by Ella Fields
Zad’s eyes, full of the same questions I felt filling my own, met mine from across an empty stallion’s back.
“I’d kill for a bath,” I said, returning from the creek’s bank and brushing water droplets from my skin. I’d washed most of the journey from my face, arms, neck, and hands, but it wasn’t good enough. I could still feel the ooze bursting over my skin, burning as my cells regenerated and soothed the sting.
Zad’s eyes merely skimmed me as I shucked on my jacket and collected my cloak from him. With a roll of his neck, he gave his attention back to Ainx, who was jabbing a finger at the map in his hands.
I wasn’t sure how he’d managed to appear so polished after riding for days, but it irked me, to say the least.
Zad and Garris looked east, the former saying, “Let’s move. We want to arrive while there’s still daylight.”
The sun warming my skin made the itch the burns left in their wake almost unbearable as we drew closer to the border. Sun-weathered villages sat in pockets of blazing green valleys. The dirt road stretched onward, winding through villages but not entering them. Little roads, some cobbled and some overgrown with weeds and wildflowers, veered off to greet each one. Children far off in the distance stopped to stare as we came into view while others darted away, likely to warn their parents.
I bit a chunk out of the apple I’d stolen from Zad’s satchel. Our supplies were meager, but we’d have enough to last until we reached the palace, or until we bartered for more from a village who wouldn’t lock itself away at the first sighting of us.
It’d happened the day before, and Zad had scowled at me, asking why I hadn’t demanded someone trade or sell to us. I couldn’t muster the forethought or the energy to care, and so I’d insisted we ignore them and march on.
Enemies were a precarious thing to covet, and I was beginning to think that I had more than I’d bargained for. Therefore, some inherent part of me knew I’d need to save my strength and store that anger down deep for what may lie ahead. For what we may find in the south.
“It is the winter queen,” a little voice said. I peered to my left at the young girl, her frightened eyes huge as she swayed on the spot outside the connecting road to her village. A young boy, maybe her brother, raced uphill toward us with a stricken expression.
My mouth eased into a smile so practiced, I could do it while I slept and never even know. “And should you not bow to your queen?”
The little girl, twirling a golden lock of hair around her finger, blinked. Her hand fell, and she all but threw herself to the ground.
Her brother glared as I laughed, and we soon left them behind.
“You taunt,” Zad said, his stallion aligning itself with mine.
I lifted a shoulder.
I could feel his eyes on my face, almost as hot as the sun that pressed harder with each mile. His voice was soft, melodic, and how I wished I could have pulled him into one of the passing forests to hear him speak against my skin. “She won’t soon forget, if she ever will, her first, and perhaps only, encounter with her majesty.”
“Handing me a compliment after I’ve berated you for not doing so makes you transparent, Lord.” I grinned, knowing it was not a compliment at all. My smile slipped as I peered down at my riding pants and my creased cotton top. “Though I do wish she’d have seen me wearing something more… formidable.”
“Your most formidable form is not one most will ever see,” Zad practically purred. “Unless they should be so lucky.”
I laughed and dug my heels into Wen’s flanks, clicking my tongue. He took off, the wind catching my hair as the sound of galloping hooves echoed across the drying landscape.
The sun was a fading orange stone in the sky, the valleys of villages but a passing dream as we kept on, covering miles of deserted land mere hours after first light.
We’d crossed the border with no interruption, though I hadn’t known what I’d expected to stop us, or who. It wasn’t as if any kind of rebellion could stage guards upon an invisible marker that stretched farther than any eye could see.
Wen jerked and nickered, and my stomach hollowed.
I blinked twice to be sure I wasn’t seeing a mirage. The heat was an entity all on its own, breathing fire down our backs and slickening every inch of our skin. I gave up trying to keep cool, and instead, wrapped myself in every layer I had. Not to protect my skin, but my soul. Then I sent iced waves dancing over my flushed skin, cooling myself to a more bearable temperature.
