwinter. We spoke at a ball in the inner courtyard of Mab’s palace. Tyr blinked, the ghost of a smile pulling up one side of his mouth. Ramel overheard some of our conversation, and I took those memories from him. Rye was not pleased with me.

  Rye. Your twin, said Vivian softly. She reached out to Tyr through their connection, opening it bit by bit, feeling like a cat stalking a mouse with her careful movements.

  The other half of my heart. The smile faded quickly from Tyr’s lips. Vivian felt a deep ache, transmitted from him unconsciously like a vibration down the invisible thread that bound them together. She didn’t fight it. She embraced his pain, opened herself to it. She wanted to understand what he felt, because so often the Sidhe hid it so well.

  Corsica was Seelie, and you were Unseelie, and you rebelled, she said quietly, almost gently, repeating Tyr’s words back to him in the hope that he’d continue.

  We fought and we failed, said Tyr, bitterness washing over Vivian as his body tightened at the memory of the rebellion. She should have just killed us. It would have been less cruel.

  Mab? Vivian dared to ask.

  Mab, Tyr affirmed. But she has always been cruel, even before she was mad. She had lost her sister the Crown Princess, and her Vaelanbrigh.

  The one before Ramel?

  Tyr smiled again, but this time humorlessly. Before that. She has had many swear their lives to her, and she has devoured them whole.

  Vivian’s head swam as she tried to piece together the timeline. She knew she was pushing her luck with questions, so she resolved to ask Ramel and maybe Tess later. Or maybe Niall would know something about it, even though he was Seelie. In her Paladin studies, Niall had taught her the overarching social structures of the Fae world: Seelie and Unseelie, Glasidhe and ulfdrengr and now Vyldgard, along with the myriad of wild creatures of the North. But she still didn’t know these intimate details, these histories of betrayal and intrigue.

  We struck in her moment of weakness. And many paid for my arrogance with their lives. Shadows haunted Tyr’s pale eyes, darkening them into stormy gray. Those who survived, she bound with iron and banished us through a new Lesser Gate into a world unknown without the runes to protect us from the harshness of Doendhtalam.

  How many of you were there? Vivian asked, her mental voice so quiet it was barely more than a whisper.

  In the end there were thirteen of us. Or, I should say, in the beginning. Tyr fell silent again for a long time. Vivian didn’t move except to draw her legs up to her chest and rest her chin on her knees. She opened herself a little more to their connection, and a miasma of emotion rolled through her like fog: well-worn anger, blunted now by time; a keen sense of failure, still cutting as a knife edge; and a choking helplessness coupled with a hard resolve never to feel that way again. She sorted through each of them, separating the layers like filmy scarves, then letting them settle again into the thick murkiness.

  In the beginning, they almost killed me. They would have been right to kill me. Within their rights. But Corsica convinced them to spare me. Tyr took a breath. She was not quite as skilled as me in the art of twisting others’ thoughts to her own desires, but she used what skill she had in my defense.

  You felt…an obligation to her, Vivian said, even as irrational jealousy coiled in her stomach at the thought of Corsica and Tyr, paired for four
centuries, bound by the most intimate of circumstances.

  Tyr blinked and then looked at Vivian as though he was waking up from sleep. Why do you feel…jealous of her? He shook his head. She is not something to envy.

  Vivian felt a blush rise to her cheeks. I don’t know.

  Tyr gazed at her for a long moment and then looked away. His hand pressed against his leg. Four hundred years. I should have been the one to kill her.

  The vivid memory rose in Vivian’s mind: Corsica advancing on her with prowling grace, two long daggers flashing in her gloved hands. Have you been training your little pet, Tyr? Have you found one that finally intrigues you?

  Vivian tried to control her thoughts, but her body reacted as she remembered that breathless moment before the fight, adrenaline surging in her stomach again and her heartbeat speeding even at the now-imagined threat. The flash of Corsica’s pointed teeth as she grinned and the gleam of the silver earrings studding her ear in a bristling spine blazed in Vivian’s memory.

