Fairy, Neat (Fairy Files Book 6)

by Katharine Sadler

  “Pure breeds are often dangerously inbred,” Benny said. His tone was light, but there was real anger on his face. It hadn’t occurred to me that he might not be one hundred percent dragon, but now I wondered.

  Archibald’s face twisted like he wanted to blow fire at Benny.

  “Archibald,” Chelsea said, drifting between us with an airy smile and a delicate, almost fragile tone I hadn’t heard from her before. She used a lot of hand motions and arm-waving like she was performing some sort of ultra-feminine dance. “Dear, you know how arguing makes my head ache.” She floated closer, Archibald’s eyes on her, his anger and smirking tough guy act dissipating like smoke in the wind. He liked her. A lot.

  “I’d never do anything to cause you pain, Chelsea,” he said. “I will keep my opinions about Benny and the fairy to myself if it will make your day brighter, dear.”

  “Oh, dear Archibald,” Chelsea said with a bit of a swoon. “You are the kindest, strongest, most wonderful man.”

  Her obeisance was so complete and so disgusting that I had to fight hard against the snort and eye roll I wanted to make. Archibald wasn’t put off by her bowing and scraping, he seemed to love it. He stood a bit straighter and puffed his chest out. “You called and I got here as quickly as I could. Have you at last decided to accept me as your husband?”

  Chelsea’s smile fell, and I could have sworn actual tears filled her eyes. “Alas, dear Archibald, I am promised to another still. He refuses to free me to wed who I wish.” Her teary eyes and frown vanished and a smile replaced them. “I’ve called to ask you to share with us your immense knowledge of the past. You lived longer than any of us in the nightmare realm and you ruled over the nightmares who are now plaguing our beautiful Rubalia. We are journeying to pay our respects to the empress, Ludwiggia, and we need your insights to be sure we cause her no offense.”

  Archibald frowned, his eyes wide. This was like watching a melodrama, a poorly acted melodrama. “Dearest Chelsea, you can’t intend to meet the vicious and cruel nightmare empress. I couldn’t bear to lose you and she is likely to do horrible, dastardly things to you.”

  Dastardly? Really?

  “Treasured, Archibald,” Chelsea said, taking both his hands in her own. “That is why we need your advice and your memories if we hope not to fall to her talons and teeth. It is clear she and her nightmares will rule all of Rubalia and we want to be on the winning side.”

  “Of course, I will tell you everything I know and remember, but I wish you would come with me and have no part in this wild, reckless mission that is doomed to abject failure.”

  “I have to try,” Chelsea said. “You know that no matter how much I wish it, I can’t be with you. I might as well have something in my life I can believe in. I believe in this cause.”

  Archibald frowned with all the gravity he could muster and nodded. “I will share my knowledge with you.”

  Benny, Chelsea, Lensy, Frost, and I followed Archibald to the shade of the forest and sat on moldy dead leaves. Archibald sat on a tree stump and held center court with all the drama and arrogance of any royal. The rest of our group stayed on the farther edge of the clearing, in the shade, to rest. Archibald insisted he speak only to the leaders of the group, as his words weren’t fit for ‘peons.’

  He didn’t speak for several moments after we were all settled and waiting. He looked each of us over in turn as though he was searching for some sort of response or appropriate homage. Benny and Chelsea didn’t make a move or even flinch, so I followed their lead and stayed still and silent.

  At last, Archibald cleared his throat. “This is something about which I swore I would never speak again,” he said, with all the gravity and emotion such words suggested and then some. “But for you, dearest Chelsea, I will make an exception.”

  “Thank you, my heart,” Chelsea said. “I will forever be grateful for your sacrifice.”

  He nodded. “When I was a child, dragons ruled the nightmare realm. I myself was of royal blood, as I was the second cousin, thrice-removed, of the prince’s first wife’s best friend.”

  He paused again to let that sink in, I suppose, and I bit my lip not to laugh at his pretension and his complete lack of understanding of how lineage works.

