“So you don’t believe it?”
“That my soulmate is taking soldiers?” I say. “No, I don’t.”
And I mean it. Wicked though Des is, he’s no monster, not like the Thief of Souls is.
I step closer to Aetherial. “The truth is that since I laid eyes on your king, I’ve assumed he’s the one involved with the disappearances.”
Aetherial’s head snaps to me. “Seriously? Why?”
I frown. “When I was delivered to Karnon, I saw the man who captured me—it was your king.”
“Impossible,” she says.
“Why do you think Des attacked your king the night you all arrived?”
Aetherial searches my face. “You’re telling the truth,” she murmurs. She shakes her head. “But it’s impossible. I’ve seen my king’s truth too. He’s had nothing to do with these disappearances.”
I lift a shoulder, my attention moving to where we last saw the fae rulers.
We are all turning on each other—this person to point the finger at that person, that person to point the finger at yet another individual. The truth of the matter is that we are all being played by the Thief of Souls, whoever they might be.
The Thief of Souls …
I rotate to Aetherial. “You wouldn’t happen to know the last known location of Day soldiers who’ve gone missing during Solstice, would you?”
She shakes her head. “They disappeared all over the palace grounds—mostly just outside the royal gardens.”
Mostly just outside the royal gardens.
The reports I’ve been given corroborate this; they mentioned the men vanishing on the outskirts of the palace grounds.
The only thing beyond the gardens is the queen’s sacred oak forest, which ringed the entirety of the property. I’ve been in that oak forest a time or two, but more than that, I’ve dreamed of the place, over and over again.
What had the Bargainer told me weeks and weeks ago?
In the Otherworld, dreams are never just dreams. They’re another sort of reality.
My skin buzzes, as if with electricity. It’s the sensation I got as a PI whenever I felt particularly close to solving a case.
“I have to go,” I say.
Aetherial gives me a quizzical look. “Didn’t you just get here?”
I wave the question off. “I’ll be right back.”
The Thief of Souls has been hunting during Solstice, and now I know just where to find him.
Chapter 46
I walk through the Flora Queen’s sacred oak forest, frowning at the soldiers shadowing me.
“It’s not safe for any of you to be here.”
Had I taken a moment when I left the ballroom to consider the fact that a handful of Night soldiers would be guarding me, I’d have tried to slip past them. At the very least I’d have requested all women, considering that the Thief of Souls isn’t trying to capture them these days. Of the six soldiers surrounding me, only one is female.
“King’s ordered that we guard you,” one of them says.
It’s the same answer they’ve given me the last several times I’ve tried to shake them off.
I turn back to the forest ahead of me. Other than a few warm droplets of blood on my skin, I haven’t found anything suspicious or unsettling about this place.
Fairy lights hover between the boughs of the trees, casting the woods in an ethereal glow.
“You could always return to the dance,” one of the soldiers suggests.
Ugh. Back to those schmoozing, scheming fairies? Back to Mara with her cloaked insults and brittle smiles, or the Green Man and his leers?
“Give me a few more minutes.”
Just thinking about the Flora rulers has me rubbing my skin. There’s something off about those two.
“Callypso …”
I pause. “Did you hear that?” I ask the soldiers.
Two of them nod, their faces grim. One of them grabs my upper arm. “Time to get back to the ball, my lady.”
Of course they’re right, but I still hesitate. Finally something slightly spooky happens out here, and now I’m to be whisked away to safety.
I let them steer me back towards the gardens anyway, which I can just barely make out in the distance.
“Enchantress …”
My spine goes stiff. I glance back, towards the origin of the voice. For a split second I catch sight of a shock of white blond hair in the darkness.
“Des?” I whisper, before I can help it.
As soon as I breathe his name, my guards hesitate, looking back to the woods for their king. But where he once was is now dark as ever.
One of my guards yelps.
I whip around. “What happened?”
They glance at each other, each one as perplexed as the last. It takes a few seconds for all of us to put together what, exactly is off about the situation.
A second ago there were six soldiers at my side.
Now there are only five.
“Move, move, move!”
The soldiers don’t stop to search for their comrade. They grab me and begin hustling towards the gardens.
They’re not fast enough.
We’ve barely taken ten steps when a slew of vines drop from the treetops, reaching for one of the soldiers.
It happens in less than a second.
They wrap around his arms and shoulders and jerk him up into the canopy overhead.
“Oh, shit,” I curse.
I’ve never seen that before.
The soldier’s feet kick at empty air as the treetop swallows him up.
My wings open on reflex.
Not going to lose another soldier.
Before any of the others can stop me, I leap into the air. My wings beat furiously, lifting me toward the guard. He’s still tangled in vines, and they pin his body to the trunk of the tree.
Using my claws, I slash through the plants. But as quickly as I cut through them, more form, winding around the soldier.
What in the world?
I manage to free one of his hands, and with it, he pulls out his own sword and begins hacking away at the vines.
