“Of course,” she agreed. For a long moment, she stared at her drink in silence, then she downed the whole thing.
“I need to see Mabona,” she told me flatly. “You can talk all you want, Kilkenny, but I’ve seen three dead members of the High Court now, including my own boss. I can’t just take your word that she’s still alive.”
“You know damn well we won’t let you see her if she’s injured,” I replied. “Our Fealty won’t permit it.”
“Handy excuse, that,” Silverstar said. “Right now, Kilkenny, I don’t know if she’s still alive or if you’ve set this all up as a trap for me and the last loyal members of the Hunt.”
“I am also a Vassal of the Queen,” Inga reminded her. “Mabona lives. You know the value of my word, Your Majesty. You know the worth of a Valkyrie.”
Silverstar sighed.
“I do,” she conceded. “But I also must see her with my own eyes. It is hard to believe that the High Court were struck helpless, even having seen them felled by the hands of our enemy.”
“It cannot happen,” I said quietly. “I understand your concern, Your Majesty, but even were I to permit, Mabona is under the guard of other Vassals. They will not permit it.”
“Your stubbornness will be your undoing, Kilkenny,” the Horned King said conversationally. “If you are ever to return to the Hunt, you must learn obedience.”
“My first Fealty is to Mabona. Then to the ideal of the Wild Hunt.” I smiled thinly at Silverstar. “Only at a far distant third is any need for obedience to the Horned King.”
“Shame.”
I never saw her move. One moment, she was putting the glass back on the table; the next, a trio of daggers were flashing across the room at me.
Inga was faster. The Valkyrie was between us before Silverstar had finished throwing the daggers, her own sword flashing through the air so quickly, all I saw was a glint of silver.
She blocked two knives. The third hammered into her shoulder with inhuman force, hurling her across the room. I could feel the cold iron in the blades, too.
I was mostly certain that Inga’s armor had saved her life…but she was out of this fight.
The first attack had come without any warning. Without Inga’s intervention, Silverstar might have killed me right there. The second attack I knew was coming, and Esras flared to life with my power as I backpedaled away from the Horned King.
She snarled and flung blades of glamor at me. I shielded myself against them with force, scattering the glamor to pieces.
“What the hell?” I demanded. “Whose side are you on?”
“There are probably smarter questions you could ask,” the Puck noted from their new position sitting on the bar. “Though I’ll admit none come to mind.”
“Mine, you fool,” Silverstar told me. “Ankaris was all set to declare you his heir! All of my work, across centuries—across three Horned Kings!—to be tossed aside on some whim of bloodline and family.”
“Oh!” The Puck exclaimed, sitting up straight. “I was getting suspicious of her, but I hadn’t known that!”
“Shut up,” I hissed at the not-quite-hallucination as I deflected a blast of force and flame into the bar.
“So, what, you weren’t one of the Masked Lords until now?” I demanded.
“Of course I was one of them,” she told me, accompanying her words with another barrage of force. This one nearly overwhelmed my shields, pushing me several feet backward. “I helped create them! Ever since I learned Calebrant had knocked up his damned changeling floozy and broken that Covenant!”
My mother had been dead for years. It probably shouldn’t have made me that angry to hear her called that, but it did.
I flung Esras forward, calling Force and Fire as I channeled my Gifts down the length of the spear. Pale-green flames blasted across the room at Silverstar, but she knocked them aside with laughing ease—and smashed me to the ground with glee.
“I should have succeeded Calebrant,” she bellowed as she advanced on me, her silver-hilted sword in her hand. “Even Ankaris stole what should have been mine, but I saw what they did not. I saw that the High Court had weakened the fae, emasculated us. We were gods once.”
I started to struggle upward, but she smashed me down with another calculated blow of Force. Not every silver-hilted Hunter’s sword had a cold iron blade…but Silverstar’s certainly did. I was less vulnerable to cold iron than most fae, but it would still kill me very, very dead.
“You betrayed us,” I ground out. “You betrayed my father.”
“You fool boy. I killed your father,” she told me. “I lured him into the path of a spell he might have dodged. And he betrayed me.”
She had my hands pinned and my power contained, but I could still exercise some level of the Gift of Force. Not enough to escape. Not enough to attack.
But enough to flip the tiny stone vial hanging around my neck up to my lips and pour the quicksilver into my mouth.
New power flowed through me as I swallowed the drug. Quicksilver was a combat drug for us, supercharging our physical and magical prowess. The last time I’d taken it, I’d jumped Between through the strongest barriers a Magus could raise.
This time, I slipped Between through the magical bonds Silverstar had wrapped around me—moments before her sword would have stabbed through my chest.
I only had time to seize a single breath of Between’s ice cold air. There were other defenders between Silverstar and Mabona, but the Nobles assigned to guard the Queen’s door wouldn’t expect the Horned King to attack them.
She was waiting for me when I stepped back into reality, Force slicing across the room at neck height as soon as she saw me.
I expecting something similar, though, and interposed Esras. The ancient spear’s magic laughed at her attack, snuffing out the blade of Force instantly.
