by Ella Fields
My boots thudded down the two steps of the cottage. “That remains to be seen.”
“Kash,” the other said with a dramatic bow.
I inclined my head, taking in his blue-black hair and dark onyx eyes. Peering back at Landen, I noted the specks of silver in his bronze eyes. “Interesting.”
Both of them watched me with a calm I knew was forced.
Zad took my things to Wen, fitting them in the satchel attached to his saddle.
The other two males ducked their heads, but I heard them snicker.
I didn’t care. I moved between them and climbed onto Wen, then directed him through the ranks to the edge of the village, where Azela and Rind were waiting for everyone to fall in line. Displeasure crinkled Azela’s features.
I tightened my hands around the reins. “Ask me to take the rear and I’ll gut you.”
She laughed, shaking her head as Rind whistled four times, indicating our departure.
Zad found me as we left the valley and entered the forest, riding hard to try to avoid having too many obstacles at our backs. “You need to stay back.”
“Don’t you dare,” I said once the next village came into view beyond the trees.
But the army that awaited us just beyond the village had my breath quaking and my hands pulling at the reins, slowing Wen’s pace.
“Goddesses’ save us,” someone said.
I’d have punched whoever it was, but it was all I could do to keep my eyes fixed on the horizon teeming with warriors.
As far as the eye could see, red and gold moved in a steady nearing wave.
The silence became a drumbeat in my chest, then Rind and Azela roared, swords raised, and the rest followed suit as we charged.
We collided in the middle of the valley between the forest and the village, no words exchanged, no acceptance of any demands or chance for surrender.
Grunts and screams and cussing filled the air as blood and oxygen mixed and tainted every inhale. Horses and soldiers fell, some hard enough to cleave the earth, as a royal of the Sun Kingdom jumped from his horse onto the ground and caused cracks to open.
I watched a soldier scream as he and his horse disappeared into the gaping crevice.
“Audra!” Zad was yelling at my right. “Shield yourself.”
“They have no shield,” I shouted back, meaning my own army. There was a time and place to be selfish, and this was not it.
“They’re also not queens of an entire continent, nor can they be,” he gritted. “Shield.”
I did as he said, knowing he was right but loathing it. I could’ve sent a bubble of air around all six hundred of us, but that would leave me with little ability to do anything else and would empty my reserves within a few hours.
And for as inexperienced as I was, I wasn’t so naïve as to think it would all be over in time for afternoon tea.
Blood trickled from a soldier’s face as I fought him and his comrade, and then his head exploded.
I shot a glance at Zad, but he was busy fending off another royal jumper with a battle-axe.
And still they came, in groups of two to one, cutting our numbers down faster than we could’ve ever predicted.
My blood became pure thunder, rumbling against my skin with each confrontation. There were hundreds more than we’d estimated.
“We don’t surrender,” Zad growled, his sword arcing through the air to remove someone’s head. “We don’t give them what they want. Release it,” he urged.
Exhaling, I nodded. I imagined filling heaping pails from a black well and tossing them high into the air. My fingers curled as my anger scorched hot and cold at the same time. The sky darkened, and lightning streaked across it.
And then it rained.
The few distracted warriors were easy kills, even more so as I beckoned the storm to leave as quick as it’d arrived. Swords and axes and daggers clanged, and when their arrows began to fly once more, I sent a burst of wind for them, turning them all around.
Our soldiers took advantage of some of the shocked and cut them down as I sent their arrows back and more than a dozen Sun Kingdom warriors fell.
Knowing better than to get carried away, I inhaled impossibly deep while knocking down a screaming warrior as the rain stopped and the clouds parted, giving view to the hiding sun.
As we fought on, the screams seemed to collide into a never-ending roar, fracturing the sky as the sun began to fade.
As though it wanted to leave early and not bear witness to such horrors.
I rode to the front, shield still in place, when I saw Azela tumble from her horse to the damp, blood-puddled grass. The beast raced through our front line and disappeared.
She fought her assailant off as she laid upon the ground, wincing, but another moved on her before she could get up. My sword pierced through his ribs, finding his heart, and I gritted my teeth as I forced it up through his shoulder. My hand and arm shook with the effort.
I swallowed, my throat dry, fearing how long it would take before magic became useless—before most of its users were useless, too drained to even lift a weapon.
Grabbing my hand, Azela swung to the back of my horse, and we raced to the rear lines where more people were falling. She grabbed a thoroughbred before it could join her horse in the village and stuck a warrior in the jugular before he could take her head.
Again and again, I sent their arrows back every time they came for us, but only some of them found their mark, thanks to their gigantic golden shields.
I had to stop when we became so mingled, black and silver mixing with red and gold too much to be sure I was taking out the enemy. I wiped blood from my eye, spurring Wen over a crevice in the ground, and found Azela once more.
“We cannot win,” she panted, her eyes, one of them swelling, taking in the overwhelming sea of red amongst us.
I was about to agree, to search for Zad, when a burst of light blinded.
Three male roars sounded, Zad and his friends slaughtering their way through stunned warriors.
“Who did that?” I asked no one.
