Dreamer of Briarfell: A Retelling of Sleeping Beauty (Fairytales of Folkshore Book 7)
Page 17
“Marian wouldn’t want me to find her at the cost of someone else’s life,” Will seethed, still struggling with his blindfold.
Theseus examined his nails idly. “If you don’t play, you will be banned from Faerie forever.” He tossed a careless gesture Meira’s way. “And she will be executed.”
Will worked his jaw, and felt around the table, picking up the nearest knife. As he ran his fingers over it, examining its heft and sharpness, I could practically feel him considering throwing it at the king instead.
My heart hammered, hoping he wasn’t that much of a hothead. That king could kill him, kill them all, with a flick of a finger. He’d put Will, put us all, in an impossible position.
Then Will finally faced the spinning wheel.
“Don’t you dare throw that knife,” Meira shrieked.
“I have no choice,” Will said tightly. “He’ll kill you if I don’t.”
“So you’d rather kill me yourself?” Meira wailed.
“You have a better chance with me.” His lips wobbled in an imitation of a smug grin. “Don’t worry. I’m the best.”
Then he raised the knife and Meira sobbed, squeezing her eyes shut. I did the same as he flung the blade.
Robin’s groan of relief harmonizing with Agnë’s keening sprang my eyes open again.
Meira continued spinning and sobbing, with the knife stuck an inch away from her left ankle.
Will expelled the breath he’d been holding. “There—now let her go.”
King Theseus only grinned. “You still have five knives to go.”
“You can’t be serious!” Will bellowed. “You really want me to kill her for you, don’t you?”
The king shrugged. “I want you to prove yourself worthy of vital information. It’s only fair.”
“You wouldn’t know fair if it bit you in the…!”
“Willoughby!” Jon’s rumble cut Will off. “Not a good time to be mouthy.”
“Just throw the knives,” Robin urged. “You know you can do it. You are the best.”
Gritting his teeth, Will picked up two more knives. Meira’s struggles became frantic, making the wheel spin faster.
Will tilted his head, listening for the wheel’s rotation, then bit off, “Stop moving! You’re making this harder on us both.”
“I’m the one getting skewered here!”
“Meira. Merope.” Will raised his hands with the knives. “You’re not getting skewered.”
“You don’t know that!” Her shriek distorted in the wheel’s zooming spin.
“Just trust me, all right?”
And wonder of wonders, at Will’s firm yet pleading order, she gradually ceased her struggles.
The spinning slowed, and Will seemed to be listening for the right moment, before he flung the second knife, then the third. They landed at both her sides, each missing her by mere inches. The fourth and fifth knives stuck by her ears.
When he picked up the final knife, the wheel suddenly spun faster than it ever had before, making Meira blur.
“What are you doing?” Will shouted at the king.
King Theseus flicked a nail. “Those could have been lucky misses. I need to make certain you’re actually that good.”
Will looked aghast, voicing my furious frustration with this demented king. “Who misses, and that accurately, five times in a row?”
“Stranger things have happened.” The king winked at me. “Like the half-dead princess who’s here for my hand in marriage.”
Groaning loudly, Will sounded at his wits’ end.
Meira’s voice vibrated through her spins. “What are you waiting for?”
“Oh, now you don’t think I’ll skewer you?” Will scoffed.
“You told me to give you my trust, and now you have it,” she wailed. “Throw that blasted knife!”
Will only nodded and tilted his head, listening for the rotations. Then he breathed deeply, chest expanding. He tossed the knife with his exhale.
The wheel came to a harsh stop, wrenching Meira violently against her restraints, before jerking her back to the center. The last knife was an inch beside her right cheek, buried in her disheveled hair.
The blindfold slipped down Will’s face, and Meira’s restraints faded, dropping her from the wheel. She slumped on her side, making no attempt to get up, nauseated moans trailing out of her.
Agnë and I tried to rush to her, but the intangible ropes of light between us kept even me in my place.