I moved with the spear, letting the quicksilver flow through my veins as I channeled Force around my limbs. My strike was the fastest I’d ever moved, with every scrap of the quicksilver’s extra energy and Inga’s training behind it as I tried to put Esras’s millennia-old spearhead through Silverstar’s chest.
She sidestepped even faster than I struck, her sword and power slashing toward my face. The quicksilver allowed me to drop to the floor, sliding past her on the waxed hardwood and crashing into the bar.
“Um. The floor is not going to help you win this fight,” the Puck told me from their seat on the bar. “Sadly, neither am I. But…ah, you are still going to need help.”
“Shut. Up.”
The last thing I needed in a fight I was losing was a sarcastic peanut gallery. I could hear gunfire outside as well, so either the Masked Lords’ main assault had chosen the perfect time to show up—entirely possible, since it appeared that Silverstar was in command of the Lords—or her people were turning on mine.
Esras had slipped from my hand as I fell, and it skittered away from me as I reached for it. From the overwhelming sense of impotent anger I picked up from the spear as it moved, it definitely wasn’t it doing that.
Of course my spear decided to complain about its abandonment issues while it was being stolen from me.
It flashed across the room and landed in Silverstar’s free hand.
“Quicksilver,” she noted aloud. “Might have been enough if you were more experienced, but you were never a match for me, Kilkenny. Not even with the spear in your hands. I have learned and trained and fought for far longer than you’ve been alive.
“You should never have been born, and the spear should never have been bound to you.” She smiled. It wasn’t a pleasant sight. “Fortunately, it now falls to me to correct those errors of your father’s.”
“Okay, apparently, I’m being too subtle,” the Puck snapped. “Run, you idiot!”
Sarcastic semi-hallucination or not, I could follow those instructions. Of course, it wasn’t like Silverstar was willing to just stand there and let me.
I ran for the door and took a buffet of F
orce to the face that flung me back across the room. If I hadn’t had quicksilver running in my veins, I probably would have broken limbs when I landed.
As it was, I used Force to land on my feet next to the hallway leading to Mabona’s room. A second blast of Force sent me flying down the hallway, smashing into the spare IV stand sitting outside the door.
The Nobles who should have been guarding the room were gone. That…seriously screwed up my plans, and it took me a moment to realize where they were.
Niamh had taken them inside the room and wedged the door shut. With a Healer and two Nobles on the other side, she could probably hold the room for a while, even against Silverstar.
Her paranoia had proven well founded. On the other hand, if those Nobles had been out here, we probably could have taken Silverstar together.
She stepped into the hallway, green armor glowing brightly with her power as she raised Esras. The spear was almost useless to her, but she could still use it as a weapon.
While I was quite certain the spear would conspire to miss if she threw it, she could definitely stab me with it. And stabbing me with Esras would definitely break the blood bond.
Which appeared to be her plan. I dragged myself up the wall to face her, feeling Mabona’s presence on the other side of the thin plaster and wondering how long Niamh and the Nobles could hold Silverstar off if I failed.
“If you can hear me at all, my Queen, I need you,” I muttered under my breath, focusing on my link to Mabona. “Now would be a fantastic time to wake up.”
She didn’t wake up. I hadn’t really been expecting her to.
The Puck appeared next to me suddenly.
“Wrong question,” he told me. “And we’re out of time for me to keep being mysterious.”
A wooden staff twice their height appeared in their hand and they slammed it into the ground. From the way Silverstar recoiled, she might not be able to see them…but she heard that.
“Mabona! Sister of my Court! Child of my blood! Lend your Champion your power!”
My link to Mabona seemed to warm. A tiny shred of consciousness flickered into being on the other side of the wall. She wasn’t awake. But somewhere deep in in her dreaming state, she heard the Puck’s words.
And answered their call.
Silverstar charged down the hall, power augmenting her every step…and fire flashed through my veins as I sidestepped her. My link to my Queen was no longer warm. It was searing, pouring liquid fire into my veins and muscles as I moved with an unconscious grace I’d often seen and never matched.
Force flashed from my hands and hammered the Horned King into the wall. Through the wall, leaving her armored form to crash into one of the empty rooms we’d raided for furniture to build the barricade.
Esras jumped back to my hand with a will of its own, settling into my grip with a mental purr.
Silverstar was back on her feet as I struck again, deflecting my blow of Force into the wall with a broad grin.
“A fair fight, then, it seems,” she snarled. “I’m going to rip your spine from your flesh!”
“Finally,” the Puck barked. “Now, Kilkenny, fight for your Queen!”
44
I honestly had no idea what to even do with the amount of power singing through me at that moment. That hesitation nearly killed me for, oh, the fifth or sixth time that fight.
A screaming blizzard of Force and Glamor-blades crossed the wrecked room in fractions of a second—and the floor beneath my feet disintegrated just as it hit. I conjured a shield to protect myself, but with no footing to secure myself, I went flying through the wall behind me.
And the wall behind that. And the one behind that.
The only reassuring thing was that I managed to focus enough power to yank Silverstar along with me, and we both planted ourselves in the concrete of the parking lot with a resounding crash.
Whatever gunfire had been sounding outside had resolved itself now, and I didn’t have time to really study to see who had won. I left cracks in the cement as I bounced back to my feet, Mabona’s power fueling my own Gift of Force as I hurled myself at the Horned King, spear first.
