by Jocelyn Fox
A writhing ball of dark fire sailed over their heads. Vivian saw it in frozen disbelief, her mind scrabbling to understand its importance. Then something hurtled into her, knocking her onto the frozen stones but somehow keeping her from hitting the ground too hard. Debris rained down around them as the fiery orb exploded against the side of the building. Vivian belatedly realized that Tyr had tackled her. He’d had a shield-rune ready, and she hadn’t been quick enough. Her cheeks burned as he sat up and offered her his hand. She pushed herself up from the ground on her own with a mutter of thanks.
“The sorceress is fighting Mab,” said Niall as they collected themselves. Vivian stared at the stone the size of her head that had landed less than a foot away from her, cracking the paving beneath it with its impact.
“Then what’s the rest of the battle?” Tess asked, the Sword in her hand and pulsing with bright fire. The tattoos wrapping her sword arm shone emerald through her shirt.
“The Vyldgard and Seelie trying to save what they can of Mab’s people,” replied Niall grimly.
“Mab will kill everyone before she lets them go free,” said Ramel.
“Not if Molly kills her first,” Tess said with a confidence that Vivian wished she felt. She didn’t entirely understand the inner workings of how a Sidhe Queen controlled her subjects, but if Mab was powerful enough to exercise such tyranny over her people, it made a certain kind of sense that she’d slaughter them all before letting them go.
“I never thought I’d wish a bone sorceress success,” Ramel rejoined, running one hand through his hair, white dust rising from his movement in a cloud about his head.
“Are we going to stand here all day or are we going to go fight?” The words escaped Vivian before she’d properly thought about them. The two Sidhe Knights and the Bearer all looked at her with varying levels of amusement.
“Eager, isn’t she?” murmured Ramel with a flash of mischief in his eyes. He glanced at Tess. “Remember when you were brand new to this world like that?”
Tess rolled her eyes at Ramel, an expression completely incongruous with the ferocity of the blazing weapon in her hand. “Now is not the time for jokes.”
“It is always the time for a well-placed joke,” Ramel replied with a grin.
“I wasn’t joking,” Vivian said, peeling away a damp curl from the side of her face.
Ramel turned his grin to her, his dust-streaked face handsome and alight with a humor she hadn’t seen until after the battle at the warehouse. “I know.”
Let’s go, Tyr said flatly, starting toward the sound of battle.
The others turned as well, though to Vivian’s relief the pace was a brisk jog rather than an all-out run. As the clash of blades and shouting grew closer, she wondered when to draw her sword.
Before someone tries to kill you, Tyr replied.
Obviously, she retorted. Did he think she was an idiot? This was her first battle, but not her first fight. Another dark orb sailed overhead but it traveled over the building and only a few small fragments pattered down around them from its impact.
“Mab is desperate,” said Niall, satisfaction ringing in his voice.
“Getting sloppy,” agreed Tess shortly.
They turned another corner and plunged into the battle. Vivian grabbed at her sword hilt and drew her blade on the third try. For some reason her hands were shaking. She tried to figure out who was an enemy and who was a friend amid the whirl of dust and shouts. They were in some sort of courtyard, the ruin of a watchtower stretched across it. Tess, Ramel and Luca had already disappeared, cleaving through the fighting with practiced ease, intent on whatever target they had spied ahead.
To her surprise, Niall stood to her left.
“Don’t you have to go to Titania?” she yelled over the din. It was strange. They stood in a pocket of calm, as though no one had noticed their arrival yet.
“If she needs me, she will call me,” Niall shouted back.
Watch your back! Tyr said sharply.
Vivian turned but Tyr had already blocked the downward stroke of the sword that would have sliced into Vivian’s shoulder. She stumbled backward as he fought the dark-haired Sidhe and ended the skirmish with a quick, decisive blow to the head of the Unseelie fighter. He rolled the unconscious man to his side while Niall guarded them.
Vivian blinked in confusion as she watched Tyr bind the hands of the Unseelie fighter behind his back. Why are you doing that?