  “What you call the nightmares, we called the lowly. They were some sort of freakish anomaly, related to dragons but unable to shift, and therefore lesser beings. They were our servants, but we lacked a true understanding of them. For millennia, the lowly and the dragons had fought wars and taken turns as the ruling class. The lowly were vile and violent, but they were smart, they watched and they learned our weaknesses, even as they served us. Dragons, too trusting as we are, learned nothing about the lowly or their culture.”

  I suspected the dragons were too self-absorbed and arrogant, rather than too trusting, but I thought it best not to point that out. “Have you since learned about their culture, about their strengths and their weaknesses?” I asked.

  “I learned much about their strengths when they violently and viciously overthrew the royals and made us their slaves. For more than a hundred years they have ruled in the nightmare realm. They care nothing for anyone other than themselves and by that I mean their species as a whole. One lowly doesn’t shed a tear for another, as long as the colony as a whole thrives, particularly their queen or empress.”

  “And how about her,” I said. “Does she care about her own well-being? Or would another queen rise to take her place if she was killed?”

  Archibald narrowed his eyes. “Please do not interrupt me,” he said, his voice rumbling like his throat had shifted. “This is difficult enough for me to talk about without you interrupting me with silly questions.”

  I took his response to mean he didn’t have any idea about the answer to my question, but I was smart enough not to call him out on it. “I apologize,” I said, bowing my head meekly. “It won’t happen again.”

  He huffed. “Dearest Chelsea, how do you associate with such uncouth individuals?”

  “It is a trial, dearest Archibald,” she said, without a hint of irony.

  Archibald cleared his throat. “As I was saying before I was so egregiously interrupted, the lowly operate as a unit. They share a single mind and do not have to speak to one another to communicate. If one of them dies, her thoughts are simply absorbed by the colony mind. For this reason, they are unbeatable. There are too many of them and they fear nothing but the death of their empress.”

  “But what else can hurt them? What are their weaknesses?” I asked.

  Archibald’s eyes flamed red and he glared at me in fury. “Interrupt me again, princess, and I will not be held accountable for my actions.”

  Ah, something else he couldn’t answer. “I apologize,” I said. “Will we be able to ask questions when you’re done speaking?”

  Frost placed a firm hand on my knee and I didn’t need to speak to him telepathically to understand that he was telling me to shut the hell up.

  Archibald frowned. “No questions. I will tell you what is known. If you interrupt again, I will have to ask you to leave the circle.”

  I folded my hands demurely in my lap and bowed my head in faux submission. “Of course. You’d have every right. I apologize.”

  Archibald snorted. “You apologize far too frequently for it to be sincere, but you may stay for now. The lowly became the rulers in the nightmare realm and killed many of my people. The rest they enslaved. Those of my people who were able fled to Rubalia. In a hundred years, no one has been able to raise an army against the lowly and succeed. Not the strongest, noblest of dragon-kind. They are ruthless and cold, and they hate dragon-kind. They hate anyone who is different from them. If you ask for their friendship, their alliance, you will die. It is best you return to the Non and forget this doomed journey. I would do so if I were young enough to start over.”

  I had so many, many questions, but if I interrupted again, I’d be forced to leave the circle and hear nothing more of what he had to say. I
looked to Chelsea for help and she pinched her lips together, meeting my gaze with something like sympathy in her eyes.

  Benny, behind her, rolled his eyes as if to suggest we were idiots for thinking Archibald could help us in the first place. Then, he yawned and stretched like he was thoroughly bored.

  Archibald’s sharp gaze flew to Benny. “Is my story boring you, Benedict?” he asked. “You who know nothing of the pain of being enslaved mock my experience?”

  Benny smirked. “You’ve told us nothing we couldn’t have figured out for ourselves, old man. You’re nothing but a whole lot of show wrapped around an empty carcass.”