She parried the spear with her sword, a blur of Force and ice crashing at me as she moved.
Everyone except her seemed to be moving so slowly. I dodged the ice and sent flame hurtling at her. She smashed it into the ground, the concrete melting under the heat of my attack and giving me an idea.
As she conjured another attack, I returned the favor of what she’d done to me. The ground beneath her feet vanished and a tornado of fire surrounded her, superheating the concrete and stone as she fell into the hole.
Steam and molten rock filled the gap in the ground—but she vanished Between to avoid the crudely assembled trap.
I stepped sideways as she emerged, dodging a flurry of glamor-blades that hurtled into the already half-wrecked wall of the chalet. I sent Silverstar flying after her blades with a blow of Force, twisting her own glamors and the debris of the wall into a series of spikes.
She didn’t manage to slow herself in time. The glamors disappeared but she still slammed home onto a dozen or more spikes of rough wood yanked out of the chalet’s wreckage.
They weren’t cold iron and they couldn’t kill her, but it looked and sounded like it hurt as they punched through and splintered around her armor. I charged her with Esras, and she barely managed to twist aside. I sank the spearhead into the debris, barely yanking it free as Silverstar leapt free and swung her sword at my head.
I ducked the blade and dodged backward. She was bleeding from half a dozen wounds where the impact had broken her armor. Even as I watched, however, the wounds were sealing. Even the armor was repairing itself, the ancient enameled metal knitting itself back together.
“You are a giant pain in my ass,” she bellowed. “You will die, Jason Kilkenny.”
“You are a traitor to the fae,” I reminded her, loudly. There were a lot of people watching this fight without getting involved. With Mabona’s power singing through me, I probably didn’t need their help—but if I failed, they needed to know she couldn’t be allowed near the Queen.
“Maybe to the High Court,” Silverstar told me. “Never to the fae. All I have done is for the fae!”
“All you have done is for your own power,” I replied. “So much blood and death, Grainne Silverstar. All in pursuit of…what? A crown? An antlered helm that didn’t even make you a Power?”
“I will be a Power when you are dead!”
It was the fastest she’d moved so far, a blur of motion and death and power that I knew I normally wouldn’t even have seen.
With Mabona’s will driving me, I met her halfway. Esras flashed through the air with lightning speed, and Grainne Silverstar, Horned King of the fae, stopped in mid-charge.
The spearhead had emerged from her back, dripping blood as she slumped to the ground.
“It’s…” She coughed, falling to her knees. “It’s iron enough, isn’t it?”
“It was forged to kill fae,” I told her. “I think I’m keeping my spine today, Silverstar.”
“You’re still fucked. The rest are still—”
She fell forward against the spear, the last of her breath leaving her as she died.
There was a strange silence to the world after that. Mabona’s power slowly ebbed from me, the purpose for which it had been lent to me complete. I couldn’t tell if the Hunters and others gathered around me were speaking or not.
If they were, it was muffled, as if a great distance had just fallen between us. My world had shrunk to myself, Esras and Grainne Silverstar’s body.
Mabona’s power was gone, but my blood still felt warm. A new heat filled my body, radiating out from my core the same way my fire always had, except…my faerie fire had barely been noticeable when it did that.
Now it felt like I had the sun buried inside my chest. It didn’t hurt—but it felt like it should have? It felt like I should have been glowing, surrounded by a
storm, not by this sudden silence.
The Puck was suddenly there, stepping through the wreckage we’d made of the ground with a delicate grace. There was something more to the Puck than there had been before, and I realized that everyone around me could see the Puck now.
“You keep what you kill,” the Puck quoted at me. The Power’s voice was gentle, but it cut through the strange silence like a knife. The fog lifted, and now I could tell that everyone around me except the Puck was silent in shock.
“What?” I demanded. I vaguely recognized the quote but I didn’t see the relevance.
“What?” the Puck replied. “I watch movies.” They knelt and picked up the antlered helm.
“I don’t understand.” I admitted.
“You keep what you kill,” they repeated, their bright green gaze locked onto me. “By ancient rights, by blood, by iron, you are her heir.”
The only “her” relevant here was Grainne Silverstar. I couldn’t be her heir. Her heir would be…
The Puck didn’t seem to grow at all, but they were somehow tall enough to place the antlered helm on my head while I was distracted. A flash of their power swept the ancient green armor from Silverstar and onto me and I stared at him.
“Jason Alexander Odysseus Kilkenny Calebrantson,” the Puck said formally. “Child of the blood of Lugh. Bearer of the spear Esras. Slayer of the Horned King in righteous single combat.
“The antlered helm is yours. The Wild Hunt is yours. You are the Horned King now.”
I wanted to argue. Wanted to deny. I couldn’t be the Horned King! I wasn’t even wholly fae!
But the burning sun in my chest told me the true story. The warm acceptance radiating from the ancient regalia of the King told me the true story.
The Hunters and Companions and asura and Nobles kneeling around me in an ever-widening circle told me the story.
Noble's Honor (Changeling Blood Book 3) Page 24