Will kneeled by her side, trying to help her sit up. “Are you all right? I didn’t nick you anywhere?”
She moaned, her face almost green. “The world won’t stop spinning, I think I need to—” She lurched to the side and threw up.
“You’ve had your fun!” Will scowled up at the king as he tried to soothe Meira. “I’ve done what you asked, now tell me what I want to know.”
“Oh, you only earned one answer: the location of the Wild Hunt,” Theseus said smugly. “But that will mean nothing without your sister’s location, which might not be with them, not to mention her condition. Then there’s my decision regarding Princess Fairuza’s offer. Those still need to be earned. But—great job!”
Will looked ready to launch himself at him and stab him come what may, but the king only clapped, and the floor beneath us moved with the force of an earthquake.
“You’ve entertained me. And now, you’ll rid me of a problem. A big one.”
At Theseus’s booming announcement, the platform beneath us plummeted, unbalancing everyone except for me. Then the throne room blinked out.
Chapter Twenty
Next blink, we were somewhere blindingly bright, platform and thrones and all.
After my vision adjusted, I saw we were where the grassy palace gardens ended, and the paved, pearly-stone passages began, and stretched through the open palace gates into the circular city below. Horses were grazing in the distance, and among them were our steeds, including Amabel.
Before any of us could ask the king what we were doing here, the earth shook again, this time with what sounded like—advancing steps?
I didn’t need to wonder long as a massive man appeared through the gates.
Jon might be gigantic for a man, but this was a real giant.
Even I felt his thudding steps in my bones, until he came to a stop before the platform, towering above us, blocking out the sun. I could barely see his coarse features within his silhouette against it.
“Theseus,” the giant bellowed. “I’ve given you enough time to get your affairs in order. Now the time has come for you to give me my bride!”
My gaze swung to Princess Erytheia. Gone was all her regal composure, and she looked ready to bolt.
Theseus placed a placating hand on hers, before he rose to his feet. “You’re right, Akropos. But you’ll have to partake in our tradition of wrestling the eldest male of the bride’s household first. If you win, you carry my sister up to your home in the mountains.”
Princess Erytheia quailed as Akropos advanced, eyeing her greedily. “Let’s do this, then. I will crush you.”
Theseus grinned mischievously up at him. “Unfortunately, with me being the king, that’s not an option. But I will nominate a proxy.” He pointed at Jon. “Him.”
Akropos the giant didn’t give any of us a chance to react, before he descended on Jon with a terrifying roar.
Jon hit the paved ground with a slam that made my own phantom ribs hurt.
Akropos stomped down his foot. A second before having his head squashed, Jon rolled out of the way, springing back up, hands held up in front of his face in a boxing parry. The giant swung at his head, but Jon ducked to the side before jumping to throw his own punch.
It landed on Akropos’s chin with enough of an impact to throw him off balance. Jon followed up with a barrage of punches to the giant’s gut, what I felt would have brought an oak down. They did make Akropos stumble back and crash to the stone-paved ground with an earth-shaking thud.
Jon charged his opponent, not giving him a chance to get up, plowing into his ribs with fists and feet. The giant crawled away, straining as he propped his hands on the grass, his blood vessels rising up against his skin, as thick as the roots of a small tree. Then he sprang back to his feet, catching Jon in a headlock.
We all cried out, each no doubt thinking he’d snap Jon’s neck. But Jon twisted the giant’s arm away, before jumping up to slam his forehead against Akropos’s nose. Bright red blood sprayed from his nostrils.
At Robin’s and Will’s raucous cheers, I looked at them, bewildered. “What are you cheering for? It’s not like he knocked him out.”
“Drawing first blood is a good sign,” Robin said excitedly. “It means whatever you’re fighting can be defeated.”