  Smoke drifted from Archibald’s nose and his eyes flamed red. “You know nothing of the pain I suffered. The lowly can get into your mind so deep that you believe you are living your life, experiencing joy and freedom and love, when you are doing nothing but sitting in a cell, unmoving. They enjoy manipulating people. Toying with them. Letting them believe they’ve achieved everything they want and then ripping it away from them over and over and over again. They tormented me with images of my love. They allowed me to believe we were together and then they’d make me believe that they held her in a cell and that she was sick. The only way they’d heal her, they told me, was if I worked for them without rebellion. If I disobeyed, they made me believe they were torturing her, killing her, until I agreed to do anything they asked to make it stop. When I finally managed to escape them, I learned my dear love had died the day I’d been enslaved, twenty years before. They gave me the greatest joy and the greatest terror and despair and none of it was real. None of it.”

  Actual tears welled in his eyes and I felt sympathy for the man. He tossed his head and glared at each of us in turn. “They are the most powerful warriors you’ll ever encounter because they don’t fight you in the physical world, they fight you in your own mind. They break your mind and they break you, until you’re begging them, offering to do anything they ask, just for one more moment of joy, of love. That is what you’ll face and that is why you will lose.”

  His words made goosebumps rise on my skin. I couldn’t imagine a harsher or more debilitating torture. I’d never survive watching Frost tortured and killed repeatedly. I’d never retain my sanity under those conditions.

  “We are stronger than you old man,” Benny said. “We’ll be fine.”

  Archibald didn’t get angry as I’d expected, he just shook his head, his eyes revealing sorrow. “Maybe you have a shot at befriending the lowlies, but the empress is more powerful than the entire colony. She has her own power and she can draw on the power of her people. Her mind control is unbeatable and she won’t be happy with your pledge of obeisance. She will want to own you body and soul. And you won’t be able to stop her.”

  I remembered how my mother had been able to overcome Ludwiggia’s mind control for brief moments and I wondered if Archibald could be wrong. Not that it mattered, we didn’t have a better plan and we couldn’t back down.

  “Not to mention,” Archibald went on, “that her sister queens have arrived.”

  That slowed my roll like a needle scratching a record. “Sister queens?”

  Archibald smiled. He didn’t seem to mind my interruption this time, maybe because he could hear the fear in my voice or because he was proud of putting me in my place. “Yes,” he said. “The lowlies aren’t just one colony. There are thousands of colonies in the nightmare realm, each with its own queen. When the sister queens all get together, they are unstoppable.”

  “How many of her sisters are here, dearest Archibald?” Chelsea asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Archibald said. “I haven’t seen them myself, but rumor says twenty-five are here.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  All I’ve ever wanted has been distilled down to an overwhelming desire to see no one else I love killed.—Chloe Frangipani

  I’m a dragon. There is nothing that intimidates me.—Benedict Dragonati

  “Think we have an actual shot of winning?” Lensy asked.

  After Archibald had delivered his doomsday news and left, we’d decided to camp in the clearing and take the afternoon to regroup and set up camp. We informed everyone about the twenty-six queens we now had to face. Because the harpies were there, and always listening, we had to be careful about how we worded the situation to our friends.

  “Our friendly reception is less certain,” I said. “If you want to back out, I’ll understand.”

  “No,” Lensy said. “I was never meant to die of old age. And I can’t allow monsters to take over my home.”

  I nodded. I wished I could tell her I had a foolproof plan, but I had nothing better than a sketchy idea of how we might succeed. Knowing about the other queens in Rubalia only made me more certain we had to fight back now. If we waited until the queens were settled, we’d have no chance of overthrowing them all.

  Hieronymus stepped away from the small group he was working with and joined us. “It has occurred to me that the nightmares may share this hive mind with whomever they’ve overtaken. I think we have to assume that the option of surprise is no longer an option. It’s likely the queens will know we’re here even if we don’t encounter an actual nightmare. They may already know we’re here.” He looked sidelong at the harpies who stood on the edge of the group. “And they may assume we mean them harm.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Without surprise, how will we get to the queens?”

