“Those infants will suffer,” he screamed.
Guilt twanged a melancholy note in my heart, which resounded through my chest. If destroying those idols would condemn the children, then I would just have to wake Drayce to help me fix my mistake. Crom Cruach continued his screams and shouts and shrieks for me to stop, which only hardened my resolve.
As much as I wished for Drayce to tell me what to do about the poor souls, I couldn’t keep them in this wretched state, waiting for me to break his curse. The wound on my left hand had healed with the blood crusting over the palm. I cut it open again and bathed the sword tip in blood.
“Please,” Crom Cruach cried. “I’ll give you the information you want for free.”
“I’m listening.”
His golden fingers slipped through the bars of his cage. “Come closer.”
I plunged the sword into the fallen idol, and a white vapor streamed out through the slit. It curled around my arm before flying to the corner of the room.
“No.” His voice broke. “I’ll tell you everything you want.”
Ignoring him, I continued breaking the statues. Each little soul touched my hand or cheek before joining the first one in the corner. I don’t know why he kept those children trapped within stone—I didn’t care. As soon as they were all free, I would turn the blade on him.
“Find Cliach the Harpist,” Crom Cruach said between wracking sobs. “He will awaken King Salamander.”
“You mean King Drayce?” I plunged the sword into the sixth statue and then the seventh and the eighth.
“King Drayce,” he said. “If Cliach plays the Harp of Dagda to King Drayce, it will awaken him.”
I paused and stared into his expressionless, gold face. “How do I find Cliach?”
“Ask any of the Free Folk.” Crom Cruach jammed his face against the marble bars. “He often plays in taverns for coins. Now, please, have mercy and stop. You’ve destroyed nearly all my worshippers.”
“If they revere you so much, why aren’t they crowding around you?” I tapped the tip of my sword over the ninth. “And what happens when I destroy your last?”
Crom Cruach didn’t answer. Maybe he knew I would break the final pair. Maybe he knew he’d already lost.
I inhaled a deep breath and plunged my sword into the ninth idol. The spirit inside sped out through the fissure, circled my shoulder, and flew toward the mass waiting in the corner.
“There’s one thing I didn’t tell you,” Crom Cruach snarled. “Without that information, King Salamander will sleep for a thousand years. That’s plenty of time for his body to disintegrate into dust.”
I held the sword over the tenth.
“Well?” he shouted loud enough to shake the room. “Release me and save him.”
A few of the guards in the room faltered but soon recovered as Crom Cruach continued a loud tirade of threats and insults. Keeping my eyes on the golden statue, I wrapped both hands around the Sword of Tethra’s hilt and plunged the tip through the final idol.
“Damn you,” he screeched.
His features drooped, and liquid gold seeped through the bars of his marble cage. The guards stepped back, avoiding the metal spreading across the throne room’s floor.
Rosalind placed a hand on my shoulder and guided me to the stairs as Crom Cruach continued to melt at a rapid pace. His liquid form flared with a light so blinding that Rosalind wrapped an arm around my back and launched us into the air.
“Have you ever seen a creature like that?” I asked.
“Never,” she replied.
“I think he’s a spiorad,” said Aengus from the stairs. “Some Fomorians created them to control the minds of their human cattle.”
“What?” I stared down at the blond male, not quite believing I hadn’t read about them in the Book of Brigid.
Aengus glanced at the gold, which now stretched the furthest corners of the room but didn’t reach the guards’ boots. One of the guards blasted it with lightning, making it recoil, then another spread out his palms and shot out streams of water. As the guards attacked the gold and drove it to the middle of the room, Aengus turned back to me.
“Spiorads don’t exist until somebody believes in them,” he replied. “They require child sacrifices to give themselves form. When they reach ten, they seek stronger souls to increase their power.”
“Why didn’t you speak earlier?” Rosalind snarled.
I gave my new companion a nod of approval, even though I had decided much earlier that Crom Cruach wouldn’t leave the castle alive.
Aengus rubbed the back of his neck and grimaced. “I’ve spent the past thousand years running for my life and dying horrifically, only to rise and face the same. Forgive me for not remembering everything in an instant.”