It was not a mirage.
Up ahead, the palace glimmered, a sandstone structure stamped in the center of nothing but sand. Trees encircled the rear, a lush-looking rainforest providing shade in a territory hell-bent on burning you to death. It wouldn’t be enough. I’d still melt at every turn and beg for snow to grace my windowpane.
Similar words had been spoken to Raiden upon our vow… A yell cleared my thoughts as a soldier was knocked from his horse.
A round of snicks pierced the air as arrows planted themselves in horses, bodies, and the sand around us. There was nowhere to hide and not enough time to see where they were coming from.
Anger bloomed and blossomed into a tidal wave, and I sent a shield of air around us, arrows bouncing off it and hanging midair as I narrowed my eyes. It was no wonder the remainder of our journey had been uneventful.
They’d been waiting.
I raised my hand and twirled my finger, sending them back in the direction they came, smiling as I heard screams and curses.
Their veil dropped, Ainx declaring, “They had a spellcaster amongst them.”
“Dead now,” I murmured.
Zad cursed violently, riding closer to a fallen soldier and helping him onto the back of Garris’s mare. “We should retreat.”
My guard dropped as I watched an arrow soar toward him. I screamed his name, and Zad dodged it. The arrow whizzed by his ear and plunged into a horse’s leg. It screeched, rearing back and tossing its rider.
“Fuck,” I muttered, sending a block of air around us again, and the now exposed traitors raced forward with weapons bared and battle cries filling the air.
I unsheathed my sword, about to meet them in the middle, shield be damned, when I saw him.
Berron was being dragged through the sand behind them.
My teeth gritted, and panic held me immobile. With a shake of my head, I grabbed hold of that ever-building fury, digging deep until it felt as if I’d overflow. The air buzzed, becoming suffocating even to me as I unleashed and pushed and sent all of them to their backs, pressing them into the sand.
Sweat beaded upon my forehead, but the sight of Berron being herded like a wild animal held my concentration steady. Until another wave of traitors crested the dunes, and I soon lost count of how many we faced.
“Two hundred.” Zad, back in his saddle, brought his horse to a stop beside me. “At the very least.”
We couldn’t.
Together, we could take a lot of them out, though it would cost us. I’d be asleep for days, unable to travel or far worse. And Zadicus would likely need to be knocked out until he fed. Still, as I saw one of the rats push Berron into the sand and kick him in the stomach, I decided it’d be worth it.
“Don’t,” Zad warned. “We can’t. You’ll only kill him too.”
A growl of helplessness slipped out, and I squeezed my eyes shut, my head spinning with the effort to keep the first line of soldiers down. “Garris?”
“I… Well, I say we retreat, my queen.” His voice was drenched in fear but unwavering. “There are far too many for this to end well.”
“They knew we were coming. They’ve had him,” I said to Zad. “They’ve had him in their filthy clutches for who knows how long, and now they’re using him against me.”
Zad met my gaze with unflinching coldness. “You are a queen, Audra, and you bow to no creature’s demands.” His next words were gentler, though still resolute. “Audra, please.” Something I’d not yet seen, something that looked a lot like f
ear entered his eyes. “You need to go. You must let him go.”
“No.” The word sliced through the throng of soldiers, causing shoulders to stiffen and weapons to rise.
Jaw hard, Zad faced ahead, eyes scanning. “It’s impossible.”
“I’m not leaving without him.”
“Behind!” Garris called, but it was too late.
Three soldiers went down as a band of twenty or more warriors appeared within our bubble of air. As if they’d been hiding within the sand, somewhere deep in the ground.
Screaming and shouting ensued. “Charge!” Garris hollered.
I coughed, struggling to breathe as my magic retreated, slamming back inside me with the force of an elastic snap. We soon became cornered pieces of meat, growing more tender by the minute as two more of our soldiers met their ends via an arrow and a thrown dagger.