  “They will know we’re coming,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “But they won’t know about the gifts we bring them.” I knew he meant the human blood and saliva, our secret weapons.

  I just stared at him for a long moment. “If they have a hive mind,” I said. “They already know about the gifts. The nightmares who visited us in the Non saw them. They may even know about the jewelry.” I meant, of course, the amulets.

  He shook his head. “Only if the hive mind crosses the boundary between Rubalia and the Non.”

  “But our friends who chose not to stay in the Non,” I said, referring to the nightmares we’d forcibly sent back, “would have told Ludwiggia about our kindness and the gifts we carry. Our friends who wait for us near the portal may also have shared the news of our gifts.” I was referring to the trolls, redcaps, dragons, and field dwarves who’d stayed behind at the rebel enclave.

  He frowned. “Our friends would not be so careless. Even if the nightmares did see the gifts, there’s a chance they didn’t understand what we had. There’s a possibility they didn’t see enough to fully understand what we can offer.” He stiffened his shoulders, his frown cutting a sharp line of disapproval through his features. “It’s a slim chance, but it’s the only one we have. The only chance we have of winning friendship is to surprise the Empress. We must not reveal the gifts to anyone until we are facing Ludwiggia and the queens.”

  “No,” I said. “It’s too dangerous. If we meet other nightmares on the way, they won’t understand our offer of friendship unless we show them the gifts.” I meant we’d be destroyed by the nightmares if we didn’t use our secret weapons.

  “Why do you need the gifts to be a surprise?” Lualla asked, her gaze narrowed.

  “We have heard,” I said. “That Ludwiggia likes it best if her gifts have been shown to no one else. She is insulted otherwise.”

  The harpy frowned, but she looked more worried than suspicious. “Our gift won’t be a surprise. The empress might be angry.”

  “You have only revealed the gifts to us,” I said. “If we tell no one else, they will still be a surprise to her.”

  The harpies both looked relieved and even smiled a bit. I felt bad about the subterfuge, but not bad enough to tell them the truth.

  Hieronymus’ expression was somber. “We must all do our best to keep our offerings, our gifts, a secret.”

  I had been prepared to die there, I’d been prepared to lose, no matter how optimistic I pretended to be, but I hadn’t been prepared to knowingly sacrifice the lives of the people fighting next to me
. How could I do that? How could I stand by while people I was leading into battle, people who’d agreed to follow my lead, died? Especially, when there was such a minuscule chance the nightmares didn’t already know about our secret weapons. “If we must reveal the gifts to save lives,” I said. “We will take the risk.”

  Hieronymus’ placid expression didn’t waver, he’d likely expected my response. “You like to pretend you’re some sort of god, responsible for the well-being of every person in your employ, every person whose life you touch, but you aren’t a god, Chloe. You are a fairy princess who has no control over the decisions of other people.”

  “I might not control their decisions, but I can decide not to lead them to the slaughter. I can decide to walk away rather than let them die.”

  “And more people will die if you walk way,” Lensy said. “I am willing to make the sacrifice for the chance to ally with Ludwiggia.”

  “We will take that chance,” the harpies said. “The mission we were given was to help our clan and we will sacrifice ourselves if necessary.”

  The others of our group also agreed that the risk was worth taking and I found it hard to breathe. My chest ached like the sasquatch was crushing me.

  “And Chloe must be protected at all costs,” Hieronymus said.

  “No,” I said. “Absolutely not. I won’t cower in the back while they give their lives. I will fight beside them. I will make the same sacrifice they make.”

  Hieronymus looked at me like I was an idiot. “And if you are dead, who will lead the fight against the queens? Who will storm the palace? No. You must survive. You are the only one powerful enough to be—” He glanced at the harpies. “To greet the queens and convince them of our loyalty to them.”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t believe…Wait, what do you mean I’m the only one powerful enough? What power do I have?”