“The Night Bringer?” I ask in a whisper.
“Yes. The Night Bringer was one.”
“But there’s another.”
The wraith nods slowly. He sniffs, watching the forest and the child running away from him.
“The only way we could win the battle was to trick the beings. We had one secret weapon: another being like them. She was powerful enough to cast a spell, binding them to one area forever.”
My eyebrows pull down.
“We succeeded in trapping one of the two beings. If I had been able to get them both—if the Night Bringer hadn’t figured it out just in time—we wouldn’t have had to dismantle my court. I wouldn’t have had to give away my own child, hide him away.”
“What does your son have to do with it?”
“Well, the spell that bound the Night Terror to the Schorchedlands was cast by two beings. One was that ancient ally I mentioned, and the other—me. It cannot be reversed without one of the two of us. The guardian will not bend and so the Night Terror cannot leave these cursed lands unless someone of my own blood with a very large amount of shadow power casts the reversal spell.”
“So your son...”
He nods. “My son had the ability to reverse the spell, and I knew the Night Bringer would come for him. So, I hid him away. No one knew where he went. The few I confided in, I told that I’d sent him to another court—he was young enough that he would adapt to the new element he was placed into. He’d no longer be a shadow fae and would no longer able to pass down the power needed to reverse the curse. The next several High Kings called us weak and began the political war that would eventually bring our incredible court to its knees. And my father let them because he didn’t trust me. He helped them by selling off children to other courts, weakening us. He must have known I’d kept my heir somewhere in the shadow lands because he pushed all of the most powerful children away.”
I suck in a breath. I knew females in my court had been forced into marriage in other courts. I knew this was to keep us weak. But I’d always thought it was because the other courts feared us and our power.
He’s telling me—it was for the good of the world.
“My father and the High Counsel knew the weaker we were, the less likely there would ever rise a child able to break the curse. Those are deeds I was never able to forgive. Deeds that drove me mad in my living years.”
“He was trying to save the world... by dismantling his own kingdom.” My heart aches at this story. What would I have done, in this situation? I try putting myself in his place. And I... don’t think I could have done it. It’s like breaking your own child’s leg because being able-bodied would put them at risk. It’s still not right. It’s cruel and unfair.
“And, perhaps, he was right. Because it almost worked.” He nods again to the forest. Where the image of his son as a boy shifts into an adult with a child of his own. And that child grows, to have her own. And that child grows to have his own.
“The Shadow Court passed to a new ruling family, another cousin chosen by my father, and my line was lost to all but me. I watched them from afar. Each child of my line I knew was at risk, but they grew weaker and weaker thanks to my father’s work.”
I narrow my eyes as one of the boys grows into a shadow fae I recognize.
“Until the Night Bringer got his hands on one of my children’s children’s children, and he died in the process of casting the spell. He wasn’t strong enough. Hundreds of years passed, and I’d thought it was over. There would never again exist a shadow fae with both the power and blood needed.”
A baby appears in the familiar fae’s arms. She gets bigger, her hair grows long and blond. Her eyes are big and golden, lovely but not very bright.
The blond shadow fae grows until she’s like looking in a mirror.
“Until me.”
Rev
I lean over, hands a tight fist in my hair.
“But what about the spellbook?” I ask my brother in wraith form.
I continue to struggle between loving the soul of my lost brother and the realization that he’s not who I thought he was. He never was.
It means what I saw in the Orb of Terrors of what he did to Caelynn was likely true. And it means when she said he deserved to die...
I shake my head from those thoughts. I’d prayed—begged—so many times for a chance to talk to my brother again. One more time.
Now, I’m getting that chance to do it. It’s just... not at all what I was hoping for.
“What about it?” Reahgan asks, exasperated. He always did get annoyed with me so quickly.
“The High Queen sent me here to get the spellbook because it has the cure to the scourge inside it.”
Reahgan begins a hysterical laugh. “So, the queen is in on this too. My! How elaborate this plan was. The Night Bringer has certainly been working overtime.”
“The queen... in on it?” I mumble.
“Oh, my sweet, naive little brother.” He’s pleased he knows more than I do. “The only thing in that spellbook is the means to unbind the Night Terror from her cell inside these curse walls.”
“What?”
“Would you come up with something more intelligent to say than what?”
I groan.
“The point of all of this, Rev, is that your damaged lover cannot get her hands on that book. We cannot allow it to happen.”
“I can’t let you kill Caelynn,” I say with more force than I’d yet had toward my brother. The words surprise even me.
He grows still. “Excuse me?”
“I don’t know as much as you do about the scourge and this Night Terror, but I’m not going to let you hurt her.”
Reahgan chuckles. It’s softer than before, but if there is one thing I know about my brother—when he gets quiet, he’s angry. “She sure has got her claws in you deep.”
“That’s not true. I hate her. But I still...”
“You hate her,” he repeats, dumbfounded. “You hate her, but you will betray your own brother to save her life?”
“Stop,” I say, pressing my fists to my eyes.