I pressed forward, my sword glinting beneath their precious sun, and met a soldier’s sword strike for strike, pushing him back, then drawing him forward to cleave him in two as another warrior with tribal markings upon her face dived through the air with a spear.
I was ready, emptying her lungs before she even neared, and then I was off my horse, falling to the sand with a thud as pain radiated through my skull.
My hair was wrenched back, and then a fist collided with my cheek. Darkness encompassed, dragging me down with heavy hands. Screaming, I forced my way back to a knife pressed against my neck, and then it dropped with its owner as she fell to the sand, her hands wrapped around her throat.
I grinned at my other assailant, taking in her violet eyes and ruddy complexion, and licked blood from my teeth. “Are you ready to meet your end?” I tutted. “Such beautiful eyes, what a waste.”
Before I could make that happen, Zad was there, separating her head from her shoulders.
I watched it roll to the sand with a frown and then backed away from the blood leaving the decapitated body.
He hauled me up. “We need to get out of here. Now.”
A glance around told me half of us would not return. The warriors had surrounded us, and I knew it’d take a miracle to get what remained across the border.
“Squash them,” I said to Zad, grappling for my sword before I jumped up and into Wen’s saddle. “I’ll get Berron. Shit, behind you.”
Zad swung his sword above his head, bringing it down in one clean sweep to slice the male warrior in half. “Retreat,” he yelled, turning his horse. “Retreat now!”
I looked over at Berron, and even with the distance between us, I found his eyes on mine. “Go,” he mouthed.
I shook my head, grabbing the reins and turning Wen to gallop toward him.
Then, I watched with my long-forgotten heart tearing out my throat, as a spear entered his side, and he fell face-first into the sand.
A hand gripped Wen’s bridle, turning him in the other direction. “We’ve cleared as much as we can. We need to go.”
“But what if they’ve killed him?” I said, barely a whisper as frost covered my eyes, crested upon my fingertips and wrapped around my vocal cords.
Zad didn’t so much as glance back at where my trainer and occasional lover—my friend—lay bleeding beneath the unforgiving sun. “They could kill us too if we don’t move while we can.”
They were now running, running toward us and screaming, my friend left to swallow sand behind them.
It took more than I thought I had left within me to hurl a gust of wind behind us. So strong, it created a wall out of sand. I tightened my legs, spurring Wen away from the crowd drawing closer. From the tower of sand I sent falling atop their front lines.
Screams, shouting, and crying reached us—chased us for miles. But we raced onward, sand flying beneath our horses’ hooves, our dead and gravely injured left to fester or heal in a hostile land.
A land I swore to reduce to rubble.
Tiny sprays of light leaked in through cracks in the walls. Not enough to bother me, but enough to know daylight was fading.
After riding for three days with barely a reprieve until we’d crossed the border, we returned to the castle at first light. I’d left Wen with the stable hand, ignored Zad’s assessing gaze, and fled via the sleet-crusted pathways straight to my rooms.
He’d let me be—they all had—as I’d collapsed on the bed and fallen into a dreamless sleep.
“Are you just going to stand there, or are you going to enter?”
Truin’s light footsteps tapped over the floor. She took a seat on the lip of the tub, her deep green homespun dress billowing over the damp stone. “I heard.”
“From who?”
“Mintale,” she said.
The dripping of the faucet was the only sound as her probing eyes sat upon me. It took all the remaining willpower I had to keep from screaming at her to get out.
“He might not be dead, you know.”
Berron, like most soldiers, was mixed, so that made him harder to kill than humans. Decapitation, draining, a blade to the heart or brain, and old age would end any of our kind. But half-blood royals—though their bodies were stronger and able to handle more—could die just like humans, through sickness and disease, and often only lived to see three hundred years.
“Might means nothing when they still have him.” Her hope was futile and the last thing I needed. “When they could kill him at any moment.” If they hadn’t left him beneath the fire-filled sun to rot, they were probably torturing him as we breathed.