  You will let your plaything die while you watch? This will be more sport than I’ve had in a century.

  She sucked in a breath, held it, tried to push down the rising anxiety prickling through her and the whirl of thoughts taking hold of her mind. She’d come in here to make sure Tyr was all right, not to fall apart in front of him. But the casual, cutting cruelty of Corsica’s words rang again and again in her head: little pet, plaything. Have you found one that finally intrigues you?

  Vivian pulled her knees tighter to her chest. You are a Paladin, she reminded herself fiercely. You defeated one of the Exiled. You shouldn’t let her words affect you. Yet her throat tightened as her mind took each thread of Corsica’s dismissive malice and unraveled it. How many other playthings had Tyr had during his four hundred years? And why did the thought of him with another mortal, much less him with Corsica, cut her so deeply? What was wrong with her? She swallowed hard, clenched her jaw and with a nearly physical effort, shoved all her conflicting emotions and thoughts away, refocusing on Tyr.

  He stared at her with a strange light in his eyes. He still hadn’t moved, but there was something different about his posture, about the way he sat. He was here in a way that he hadn’t been before their conversation.

  “Is your leg hurting you?” Vivian managed, her voice only half-choked.

  Tyr’s lips parted and he blinked several times owlishly. He flexed the fingers resting on his leg and almost hesitantly nodded.

  Vivian cleared her throat. She slid off the bed, ignoring the twinge of pain from her arm. She’d escaped the fight with Corsica with a shallow cut across her arm, but somehow that superficial wound hurt more than when she’d broken her arm. The pain was sharper, more immediate. Closer to the surface. She used it to anchor herself. “I’ll go grab the healing kit. It didn’t reopen or anything, did it?”

  Tyr shook his head, leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. He looked tired. Maybe she could convince him to take some blood after she tended to his wound and checked him over for anything else. She closed the bedroom door quietly behind her.

  Niall looked up from cleaning his weapons as she entered the study-turned-living-space that he and Ramel and the Glasidhe had shared for the past weeks. She headed for the desk, where they’d taken to keeping their Fae-approved healing supplies in the bottom drawer.

  “Tyr is finally talking,” she said as she pulled out one of the kits. “Well, in a manner of speaking. You know what I mean.”

  “How is your arm?” Niall asked.

  Vivian shrugged. “Hurts more than a broken bone right now, which is weird, but I’ll be fine.” She looked at Niall and then noticed Ramel sleeping on his bed in the corner of the room. “Oh, sorry, didn’t see him sleeping,” she said in a low voice.

  Niall shook his head. “Our voices won’t wake him. He needed rest.”

  “White shroud?” Vivian asked, trying to remember her lessons.

  “Very good. Yes.” Niall sighed. “We have been using it much more than I would like these past years. The war has not been kind to our people.”

  “I don’t think war is kind to any people,” replied Vivian.

  Niall tilted his head in silent assent.

  “Did you know Corsica before she, well, rebelled?” she asked carefully, watching Niall’s handsome face closely. Something passed through his eyes too quickly for her to identify. Regret? Anger? She couldn’t tell.

  “I do not speak of it,” he said.

  Vivian nodded. “Okay. I’m just…trying to understand.”

  Niall looked down at his blade and began buffing it with a cloth. “Some things cannot be understood.”

  “Right.” She cleared her throat. “How’re your side and your shoulder?” She rifled through the labeled pouches in the healing kit until she found the ones that she wanted to use in a hot compress for Tyr’s leg.

  Niall shrugged. He pulled up one side of his shirt briefly. Vivian glimpsed tawny muscled flesh marbled with green and blue bruises. She winced.

  “Nothing worse than what I have endured in my training as a Knight,” Niall said almost gently, as though he saw her worry and wanted to reassure her. He smiled. “Though admittedly, that was a few centuries ago.”

  Vivian returned a wan copy of his smile. “Well, let me know if you or Ramel need anything. I know Tess is here now and you’re probably more comfortable with her, but…” She shrugged.

  “Why would you assume that?” asked Niall.