The giant reached for Jon’s throat again with a roar, but Jon only tore his hand away, and pulled his fingers apart violently. As Akropos bellowed in pain, I finally realized the struggle was, shockingly, not evenly matched. In Jon’s favor. Jon was the far better fighter, and he was a lot stronger than I’d given him credit for.
Jon soon had Akropos on all fours in a chokehold, and nothing the giant did budged his grip. The giant looked like he was about to pass out, strained again, and the veins in both his legs and arms popped out like earlier. Suddenly, he tore himself from Jon’s chokehold, and clamped his own hands around his throat. Jon gasped for breath, his attempts to escape the giant’s grip failing completely this time. I clearly knew nothing about fighting, and had severely miscalculated his chances.
“No!” Will yelled furiously. “How did he do that?”
“He’s cheating somehow!” Robin shouted, as angry and terrified for their friend.
“The only one cheating here is the king, when he pit Jon against something so large, he barely reaches his shoulder,” I hissed. “He put him in a fight he can’t win!”
“Jon was winning,” Robin growled. “Size doesn’t win fights, maneuvers do. And Jon had found out the giant’s weaknesses, was taking full advantage of them, until just moments ago.”
As Jon’s legs started buckling underneath him, Agnë shrieked his name and started running to him at the same moment his friends did.
“No!” Princess Erytheia shouted, shaking as she watched the uneven struggle with unblinking eyes. “This is my life they’re fighting over. If any of you interfere, it will be considered cheating, and Akropos wins by default! He takes me to his mountains, and both of your quests fail.”
As the others stopped, besides themselves with rage and futility, I noticed those veins spreading across the giant’s legs again, and a desperate idea blossomed in my mind.
“So, cheating ends the fight in the opponent’s favor?” I asked Erytheia.
“Yes,” Erytheia said, looking as terrified as all of us.
Jon finally managed to tear away from the giant, spitting blood, panting, face pale. Then he hurtled back at Akropos, slamming against him with a force that should have at least made him stumble, like it had earlier. Akropos didn’t budge this time.
I made the same observation, and it solidified the idea in my mind.
Robin had been right. He was cheating. And I knew how.
“Robin!” He tore his eyes off the fight at my shout. “If this Court is Orestia’s cognate, and this giant is native to this land, he is different from the giants Jon belongs to in the Northlands.”
“What does that matter?”
He turned away to the fight, eyes feverish with rage and helplessness, and I floated around him, forcing him to look at me. “It matters because the giants in the Old Tales of Campania and Orestia are not a large race of humanoids like the Northlander giants. In all their stories, they are born from the soil of the mountains fully-formed—and they get their strength directly from it.”
Robin’s eyes rounded as he got my meaning, his face morphing from confused to outraged. “I knew it! I knew he was cheating!”
I nodded. “Every time Jon bested him, he sucked so much power from the earth, his veins bulged with it. But from what I noticed, he has to be directly touching the soil—the grass, not the paved ground—with his hands or feet!”
The appreciative smile he gave me made a warm feeling spread up from my gut to buzz around my heart, before he suddenly said, “Yell at me.”
“Huh? Why?”
“Because if we yell your discoveries to Jon, that would be interference, and therefore cheating according to those weird fey rules, and Akropos wins. But if we yell them in a fake debate…”
“…Jon overhears us, and finds out how he can win,” I finished for him, suddenly excited, though I found this strategy familiar.
Before I could think where I’d heard something like it before, he gave me a nod, and started shouting, “I told you size doesn’t win fights!”
I was taken aback by his loudness, but instantly caught on, yelling back even more loudly, using my opera training, what I’d recently denounced as pointless. “And you told me Jon is a giant! Doesn’t look like a giant to me now!”
Wincing at my volume, but giving me a quick, approving grin, Robin roared back, projecting his voice like I did, “I said he is half-giant! And there are many kinds of giants, Fairuza!”
Hearing him say my name again sent a surge of emotion rushing through me, energizing me into being the loudest I’d ever been. “That’s what I mean! You don’t just say ‘giant’! You have to be specific! Human giants like your friend here, are nothing like the earth-giants that live in environments like this one—because those derive their power only from the soil, you halfwit!”