There’s no way to know if they are fighting of their own free will, Tyr said. I will not kill someone forced to fight.
Niall took the next Unseelie fighter while Vivian held up her sword and tried to convince herself that she’d be able to knock an opponent unconscious rather than killing them. Then she straightened, struck with a sudden idea. Holding her sword in her right hand, she fumbled for her rune-stick in her zippered pocket with her left hand. Still guarding Niall’s back as he finished the skirmish with the Unseelie fighter – a woman this time, Vivian noted with a bit of surprise – she called up the rune in her mind and drew it quickly but accurately on the back of her sword hand, redrawing two lines when her shaking hand made them curved rather than straight.
Tyr bound the hands of the Unseelie woman while Niall guarded him. Another fighter leapt toward them from the opposite side, blade raised. Vivian jumped in front of him, the impact of the blocked stroke shuddering painfully up her arm. As she drew back her own sword for an offensive stroke, she reached for her taebramh. It was hard to find, her heart pounding in her ears and her legs shaking now too. She didn’t call it up in time, and the Unseelie’s second chopping stroke knocked her blade out of her grip, her hand going numb past the wrist. Niall and Tyr wouldn’t be quick enough. With a final burst of effort, she found her taebramh and shoved it into the rune on her deadened hand, flinging it toward the Unseelie fighter. The rune flared and punched out a concentrated burst of energy, hitting the dark-haired Sidhe more forcefully than even Tyr’s blow.
“Very good,” said Niall approvingly.
“Did I kill him?” Vivian asked, shaking her dead hand to try to regain feeling as she bent and picked up her sword in her left hand. She quickly checked the rune. It was still intact and she could use it again. Thankfully, Forin and Farin had made her run drills with her left hand, so it didn’t feel entirely foreign.
“He’s alive,” Niall said as he bent to bind the fighter’s hands. Tyr offered her no words of praise. Fine. She didn’t need his approval. She turned and kept her taebramh ready, trying not to be distracted by the dozens of hand-to-hand fights taking place around them. None of the books she’d read had captured this visceral experience: the dust in the air, the smell of blood and sweat, the cold sharp shiver of Mab’s power in the air, the watchful buzz of her nerves as she tried to discern which figure would be her next opponent.
“We should head toward the throne room,” said Niall, garnering a terse nod from Tyr.
They fought their way across the courtyard, angling around the fallen watchtower. A great hill rose at this far end of the City, pillars and doorways set into its side. Vivian remembered that the Unseelie palace was named Darkhill, and she thought their stronghold in the White City was appropriate.
The fighting thinned as they crossed the open space between the watchtower and the hillside. Vivian kept pace with Tyr, Niall running slightly ahead of them. They passed a glistening statue, and then another. As they neared the largest set of doors in the hillside, Vivian saw a muscular woman with short hair and golden chain mail sketching runes on pieces of wood about as large as her hand. She slowed in curiosity. The woman placed one of the completed runes at the base of one of the crystalline statues, which Vivian realized in creeping horror looked too life-like.
“They’re not statues,” she said, her eyes widening. “They’re people. Frozen people.”
The woman in the gold chain mail activated her rune and watched as the heat blooming from the small shard of wood began to melt away the thin, hard shell of ic
e around the trapped Unseelie’s feet.
They are probably dead, said Tyr. You cannot help them.
“Why would you just assume that?” Vivian asked.
The ground shuddered beneath their feet. The air rippled with waves of power, pressure building and releasing in time with the movement of the earth.
Niall turned to Vivian, his immaculate pale hair mussed from the fighting. “If you want to stay, stay, but make your decision.”
Vivian opened and then closed her mouth. Her hand stung as it finally regained some feeling. “I’m coming with you.”
“Then we need to go.”
She forced her feet to move as they headed toward the doorway, gaping like a wound in the side of the hillside. Her breath plumed in a frosty cloud as they plunged into a cavernous passageway, the pristine white of the city behind them replaced with frosted gray stone and dark, damp moss.