One of the ropey branches darts out, wrapping around his wrist and squeezing, squeezing. I hear the crack of his bones breaking. The soldier cries out, his weapon falling uselessly to the forest floor beneath us.
I rip through the plants, freeing his now mangled wrist. As I do so, I feel vines snake around my own body, twisting around my torso.
Shit.
I’m pried away from the guard, my body flung to the ground. I land on my hands and knees, and for several seconds I just rest there, breathing heavily.
The four remaining soldiers close in around me, helping me to my feet. Already several of them have their wings out. No doubt about to join me up in the canopy.
I glance above me. As I watch, the vines completely ensnare the soldier, cleaving him to the tree.
And then—horror of horrors—with a wet rip, the trunk of the tree parts around the fairy and begins to suck him in.
“Holy fuck.”
Once more, my wings flare out, but the remaining soldiers hold me fast.
“We need to leave,” one of them says.
But I can’t look away.
It only takes seconds for the trunk of the tree to fully wrap around the fairy and then another several seconds for it to reseal, starting at the soldier’s feet and working its way up, leaving a thin line of blood in its wake.
And then it’s over.
A tree just swallowed a soldier before my eyes.
I did this. I led these guards into this sinister-ass forest, and now two men are gone.
I spend several seconds glaring at the treetops and berating myself as they lead me away before I remember.
I am the Night King’s mate. I’m no victim, I’m a survivor, a fighter.
I’m someone’s nightmare.
“Let me go,” I say calmly.
The soldiers ignore me.
“I said, let
me go.” This time when I speak, it comes out as a command.
“My lady—” one of them protests.
I begin to glow. “This is not how you treat your king’s mate. You will listen to me, and you will follow my orders.”
Now they do listen to me. Their hands fall to their sides.
I turn around, stalking back to the tree, my skirts swishing around my ankles. “Men,” I call over my shoulder, “leave this place and go find your king. It’s not safe for you here.”
This time, they don’t follow my order. Seconds after I give it, all four remaining soldiers flank me. “We’re not leaving you,” one of them says,
I want to growl at them. Surely they know how dangerous this is for them.
I push my worry and frustration aside. I can only focus on one thing at a time.
Several feet away lies the captured soldier’s sword. I grab it then face off the tree that ate one of Des’s men.
This was a bad day to piss me off.
I pull the sword back like a baseball bat, well aware that this is not how you hold a sword.
One of the soldiers at my back says, “It’s against the law to cut down—”
I swing the blade, embedding it into the tree trunk. With a swift yank, I jar the sword out.
“I’m not cutting the tree down,” I say over my shoulder.
WHACK.
I strike the trunk again.
“I’m saving one of my guards.”
Again I yank the blade from the bark, wood splintering away as I do so.
“There’s a difference.”
There’s not really a difference. Sure, my goal isn’t to cut the tree down, but I probably will chop the fucker down to save this soldier.
The tree moans, and I can hear the neighboring ones hissing at me, some of their branches bending down and swiping at the group of us.
I’m pretty sure I just made enemies with the oaks.
I look over my shoulder at the guards at my back. “Well, are you all going to just stand there, or are you going to help me get your comrade out?”
That’s all the encouragement they need.
What’s left of my guards and I take turns sawing into the tree trunk, bits of bark splintering off with every hit. The tree begins shrieking, the ungodly sound carrying through the woods.
We do this until we see a swath of skin.
The night soldier is still cocooned in vines, his body curled inside the core of the tree.
That is not a sight you see every day.
I drop my sword, and together with my guards we pull out the coughing soldier from the heart of the tree.
He pants, pulling off fine, spindly roots that seem to have wedged their way under his skin and into his veins.
“Thank you,” he wheezes to his comrades, clasping one of them on the shoulder. His eyes move over the group until they find me.
The rescued guard gets up, dusting dirt and bark off of himself. He kneels before me, taking my hand and pressing it to his forehead. “I owe you more than just my allegiance, my queen. I vow that as long as I live, my shield and my sword will protect you. My life is yours.”
Chapter 47
The oak we hacked into is making strange, wheezing noises, and its neighbors have quieted for the moment. The vines that once entrapped the soldier now roll up into the tree’s core, withering away.
The soldiers, meanwhile, are tending to their comrade, leaving me to assess what exactly just happened.
A voice called to me, I saw Des’s likeness, and then two soldiers disappeared, one whom we recovered, the other who is still missing. The sequence of events is hauntingly similar to the tales that have been coming in.
I turn to the other trees that surround us. Never have I been so sick of the color green in my life.
But green isn’t the only color in this forest. Dark blood drips down many of the branches around me, turning the sacred wood into something macabre, something I’d be more likely to see on Memnos, the Land of Nightmares.
An ungodly thought hits me.
The men that are missing …
I stride over to where I dropped the soldier’s sword. Picking it up again, I head to a particularly bloody tree several feet away. Once more I lift the weapon.
“My lady,” the female soldier calls after me, “cutting down one tree to save a soldier is bad enough. To cut down another will be seen as an act of war.”
Too bad for Mara, she already swore an oath of peace with Des’s kingdom.