I skimmed my hand over the warm water’s surface, catching the last of the lavender-scented bubbles.
“You cannot go back.” Her tone, the worry within… it sounded as if she’d spoken to a certain lord. “Not without an army.”
“War,” I said, my hand stilling and falling to lay upon my stomach in the breast-deep pool of water.
Truin nodded. “I fear it is coming whether we start or end it.”
“I’d rather not listen to your fable predictions right now.” I slid deeper into the water until it crested my chin and tickled my lips.
“It is not a prediction but a fact.” I said nothing, and then she sighed. “Let me heal your cheek.”
“No,” I said, barely feeling the dull pang in the bone, nor the cut inside my mouth.
She scooted closer, angling her head. “It looks as if it was almost crushed.”
“It will heal on its own.” A bruised cheek and a few bruised ribs were nothing compared to what Berron had endured, and if he wasn’t lucky enough to have reached the ever, then what he was still enduring.
Truin tucked some yellow-gold hair behind her ear. “And what of the king?”
I’d scarcely thought of the parasite who’d caused this, remembering he was still layers below us, fading away in the dungeon. “He is no king.”
Truin watched me for a moment but not for long. I shut my eyes and disappeared beneath the water.
When I emerged, she was gone, and I drew in long breaths before sliding back under once more. My hair curled around my face in silken ribbons, my eyes opening to view the blurred ceiling bobbing above the surface. No sound entered this space but that of my heart galloping in my ears.
Bubbles rose from my mouth as I opened it and screamed.
When the hum of the castle settled, I left my perch by the window where I’d watched snow drift over rooftops and the mountain-specked landscape and exited my rooms.
My white gossamer robe swished, the slits in its sides revealing the expanse of my legs with every step. It fluttered behind me as I wrapped the silken lace closer over my chest and descended into the gloom.
Azela’s gaze fell on my cheek when she saw me round the last of the stairs and enter the dungeon. With a nod, the door and gate rattled open, their rumble enough to wake the residents two floors above. Mostly kitchen and cleaning staff.
She didn’t shut them behind me, but she did move out of earshot as I traversed the stained floor and rounded the rows of cells until I’d reached the center where the torture table sa
t.
I climbed atop it, weary but unable to rest after sleeping most of the day and knowing what was to come.
“Your face,” Raiden said, his back to me as he stroked a sliver of arcing light falling across the floor from a crack in the ceiling. “You’ve been busy.”
“In more ways than you’d think,” I said, infusing my voice suggestively.
I did not ask how he’d known I was injured when he couldn’t even look at me. He’d either heard the guards talking about what’d transpired, or he’d glanced at me briefly before I’d noticed.
“The lord?” he asked.
My heart stilled. “What of him?”
“He’s the one warming your bed. Your body.”
Too shaken to even inhale, I forced out, “And you would know of this how?”
He turned then, his green eyes red rimmed and his growing hair curling in a thousand different directions. “He’s always wanted you. I know that much at least.”
“What else do you know?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking if I’d tried. It was working. Somehow. This stupid idea didn’t seem so stupid anymore.
“Nothing,” he said too quickly before letting his gaze roam down my body, catching my exposed skin. “Except one thing.”
“And what is that?” I asked, enjoying his eyes on me. A warm caress even if it was for only a moment before he tore them away and curled his lip.
“I know I would never have fallen for a soul as rotten as yours.”
I could only stare, my heart’s rhythm growing quieter, fainter with every beat.
He blinked, dark lashes curling toward his brows, and then he turned back to the wall.
And still, I stared at him. At his stained clothing, at the ramrod granite expanse of his back. He was losing muscle tone being cooped up down here but not enough to make him look starved.
Not yet.
I reclined over the table, if only to hide the tremor in my hands even though he wasn’t looking at me. “I’d ask myself if you ever truly had countless times.” I paused. “After.”
“After,” he repeated. “After what?”