A far cry from the elegance I remember, Tyr said, mostly to himself.
The sounds of the fighting in the courtyard faded behind them. They passed a handful of corpses, most dark-haired but a few with tawny golden complexions, now pale in death. After the first few, Vivian didn’t look at them, focusing on the path directly in front of her feet.
A shadow detached from the wall of the passageway. Vivian’s heart leapt into her throat as she stared at a giant black wolf, uncanny intelligence in its golden eyes. She instinctually raised her sword but forced herself to lower it again, telling herself firmly that this was probably another ulfdrengr wolf.
“Beryk,” said Niall respectfully, greeting the huge beast.
Beryk turned his gaze to Niall and flicked his tail. Vivian noticed that his muzzle shone wetly with gore. She wondered whether he’d killed any Unseelie, and then her train of thought was cut short as Tyr went down on one knee before the wolf. She gawked at him, wondering if the trip through the Gate after so long in the mortal world had scrambled his brains.
But the wolf stepped forward and sniffed Tyr’s silver hair. The Exiled Sidhe didn’t move. Vivian knew she wouldn’t be fast enough if the wolf decided to bite off Tyr’s head. His jaws definitely looked big enough to do just that. Beryk considered Tyr and then licked his forehead in a strangely doglike gesture. Vivian blinked as she saw the smile that curved Tyr’s lips.
“Done with your introduction?” Niall asked, looking down the passageway and hefting his blade.
Tyr rose and bowed his head to Beryk. He said to Vivian, Please tell Niall that it is not every day one meets a herravaldyr, and it has been centuries since I have had the honor.
Vivian dutifully repeated his words, her voice hoarse from the dust and cold.
“I was not censuring you, merely inquiring,” Niall replied amiably. Other than his mussed hair and the blade in his hand, the Seelie Knight looked like he was just going for a casual stroll and remarking on the weather.
Tyr inclined his head in graceful acknowledgement. Vivian experimentally transferred her sword back into her right hand, grimaced and kept it in her left. They started again down the passageway. The ground still rolled and the air still flexed, but it was as though they’d become used to it, sound disappearing for a moment and then flooding back, keeping their balance on the changing path.
They passed two still mounds that Vivian recognized as corpses, but not of the human – or rather, Sidhe – kind. Two huge black hounds lay still, their blood freezing in dark glistening pools around them.
“Mab’s hunting hounds,” said Niall under his breath as they passed.
Vivian shuddered as she imagined those huge hounds hunting something other than rabbit or deer. As they rounded a bend in the passageway, flashes of varied light played on the frosted walls. Muted explosions reached their ears, punctuated by the clang of blades. Niall picked up the pace. A thrill of excitement threaded with dread rushed through Vivian.
They emerged into a great hall, larger and grander than the cathedral in New Orleans, pillars of obsidian reaching down from an arched ceiling so far above their heads that Vivian could only catch the glimpse of ice shining on the underside of its dome. A red carpet ran up the center of the room, ending on a dais with a carved stone throne. Great arched arms of candelabras stretched on either side of the throne, but only a few candles still flickered, the rest burned down into pools of wax that spilled over the silver stands like frozen waterfalls. And stacked at the base of those candelabras were skulls, stripped of their flesh and staring blindly out at the battle raging in the throne room. A black cage horrifyingly similar to a large birdcage sat in the shadows, a still figure lying prone within it. Vivian stared, her skin crawling.
“Gods preserve us,” whispered Niall, even his stoic demeanor shattered by the gruesome sight.
“Who would do something like that?” she said shakily, just because she had to say something. She knew that Mab had done it. She knew that those were Unseelie skulls stacked in pyramids below the dying candles. But she still felt like she had to ask the question, to give voice to her disgust.
Tyr and Niall stepped forward into the throne room, their blades raised. Vivian held her taebramh ready and gripped the hilt of her sword.
“I’m guessing now is when deadly force is authorized,” she said in a low voice.