Satisfaction fizzed through me when I tossed that specific insult at him. From the quirk of his eyebrow and lips, I could see he remembered when he’d called me that, and appreciated my retaliation.
Our screaming match had clearly reached Jon’s ears, and he’d figured out what we were trying to tell him. He abruptly ceased his efforts to wrestle with Akropos, and went for his middle.
With bulging muscles and a roaring heave, Jon hoisted the giant’s feet off the grass—and the effect was instantaneous.
Akropos’s struggle weakened fast, until all he could do was attempt to unbalance Jon with his dead weight, a desperate attempt to land back on his feet. Jon only bent backwards, raising him higher, putting more distance between the giant and his source of power.
When Akropos had grown almost limp, Jon tightened his arms with a triumphant roar, and the sound of cracking ribs made us all flinch.
Theseus, who’d been watching silently all the time, rose, and with a powerful spin, Jon tossed Akropos onto the paved ground at his feet.
Jon doubled over, panting. “If magic boosts are allowed in your fights, you should have given me an enchanted armor or something.”
“They’re not,” Theseus said, his smile so wide it threatened to split his face as he looked maliciously at the giant crumpled at his feet. “Not only were you cheating, Akropos, but you intended to fight me using your earth magic. Do you know what the price for deceiving a king is?”
Akropos rose to his knees, cradling his injured side, seeming more disoriented than angry by his defeat. “You never said I had to play fair, just to fight for Erytheia’s hand.”
“And you lost.” Erytheia beamed at him spitefully. “And for cheating, we waive any payment you wanted for the gold you brought down from the mountains, including my hand in marriage. That means you get to leave empty-handed, and never come back.”
The giant slammed his fists on the ground, grinding his teeth. “We had a deal!”
“And you failed to meet the requirement by losing this fight.” Erytheia made a dismissive gesture, nose in the air. “What could I need with a giant who needs magic to win a fight, and still lost to a mere man from the Folkshore? That dishonor alone would make a courtier like Merope reject you, let alone the Princess of Summer.”
Theseus sat down again, leaning back lazily in his throne, flicking Akropos a shooing gesture. “Off with you now.”
Agnë’s fairy face twisted in a furious frown I’d never seen before as she rotated glowing hands around a pale blue light. It solidified into an ice ball as large as her head, and she scurried after the giant and tossed it at his. The impact toppled him all the way down to the city below like a boulder, making us all burst into a range of mirth, with the royal duo laughing the hardest.
“That was surprisingly petty of you,” Meira slurred, clearly still dizzy, and holding onto Will for balance, who supported her with an arm around her waist. I was so used to her being below my height that the sight of her as tall as Will still didn’t feel like reality.
“It was,” I agreed. “I didn’t know you had it in you to be mean, Agnë.”
“Only to those who deserve it.” Agnë sniffed, creating another ice ball and handing it to Jon. “Put this on your nose, it’ll help.”
“Thank you.” Jon kneeled on the ground as if unable to stand anymore, pressing the ice to his face. From this position, he looked up into Agnë’s eyes, and even his pain didn’t affect the gentleness he always regarded her with.
Theseus clapped, regaining our attention. “You’re a more capable group than I thought, and I thank you for ridding us of that humongous pest.”
“Thank us by telling us the information we came for!” Will sniped impatiently.
Theseus shrugged. “I could, if you want me to ignore the princess’s request.”
I couldn’t help the quiver of desperation as I exclaimed, “Why?”
“Because I would answer your requests after you’ve performed the three tasks for me. If I answer any now, I’ll forgo yours.”
“No, no!” Meira said urgently, even as Will groaned in the background. “We don’t want that.”
“If so, we come to the task that would benefit me.” Theseus suddenly pointed at me. “It’s your turn to prove yourself.”