Azela had gone, and even the warrior before me, who’d had his sword dancing toward my leg, hesitated at the flare of light. I took the opportunity to end him by emptying his lungs, and then I moved onto the next.
Soon after, Zad came into view, his arm bleeding and his friends fanning in different directions. “What was that?” I asked him.
“What?” He kicked a fallen warrior in the neck when he tried to get up.
I growled, slashing at a female whose dagger skimmed my arm. She folded as I drained her lungs too. “I’m not stupid. Was that their power, or one of ours?”
The way he refused to look at me, brushing sweat and blood from his brow, was answer enough.
But I remembered the stillness, their eyes, and I realized what it was and who it belonged to.
Faeries. His friends… not royal after all.
The Fae were thought to be nearly extinct after my father decreed they were a threat to our society. With the agreeance of the Sun Kingdom, no faerie were permitted to enter or reside in Rosinthe. Any that dared to remain were hunted and killed—or worse.
I didn’t have the luxury of staying shocked for long as another wave of warriors crested the small knolls on either side of us.
Zad groaned. “Fuck.”
“Uh-huh.” We were surrounded.
I slit a soldier’s throat, and gore splattered onto my cheek as Zad caused another head to explode.
He looked at me after, then at the battle crying warriors who were thundering toward us in the middle of the valley. “You need to go.” His sword cleaved through someone’s face, then he turned back, eyes pleading. “Please.”
I shook my head, riding away from him before he could try to do something stupid, like save me.
I got as close to the front lines as I could when it happened.
Fire arced across the grass in two even lines, stopping soldiers in their tracks so fast that some of them
fell into the flames. It roared and flared, licking toward the sky and jumping into the Sun Kingdom’s paths when they tried to run around it.
My heart was a drum beating in my throat as I watched those golden flames dance and felt their heat creeping beneath my armor.
We were caged animals, penned in.
Everyone stopped. Even the injured who were capable squinted to the growing fire, looking for its owner.
Zad’s gaze met mine from across the field, the gold of his eyes glowing with questions I couldn’t answer.
A few wrangled breaths later, I didn’t have to.
“The king,” some of the Sun Kingdom’s warriors cried.
They then began chanting as the male on the back of a gray dappled gelding galloped over the plain, right through his legion of loyal traitors, and through the flames.
They parted for him, closing before anyone could follow. An extension of their master, of the very male himself.
His skin gleamed with perspiration. His chest heaved as he slowed and raised his hands when my soldiers moved forward, swords bared and their eyes bouncing back and forth between us.
Raiden’s throat bobbed, and those iridescent green eyes roamed over me, concern and relief etched upon his face and evident in his voice. “Even covered in gore, you rob me of breath.”
I wasn’t sure where to look, what to do, or how to even breathe properly.
Raiden’s soldiers, blinking and dazed, while others crying, backed up, retreating and regrouping, leaving our lines separated once more.
Slowly, as if he knew, even with his army behind him, that he could still die, Raiden came forward.
“My queen.” The words were not words, but breath with no sound.
I tore my eyes from his curving mouth, glaring. “Seize—”
“Now, now.” Raiden tutted. “We both know what will happen if you finish that sentence.”
A low snarl entered my ears.
Zadicus.
A glance at his tense frame, coiled tight and ready to explode, didn’t offer any help.
“Stop,” he said between gnashed teeth. “Any closer and I’ll end you, your precious army be damned.”
Taking in the sight of Raiden, free and smiling amidst the bloodshed, I reached out, my hand resting over Zad’s arm.
Raiden’s eyes fixed on the touch as he came to a stop, his nostrils flaring. “Been busy, my queen?”
I ignored that. “You need to surrender.”
“Or what?” he said, the softness in his gaze replaced with dancing arrogance. “You cannot kill me without killing yourselves, and you know it.”
Looking at Zad, I found his eyes on me, but I couldn’t glean anything of use from them.
The male in him wanted Raiden dead, but he also wanted me alive. “We leave,” Zad murmured through tight lips.
Raiden laughed, gruff and short. “Does he make all your decisions for you now?” I clenched my teeth. Raiden flicked his eyes to Zad, snarling, “It would seem you finally fucked, I mean slithered, your way to the very top, my lord.”
Zad bristled, but I held up a hand, cutting off any retorts he might have made.
The soldiers and warriors around us began to grow restless, and I blinked at Azela when she approached.
Lips thinning, she nodded.
“Fall back,” I said, staring straight at Raiden but speaking to my people. “Bury the dead and gather the wounded.”
A low hum eased my fraying nerves as movement and voices filled the valley once again. Albeit much quieter than ten minutes before.
“Okay, I’ll play.”
Raiden’s brows rose, as did his lips.
“What is it you want?” I asked of the traitorous king before me.
He swiped a hand over his bearded chin, huffing out another laugh. “Many things, my queen. You, back in my bed, my children filling your womb, and peace, of course”—he gestured around us to the soiled scenery, death still floating upon the stained air—“for all the land.”
Zad growled, and I felt his rage smother like a protective, bristly blanket. “You forfeited the right to any such desires when you betrayed our queen.”
