“Oh, how I long for that to be true, Nightmare. Oh, how I long for you to haunt me for all eternity.”
I’d run out of options.
I was about to be drowned in blood.
“It’s time,” The Balance began.
And it was time. Time to take a last gamble.
“Push her – ” The Balance began to order, but I interrupted him.
“Finmark Thorne,” I whispered. “Forget all loyalties except those you have to me.”
Scouvrel’s eyes widened and his sudden inhale sucked the air out from between us. My gamble had paid off. I had his name.
“ – into the blood and drown her!” The Balance was still talking. “Do this, as you have been ordered, Knave.”
“Finmark Thorne. Let go of me and freeze for one minute,” I whispered as The Balance spoke, my skin turning to gooseflesh at the gamble I was taking. Was it true? Could I order him to stop with his name?
Scouvrel’s hands released me and he froze in place on his knees. His eyes were huge and brimming.
I didn’t waste a second.
I ripped the arrow from his bicep and leapt toward The Balance.
The Balance’s eyes widened as I crashed into his chest, his hands reflexively closing around my waist at the same moment that I plunged the arrow into his throat.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
The Balance gasped, clawing at his throat. His eyes seemed to flicker from one blue and one brown to both a bright cat’s eye yellow.
“No!” Scouvrel whispered.
I drove the arrow deeper as the Balance choked. And then his hair faded from half white and half black to all black. And his wings disappeared.
He went limp under me and I clawed my way back up to my feet, gasping for breath. I felt strange. My head was spinning. It was hard to see properly.
I didn’t feel like myself. I felt like I was someone else looking down at my own body.
The Balance had turned to a warbly version of himself – like how I saw mortals in my spirit vision. And then a white light shot out of his chest and up into the sky. Once it cleared the treetops, it burst – with a loud bang – into a thousand white stars. They formed a weigh scale for three heartbeats. And then they rained down on us.
In the distance I heard angry shouts.
“Nightmare,” Scouvrel said carefully, rising to his feet, his eyes wide and hands spread open as if to show he was unarmed. “Nightmare, I bear you no ill will. Please do not kill me.”
“Are you asking for a bargain?” I asked harshly. I didn’t want to kill him. Not anymore. But his betrayal still stung to my core. Fury bubbled up into my heart.
His face was pale. “I’m asking you to spare my life.”
“Then we are bargaining for your life,” I said, scooping up my scabbard and buckling my sword belt in a single motion. The bow and arrows came next. I tossed Scouvrel his sword. The look on his face of fear and caution was unlike anything I’d ever seen from him before. I didn’t stop to ponder it. I grabbed my cage from the mossy ground, shook Werex out of it – he landed right in the pooling stream of blood – and tied the cage to my belt.
“Yes,” he said. “We are bargaining for my life and for my name.”
I quirked an eyebrow at him. “It seems that you don’t like being in my power.”
His eyes grew dark as his pupils expanded so far that I could barely see the irises. “Trust me, Nightmare, I have enjoyed every moment of being in your power. Relinquishing my name will not lessen your hold over me.”
I snorted. “Moments ago, you would have drowned me in blood.”
“As I was bound to do. You will have a much fuller knowledge of the pain of that before you’re ready for it.”
“Oh?”
“Now that you’re The Balance.”
I gasped, my eyes darting to the corpse of the Fae who had once been The Balance. My heart began to pound in my skull.
“My old enemy,” Scouvrel said. “The righter of wrongs. The destruction of good. The Leveler.”
“No,” I gasped. I couldn’t seem to see properly. My vision was clouding over.
“That’s what I said, if you recall. But you froze me. And there was nothing I could do to stop you.”
“No.” My eyes met his, wide and afraid, just like mine.
He crossed to me, stepping over the fallen body of the one whose role I had taken. He snatched my hands up in his.
“Nightmare. My most precious Nightmare.” He licked his lips nervously, his eyes like those of a rabbit, darting this way and that. “In a moment, every Fae within miles will be here trying to kill you while you are vulnerable and before the mantle of your role asserts itself.”
“But I’m not even Fae!” I protested.
“Nevertheless,” he said, searching my eyes. “We ought to hurry. If you are willing to bargain for my life and name, then we must do that now. Trust me, Nightmare, every current of my soul follows you like the tide follows the moon.”
“I don’t know what tides or moons do,” I said, pulling my hands from his. “But I do know that you lied to me, you betrayed me, and you tried to kill me.”
“And now you command my whole being.”
“Because I am The Balance?”
He shook his head. In the distance, I heard the crash of people and beasts hurrying through the forest.
“That tie broke with the old Balance’s death. No, Nightmare. You have my name. And with it, you have me.”
“Then I think I’ll keep you,” I said frostily. I drew my sword from my scabbard.
The trap was set, though I hadn’t planned it. All I had to do was wait and hold my nerve. I shoved my bow into my quiver, grabbed the cage in my left hand and my sword in the right.
Steady, Allie. Steady.
I knew what I would do if I was a Fae and I saw that mark in the sky.
Which meant I knew what she would do.
“Then you will not kill me?” Scouvrel said warily.
“I own your life, but I find I like it where it is,” I said, mimicking what he said about my braid. “But it is mine now. Do not cut it short. It is not yours to cut.”
The glowing stag I’d been waiting for crashed through the trees before any other Fae made it to the little dip in the ground where we were hidden.
The moment I saw my sister’s red hair streaming in the breeze, I smiled.
I remembered the look on her face right before she cut off her husband’s head. I remembered her messy room, her dresses flung everywhere. I remembered the cruel glint in her eye when she looked at me.
And I thought of her as small.
And she was small.
So small, that now she was in the cage, stag and all.
I heard a shriek and a clatter from in the cage as the stag hit his antlers against the iron bars.
A roar of voices washed over us from the nearby bushes.
Scouvrel cursed, putting his back to mine as a ring of Fae surrounded us.
I slashed out with my sword, cutting the air before me and letting the cage fall to hang from my belt.
Hurry, Allie, Hurry!
I reached out, grabbed the tear, and forced it open, reaching back to grab Scouvrel by the collar of his coat and pull him through the tear in the world with me.
Excitement vibrated through me like a note through a mandolin string.
I had her at last.
At last.
Read more of Allie Hunter’s story in Fae Pursuit: Book Four of the Twisted Fae series.
Behind the Scenes:
USA Today bestselling author, Sarah K. L. Wilson loves spinning a yarn and if it paints a magical new world, twists something old into something reborn, or makes your heart pound with excitement ... all the better! Sarah hails from the rocky Canadian Shield in Northern Ontario – learning patience and tenacity from the long months of icy cold – where she lives with her husband and two small boys. You might find her building fires in her woodstove and wishing she had a dragon hand
y to light them for her
Sarah would like to thank Julie Thomas and Eugenia Kollia for their incredible work in beta reading and proofreading this book. Without their big hearts and passion for stories, this book would not be the same.
Sarah has the deepest regard for the talent of her phenomenal artist Luciano Fleitas who created the gorgeous cover art that accompanies this book. Without his work, it would be so much harder to show off this story the way it deserves!
Thanks also to the Noble Order of Female Fantasy Authors who keep me sane – sort of. And for my beloved husband, Cale, and sons Neville and Leif who are endlessly patient as I talk to them about bookish passions.
Please see her full catalogue of books, including freebies, new releases and special offers on her website.
www.sarahklwilson.com
Fae Nightmare Page 18