  “Well, she’s the Bearer, and she’s been in Faeortalam for a while, and you guys have had…adventures and stuff,” Vivian finished lamely.

  Niall wiped the cloth down the length of his sword twice before replying. “She is the Bearer, but you are a Paladin. The Paladin, right now. One could say the First Paladin.”

  The way he said it left no doubt in Vivian’s mind that it was a title. The First Paladin. It sent a little shiver down her spine. “I’m not the first,” she muttered in half-hearted protest even as she felt herself blushing in pleasure. Damn her scatterbrained emotions. “You said there were other Paladins. Before.”

  “Not in this new age,” said Niall. He glanced at Ramel as the Unseelie Knight stirred, murmuring something in his sleep. When the other man quieted, he turned back to Vivian. “Don’t doubt your importance. You fought well. You have earned your title and your place among us.”

  Vivian didn’t know what to say, so she swallowed and picked up the elements of the hot compress. She’d almost picked out herbs for a tea but then she remembered belatedly that Tyr didn’t drink tea. “Let me know if I can help with anything,” she said to Niall as she stood. “And maybe…maybe tomorrow we can start training again?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Get a few hours of sleep and we will start again this evening.”

  The thought of training brought a genuine smile to Vivian’s face. “Sounds like a plan.”

  She walked to the kitchen and found a glass bowl, filling it with a small amount of water and setting it in the microwave to heat. There were some definite advantages to the modern technology of the mortal world. Tess, Luca, Ross and Duke sat around the kitchen table. They didn’t pause in their conversation as Vivian waited for the microwave to do its work.

  “I know Titania will be putting a guard on the Gate on the Fae side,” said Tess, leaning back in her chair.

  “The bone sorcerer is our responsibility,” Luca said. After his shower, he’d braided his hair. Vivian liked the look on him. It was very Viking nouveau.

  “You mean my responsibility,” Tess said darkly. “I made the decision to let him live.”

  “It was not just you,” replied Luca with a shake of his head. “I respected your decision as the Bearer, but I also came to my own conclusion. We all decided to honor Merrick’s word to the Exiled. This is not a burden for your shoulders alone.”

  “I don’t think that the bone sorcerer should be our main concern,” said Ross with a confidence that surprised Vivian. Not that Ross wa
sn’t confident, but when it came to the Fae, her tough roommate tended to let others take the lead. “Farin helped me remember and gave me some of her own memories while I was sleeping.”

  Vivian barely heard the microwave beep. She leaned against the kitchen counter and listened unabashedly.

  “Molly’s the one in control. Whatever happened, whatever power she gained from the river stone and then from whatever deal she made with the bone sorcerer…she’s in charge now.”

  Tess pressed her lips together. “What did you see that made this so apparent?”

  “Trust me,” said Ross with dark conviction. “Farin saw them kill Ramel. They brought him down to the dungeon where they’re keeping the bone sorcerer.” She paused. Duke put his hand on her knee in silent encouragement. “They tied him down to a table and there was this chanting…it was an incantation or a spell or something. These shadows all gathered beneath the table and then tentacles swirled up and suffocated Ramel. They poured his blood over his sword, the one with the ruby in the hilt, and when he died, the sword turned black.”

  “She turned one of Mab’s blood-blessed blades into a weapon to be used against her,” said Tess in grim recognition.

  “She killed two other people right in front of me,” added Ross. She swallowed hard. “I need to call that in.”

  “Should you wait ‘til they’re declared missing?” Duke suggested. “They’re still gonna be dead no matter what.”

  “Thanks for pointing that out,” said Ross with sudden, sharp anger. She collected herself and shook her head. “No. Their families deserve to know.”

  “You can’t call in the warehouse, though,” pressed Duke. “Normal cops try to take that down, it’d be a slaughter.”

  “Corsica’s dead. We could have Tyr take off whatever spell she put on it,” replied Ross.

  Vivian bridled at the casual suggestion of thrusting Tyr back into such a dangerous place. She stepped forward and said, “I don’t really think that’s a good idea, either. Molly and the bone sorcerer are still in play.”