Reahgan circles me, examining me like a wild animal caught in a trap. “It’s the magic of the mating bond,” he says definitively. “Yes. If you mean it, that you hate her, yet you’d say those things...”
He presses his face close to mine, and I squirm back, avoiding looking right into the black void where his eyes should be.
“Then, you are simply being manipulated by the magic of the bond. Your feelings for her are not real, little brother. It will convince you to protect her at all costs, even when it makes no sense.”
“No,” I say, even though I’ve had those same thoughts. Where does the mating bond begin and I end? What’s real, and what’s the magic? That, I don’t know.
Reahgan drifts to the floor beside me, hands on my knee and face inches from mine. The smell of burnt flesh fills my nose. “I can cure you,” he whispers seriously. “I can break the bond.”
My eyes fly open. “What?”
“The bond is simply a spell. And it can be broken.” He rushes over the words like he’s just figuring this all out along with me. “You can be free of this spell she has on you. You’d be able to see so clearly then!”
My stomach sinks. I don’t want that—do I? My feelings for Caelynn are so complicated it would be nice to be able to sift through them easier. But breaking the bond?
“You are so easy to manipulate, and she’s doing it to you now. I won’t let them win this game just because of your sappy feelings that aren’t even authentic.”
“This isn’t a game, Reahgan.”
“To them it is! They want to destroy us all. And they’re moving naïve and ignorant living fae—like you—around like fucking chess pieces. It’s masterful, really.”
I don’t know what to believe. His story fits.
But he wants to kill Caelynn because he thinks she’s going to help the Night Bringer destroy the world.
“Even if all of this is true, Caelynn would need to cast the spell. She won’t do it.”
“That’s what you’re putting your bets on, Rev? That your sweet fated mate will refuse to do their bidding? How do you think I died, Rev? She killed me to complete a bargain she made with them!”
“What did you do to her?” I say as those images play through my head again. Caelynn held down by my brother’s power. Nausea rolls through me.
While he was alive, I’d always hero-worshiped my brother. So much I hadn’t seen the cruelty in his eyes.
But I see it now.
“Before Caelynn killed you. What did you do to her?”
“Ha!” he spits. “I did nothing to her.”
“I saw you.” I stand. “You held her down.”
“She was an assassin! A spy sent to kill my little brother. What did you expect me to do? Pour her tea? No, I was going to do whatever was required to get answers from her.”
“You enjoyed it.” It feels right, this realization. He’d always liked causing others pain. He reveled in it. The way he picked on me wasn’t just a big brother teasing his sibling. He loved it. He liked seeing my tears. My pain.
“I didn’t do anything. The bitch broke free of my holding before I had the chance.”
I shoot a blast of white-hot power straight into the wraith’s chest, and he crashes through the far wall, wood splintering. Anger fills me, and I charge my brother.
Caelynn
Soft moans—a mixture of pleasure and pain—drift through dark the trees. The sun has set entirely now, leaving the space between the white tree trunks pitch black. I couldn’t see their haunting images even if I allowed myself to look.
But now, the voices are louder.
It seems the forest has shifted its strategy with less to show and more to tell.
Caelynn, a myriad of voices whisper. So many of them, calling to me. Lead us, Caelynn. Be our queen. Give us our power back.
I swallow. Not real.
“That’s why the Night Bringer gave me his power,” I say, running my new truths through my mind. “It wasn’t some benevolent act for a fae doing his bidding.” I take in a huge breath and hold it. This... this story is too much. It twists all the things I thought I knew into something entirely different.
“It all served a purpose,” my wraith agrees.
I let out my breath slowly. “If all of this is true...”
“You are the one they’ve been waiting for. They need you to free them.”
I shake my head. Yes, sure that’s true, but there’s more. Maybe in the grand scheme of things, it shouldn’t matter. Maybe the evil plot to destroy the world is more important, but my mind is caught on two important facts.
“It means I’m your great, great, great, great... granddaughter.”
The wraith grows still. “Yes,” he whispers.
“It means... it means I have royal blood.”
“Yes.”
I blink slowly. The Night Bringer once told me that if I did as he told me, I’d become Queen of the Shadow Court. All I needed was his power and the freedom to choose my own court. Those two things he would give me, and even without any more involvement, the Queen of the Whisperwood would name me her heir. The Shadow Court needs a strong ruler. And I would be the only one in the entire kingdom with the power to fuel it all.
So, the possibility of being the Queen of the Shadow Court is not new. It was never really a possibility because I was banished quickly after I earned my magic. But the thought, the vague hope, was always there. Since I was an adolescent.
But this... this is something different. This is destiny. This is a life that was taken from me.
I should have been a princess.
That throne isn’t just a vague possibility out of coincidence and convenience. It’s rightfully mine.
I shake my head as all the things I learned swirl through my mind. Wraiths are not traditionally very trustworthy allies—unless you’ve bound them to a bargain, which I haven’t. So, all of this could be bull shit. It could be more manipulation. God knows I’ve had my fair share of that.