“I don’t give a fuck what the Flora Queen sees this as.”
I roll my neck, and then pull the sword back and take a swing. The blade embeds itself into the thick trunk, something warm and wet spraying from the wound.
The tree screams—the sound like a pig squealing—as I cut into it.
I yank the blade out of the bark. From the gash, blood oozes.
Bleeding trees. What a grisly, grisly sight.
No one else dares to join me, though they all avidly watch.
I swing again and again, ignoring the strain in my arms. Each successive blow cracks a bit more of the bark, spraying out shards of wood and bits of blood. The tree continues to shriek, its canopy rustling.
I’m covered in gore. It speckles my hair and paints my face, reminding me of that fateful night years and years ago when I stood up to my stepfather … stood up and watched him die.
Slowly but surely the hardened bark of the oak gives way to its soft core. I begin using my claws to rip it away, studiously ignoring the fact that my hands are now coated with blood. With one final rip, I unearth exactly what I feared.
In the heart of the tree, covered in gore and a web of roots, is a sleeping man.
It’s downright spooky, staring into the face of a man who’s been missing for who knows how long, his arms crossed over his chest as though someone laid him out.
Unlike the Night soldier we just retrieved, this man looks like he’s been here a particularly long time. The vines wrapped around him have now fused together, and his long hair is matted to his skin.
Whatever color his uniform originally was, it’s now crimson, steeped in blood. But I don’t need to make out the color of his uniform to figure out which kingdom he belongs to. The curving ibex horns indicate that he’s a Fauna solider.
“There’s a tree cutting party, and I wasn’t invited?” a familiar voice says at my back.
I turn around.
Des leans against a neighboring oak, watching me with those eyes that see everything, his white hair stirring in the breeze.
His arms are folded over his chest, his biceps looking massive and his tattoos particularly menacing. I have to remind myself that the three bronze bands on his other arm are for valor because right now, even clad in fae attire, he simply looks like the Bargainer, the man who strikes deals for gain and breaks bones for slights against me.
“If my mate is going to break the law, she should at least invite me along,” he says, pushing away from the tree.
His face changes seconds later, when he takes in the scene.
“What happened?” Des asks, all humor gone from his voice.
I wipe my bloodied hands off on my dress. “I think I found the missing soldiers.”
Chapter 48
Des disappears, materializing at my side a moment later. He scrutinizes the man sleeping in the tree.
“Mara,” he whispers.
Mara, the vain Queen of Flora, has been hiding men in her sacred oak forest, one of the places where it’s forbidden to strike down a tree.
No wonder no one had found the soldiers—they’d been hidden inside the one place that could not be disturbed. Only an outsider like me would be ignorant and ballsy enough to desecrate this grove.
I feel the breath of Des’s magic a second before it hits the vines. The tree shrieks as it blackens and decays, the vines that hold the man fast now curling away.
Motioning with his hand, the Bargainer’s magic pries the sleeping soldier out of the
tree. Vines groan and snap as the man is released.
His body is covered in gore like a new baby’s might be as Des’s magic settles him onto the grass. And in some ways, this is a dark rebirth.
“The bleeding trees,” I say to Des. Each one must house a missing soldier, his body cocooned inside it.
The Bargainer nods. “I know, cherub.” His eyes meet mine.
The plants aren’t rotting from a disease at all—they’re coffins.
Des leans over the sleeping soldier, his eyes scouring the man. “He’s just like the women.” A muscle in his cheek ticks.
The trees begin to rustle and shake as a wind kicks up. It lifts my hair and lashes it about.
“Mara’s coming,” Des says, his voice ominous.
My skin chills. This whole time it was the Queen of Flora who was behind the men’s disappearances.
The wind picks up speed, beginning to tear leaves from their branches.
I feel rather than hear her approach, her magic thickening the air with scents of pine and honeysuckle.
When I finally see her, her dress is whipping behind her, her bright red hair billowing around her like a fiery corona. At her back, a regiment of guards follow, their faces solemn.
“Who has struck down one of my trees?”
Struck down—like it was a man not a plant. Perhaps to her it was. Perhaps these trees are far more beloved than the men lying dormant inside them.
I straighten as she closes in on our group.
Mara’s eyes move to the tree I just demolished, and her low moan carries on the wind, rising higher and higher until it becomes a shriek.
“My sacred oak!”
For a moment, we’re forgotten. She rushes to the tree and falls to her knees at the foot of it, her hands going to its bloody trunk.
Now’s probably not the time to tell her that we actually took out two oaks, not one.
She doesn’t spare the sleeping soldier laid out near her a passing glance.
“I never thought it would be you,” Des says quietly, menace riding his voice.
His wings snap out, the bone-white talons gleaming in the darkness. The shadows are gathering around him.
Mara’s head is still bowed. “You entered the Fauna King’s palace and defiled it. I invited you to my kingdom and you dared to do the same. First with my harem, and now with my holy forest.”
A Strange Hymn (The Bargainer Book 2) Page 28