In the center of the throne room, beneath the apex of the domed ceiling, Queen Mab battled Molly, their motions too fast for Vivian to properly follow. Colored mist and bursts of light swirled around them, reminiscent of the chaos of the in-between place after the Gate and before the Fae world. The pulses of power emanated from them, shock waves rolling out as they struck at one another and defended themselves. A dark-haired woman in a red breastplate stood by one of the pillars, her sword drawn but the tip resting on the ground as she watched the battle with keen golden eyes. Opposite her, across the room and standing against another pillar, stood an otherworldly, dazzling woman that Vivian immediately knew as Titania. She hadn’t seen any other Sidhe as stunning and golden.
Closer to them, Kianryk fended off two great hounds, his tawny fur matted with blood in places. One of the hounds managed to sink its teeth into one of Kianryk’s hind legs, hobbling the wolf’s movement and allowing the second hound to attack more effectively. Tyr leapt forward and spitted the black hound on his blade, letting go of his sword and prying its jaws from Kianryk’s leg with his bare hands. Kianryk promptly pinned down the second hound and ripped out its throat in a spray of gore.
“Steady,” said Niall. “Keep awareness of everything. Don’t let yourself watch one thing for too long. That’s a good way to die.”
Vivian shook herself. “Thanks.”
Apart from the two Queens and the duel between Mab and Molly, Tess and Ramel were locked in their own fights. Tess had sheathed the Sword and fought with her plain blade, the complex designs on her arm still blazing through her shirtsleeve. Vivian frowned and scanned the throne room for Luca, finding him engaged with another hound deep in the shadows, his axe flashing when it caught the dim light. There were other fights happening, but she didn’t know the participants, so it was harder for her to tell who was who, especially since some of the dueling pairs both looked Unseelie.
The Unseelie that Tess dueled gained the upper hand, knocking her to the ground. Without second-guessing herself, Vivian sprinted forward as the Unseelie wearing black armor raised his sword over his head. It was a long distance, longer than she’d ever sent one of her runes, but she clenched her jaw and pulled up a rope of her taebramh. She couldn’t let him hurt or kill the Bearer.
Still running as hard as she could, Vivian thrust her taebramh into the rune on her hand, shouting its name for good measure as she willed it to cover the distance. The impact only knocked the black-armored Sidhe to the side, not even lifting him from his feet, but it was enough to send his downward stroke careening wide. Tess sprang to her feet and knocked his sword from his grip. Vivian activated the rune again, and this time the blow lifted the fighter from his feet. By the time she skidded to a stop a few fee
t away, Tess had already bound her opponent’s hands.
The Bearer grinned, blood smeared across her face from a cut near her hairline. “You’re a handy sidekick.”
“I’m not a sidekick,” Vivian protested, panting from the sprint, but she grinned too. Somehow, in the midst of the darkness and death, she still found Tess’s joke funny.
“Okay, partner-in-crime,” amended Tess.
“Partner-in-heroism,” countered Vivian.
Tess snorted and Vivian swallowed her laugh, turning back to the turmoil ebbing and flowing through the shadows of the throne room.
“Vell and Titania have them hemmed in,” Tess said, motioning to the dark-haired woman in the red armor and the Seelie Queen.
“It’s like a cage match,” said Vivian as understanding dawned on her. The other two Queens had trapped Molly and Mab, forcing them to fight to the death.
“More like a gladiator fight,” said Tess grimly. “No one is going to come out alive from this one.”
The fighter in the dark armor groaned.
“Stay down, Donovan,” Tess warned. “Otherwise it won’t be a blow to knock you out next time.”
The sheath on Tess’s back rattled as the emerald in the hilt of the Sword flared with light. Mab screamed and the throne room shook. Vivian went down on one knee briefly before she caught her balance.
“Hopefully they don’t bring this down around us,” Tess muttered. “I really don’t like collapsing throne rooms.” She sheathed her plain blade and reached over her shoulder. “Might want to avert your eyes.”
Vivian took Tess’s advice and glanced away as she drew the Iron Sword from its sheath. Its blazing fire lit the throne room in shifting white and green-tinted light.