But the forest’s images do not lie. So, I can trust that, somehow, I am part of his desires. And it’s very clear to me that this means a lot to him. This wraith feels strongly about this story. About me.
So, maybe it’s only partially true. But I don’t really care.
I take in a long breath, accepting everything he’s said as truth. “I’m going to kill him.”
“Yes! Now, you understand!” The wraith floats in the air, his bottom half swishing eagerly. “Rev must die so that you can live to restore the Shadow—”
“No,” I say. “I will kill the Night Terror. I will kill the Night Bringer’s mate so he knows what it feels like.”
He stops, eyeing me carefully.
“Rev will live,” I tell him. “He will be the hero the realm needs. And he’ll go on to be High King.”
“But... then you will still be imprisoned here. Forever. And our court will fall. You are the last heir. The last one. Do you understand what that means?”
“It means we’re no worse off than before. No one knew I existed. ” I shrug.
His mouth falls open. “I thought you loved our court. I thought you’d fight for it, choose it, above all else.”
I nod slowly. “I’d choose it above all else. Except him.”
If I’d known all of this before... before the trials, before my time with him in the Crumbling Court, before crushing his heart to help—maybe I’d have chosen differently.
.
No, I cannot kill him because my own choices backed me into a corner. I am not that selfish.
I turn and face the fire, flickering gently in the darkness. My wraith—my ancestor—doesn’t make a sound, and I don’t turn to face him. I’d leave now if I didn’t know it was certain death to cross the plains at night. I must wait for the morning.
So, I wait, contemplating my entire life with this new information. Did my father know? That would make a lot of sense actually. And my Gran too.
It’s why they wanted to send me away. It’s why they thought my disobedience put me in danger. It’s why they feared me after I’d killed Reahgan. It’s why they pushed to have me banished. Because I had this dark power now that was dangerous to the whole realm.
Eventually, I slip into a fitful sleep, and when I wake ready to set off over the now vacant wraith plains to find Rev, my wraith is gone. Maybe he left the moment I chose Rev over his vendetta. I don’t care. My mind is made up.
I choose Rev.
I will always choose him.
THE PLAINS ARE AS EMPTY and open as they were yesterday morning. Though, of course, I know better. An army of wraiths waits in the shadows for any hint of Rev or me.
I suppose it should be a relief to know they don’t want me dead. They just want to capture me and take me to the Night Terror. Except, I also know better than to think that’s any not worse.
Death would be a mercy. That’s what my magic whispered in my ear those days I was bound by a bargain to the Night Bringer.
I cover myself in shadow. It would be preferable for me to save my magic for more important things than staying hidden, but after yesterday, I know this is a worthy use of my magic. It doesn’t take much anyway. I’ll just keep my shadow leaping to a minimum.
I take off at a full sprint across the plains. I find the massive footprints of the zombie bear and the dirt scorched from Rev’s magic, but the bear‘s lifeless carcass is nowhere to be found. I keep running. After a few miles and no surprising mishaps, I reach the looming shadow of the mountain pass. I don’t know where Reahgan took Rev, but I know where Rev will be heading eventually—through this mountain pass and deeper into the Schorchedlands.
I slow to walk when the ground beneath me shifts from ashy dirt to uneven rubble and stone. When light from the hazy sky is completely blocked from view by the massive mountains.
There are a few leafless trees here but no water s
ources. I’m already running low on water, but now isn’t the time to worry about that. I have to find Rev first. Figure out how to not die of thirst second—or at least somewhere on my to-do list.
I continue walking slowly, shadows still covering me, but a soft glow appears between two smaller mountains.
The glow recedes like nothing had been out of place at all.
On a whim, I follow the pathway toward the light. It’s winding, passing through a few small nooks between a set of mountains, and uphill. Finally, I turn a corner and suck in a breath at a tiny cottage smack in the middle of a red-tinted valley.
A fucking cottage in the middle of the Schorchedlands.
Now, even if this has nothing to do with Rev—I’ve got to find out what the hell is up with this place.
Rev
Reahgan’s smoky form rises from the blackened dirt outside the cottage, shattered glass, and splintered wood scattered at his feet.
“You see! You can’t think straight about her!” His booming voice rumbles the ground beneath me as I walk around to face him. “You’d attack me, your own brother, over the whore who killed me?”
My chest heaves. Around a hundred feet behind Reahgan is a swamp of bubbling black fluid. What lies inside the blackened water? More bones eager to devour me or something else? Something worse.
“I can free you of that burden,” he purrs as his body again floats to the air.
My chest heaves. “I don’t want to harm you,” I say, ignoring his comment.
“No? You just blasted me through the stupid cottage in rage. Defending the honor of your whore of a mate.”
“Stop!” I yell. “Stop calling her that.”
Reahgan laughs again, and the rocky terrain around us rumbles. “You are farther under her spell than I thought. A sick puppy in love with the shadow bitch!”
Reahgan laughs maniacally as I charge him, fists swinging. I fly straight through his body and skid to a stop on the other side.
Curse of Thorns (Wicked Fae Book 2) Page 18