Eyes trained on me, Raiden ignored him. “You and me, Audra. We fix this, as I’d always planned for us to.”
I could scarcely breathe, trying to absorb all that was happening here. All that would now change, or go unchanged, thanks to his escape.
“Over my rotting body,” Zad said.
“I’ll take great pleasure in arranging that. But for now, I must take my leave.” Raiden clutched the horse’s reins, clucking his tongue, and they turned. With a heated look at me, he then swung his gaze to Zad. “All in good time, my lord. All in good time.”
“Wait,” I said, unsure why.
“Oh?” Raiden stopped his horse. “Are you to join me?”
A shocked laugh barked free. “No. I am to kill you.”
He held out his hand. “Then by all means, you must accompany me to have that chance.”
Staring into his eyes, I found he was being dead serious. “You really did lose your mind.”
“You’re worth insanity.” With a sigh, he glanced at his army, who were awaiting orders, then grinned at me over his shoulder as he rode off. “I’ll be in touch, wife.”
We could do nothing more but watch him leave.
I did nothing as my soldiers and his own tended to their wounded and began to disband.
“Majesty,” Azela said, startling me when she approached and touched my arm. “We’re leaving.”
Raiden and his people soon became blobs beneath the sinking sun, but he knew, he had to, that I was watching.
Turning Wen, we slowly joined the others. Zad was at the front, overseeing our route home, and he refused to look at me when I neared.
Exhausted and confused and a myriad of other things no one could aptly name, we rode through the night and set up camp the following afternoon in a small village a day’s ride from the city.
The weather was that of spring given our distance from the capitol, but campfires were still lit to boil water, clean wounds, and cook skinned animals that’d been killed on the way in.
After seeing Wen to the stables outside a tavern, I left him with the guards, instructing they feed him and wipe him down with a tone that had them snapping into action immediately.
I’d have done so myself, but the lord’s silence and inability to so much as look at me since we’d parted ways with the escaped king had irritated me to no end.
I found him inside, rummaging for liquor behind the wooden countertop with two of his Fae friends. When I should broach that I knew what they were, I wasn’t sure. It was up to me to decide their fate, and I wasn’t in the mood to bother with such matters right now.
I snatched a stool and tried to infuse some warmth into my voice. “My lord.”
He poured himself a whiskey, then capped the bottle and returned it to its home.
As if sensing the brewing tension, the few other soldiers in the room made their way outside. His friends, however, just wandered to the farthest corner to take up a game of darts.
“Zad,” I hissed, slapping a hand down beside his drink.
He picked it up, tipped the entire lot down his bobbing throat, and then shook his head. “What?”
I blinked, sitting back on the stool. “What do you mean, what? You’re ignoring me.”
“How lovely of you to notice.” He poured another, throwing it back immediately.
“I didn’t know he’d escape.”
“Well, he has.” He again placed the bottle of whiskey away, then finally, gave me his golden eyes. “And now we will all pay the price.”
His tone hinted at more than one price. “We might have been dead if he hadn’t shown up.”
A gruff laugh barked from him. “Now you have gratitude for the bastard?”
I swallowed, unsure what I was feeling.
He seemed to notice that and sighed. “You should sleep. We all need to sleep.
”
Walking to a door at the end of the bar, he opened it and began marching up the stairs.
I followed, racing after him, and caught his hand before he could enter an empty room housing a single bed. “Stop it.”
“Stop what?” A tremor wracked his hand, and he pulled it away.
“I will fix it, but for now, we count ourselves lucky the bloodshed seems to be over.”
Staring down the slant of his nose, he licked his lips. “You’re no fool, Audra.”
My brows crinkled. “What do you mean by that?”
Stepping closer, he lowered his head, whispered words hitting my cheek as his eyes bored into mine. “It means you set this up. You have your husband back. And now”—he took a step back, his eyes never leaving mine—“we must all hold our breath while we await what comes next.”
“Nothing is going to happen.” Not at this point in time. “We might still be vowed, but I don’t know what to believe. I don’t trust him, but I do trust that if he wanted me dead, he had his chance and he didn’t take it.”
“You are still vowed,” he repeated, and the way in which he’d uttered it, with such low vehemence, stilled my breath.
We were still vowed. So where did that leave me and Zad?
“I must not rank very high on your list of priorities,” he said. “If this new problem has only just occurred to you.”
“Don’t,” I said when he turned his back to me, about to leave.
His hand wrapped around the brass handle, his shoulders shaking as he exhaled. “I cannot do this with you right now.”
Then he was gone, the door closing in my face.
For untold minutes, I stood there, staring at the dirtied door, wondering if I should use what little I had left to break it down and get to him.
I decided against it.
It had only just transpired. It wasn’t fair he already acted like some snarling beast over the outcome of a situation that had so recently tied a noose around our necks.
I found some unused laundry water readied in the small room next to mine, which housed cloths and aprons and other miscellaneous items, hanging from lines hooked into either side of the walls. It was freezing, but that didn’t matter. It was fresh, as though someone had prepared to wash the garments next to the three pails but was then told to leave.