Rosalind hissed. “You’re not the only person who’s been confined for a millennium.”
My head throbbed, and I gazed down at Aengus, who dipped his head and scowled. They were both right, but this situation wasn’t anyone’s fault and from the way the guards were driving Crom Cruach back to the center of the room, it looked like the gold would soon be under control.
“The souls I released are acting as his tether.” I willed away the cage of marble and said in a louder voice.
“I want everyone to gather him up into several jars. We’ll keep him separated, so he doesn’t talk anyone else into sacrificing their children to him.”
“What about the souls?” Rosalind tilted her head toward the little wisps dancing around each other in the corner of the room.
I turned my gaze to the wall of windows on my right, which opened and let in a cool gust of air. The souls raced toward Rosalind and me, formed a little circle around our joined bodies, and then drifted out into the afternoon sky.
“Good bye,” I murmured as I commanded the palace to close the window. When I broke Drayce’s curse, I would ask him to check that they reached the Otherworld.
The sun had set before the guards found the last scrap of liquid gold and secured it in twelve crystal jars that filled the throne room with light. This separated version of Crom Cruach didn’t speak or try to communicate with me, and I hoped this would be enough to keep him dormant for an eternity.
Osmos, Aengus, and Gerald took four jars each and hid them in three different locations around the palace. I retreated into the queen’s bedroom, which now glowed with the light of the moon. The gold wall moldings glinted silver, and the thick, white curtains around the four-poster bed beckoned at me to approach.
Destry rose from a side chair and dipped into a curtsey. “His Majesty hasn’t stirred.”
“Thank you.” I reached behind my back and undid the fastenings of my sword belt and set it on a side-table within easy reach of the bed.
Destry helped me out of the leather bodice and skirt, and handed me a long nightgown made of the finest spider silk. Afterward, Rosalind and Destry retired into a bedroom that led off from mine.
I parted the bed’s heavy curtains to find Drayce lying in the middle of the bed. He hadn’t moved from where we had left him earlier in the day and would have looked dead if it wasn’t for the wisps of warm air escaping his nostrils.
With the seeing-glass in one hand, I lowered myself onto the mattress next to him, positioned my head on his shoulder, and stared into its reflection. This time, the eyes that stared back at me held a silver malevolence, set within a face as black as midnight.
I flinched and set the glass aside on the vast mattress. So far, I’d learned that someone called Fear Dorcha, who was also an ally of Queen Melusina, had wanted me cursed to sleep. I could only guess that the former queen needed me immobile while she took over my body in her weakened state.
Nessa the cook also told me that only his mate could break Drayce’s curse, and she had given me a glass that had allowed me to reach who I thought was Drayce. But who did those silver eyes belong to, and how did I know the mirror wasn’t a means to be captured by Fear Dorcha?
A long breath heaved
from my lungs. I couldn’t afford to become ensnared when Drayce was cursed to sleep and the only person able to wake him was me. I covered us both in a blanket, placed a hand on his chest, and drifted to sleep.
Soft kisses on my eyelids pulled me out of my slumber, and I stared into Drayce’s smiling, green eyes. Moonlight streamed in through curtains of silvery lichen that twisted and turned in the balmy breeze. I drew back and pushed myself up to find us lying within the bed of moss.
“This is a dream,” I said to Drayce.
He slid his warm hand down my bare arm. “Come back to me, Neara.”
I slid away and paused at the far end of the mattress. “Who are you?”
Drayce stared at me as though I had spoken in the language of the ancient druids. He was naked, his smooth skin gleaming in the light of the moon, and the muscles of his strong body rippled as he edged toward me.
I launched myself off the bed, slid through the curtains of lichen that caressed my bare skin, and wrapped my arms around my body. At my back was the open window. I turned to look at our surroundings, but we were too far up for me to recognize the land below.
We could have been in another part of the palace, somewhere else within the realm, or in the Otherworld. The only thing that made sense was the half-moon.
The trees that made up the four posters of the bed appeared larger. I didn’t remember their canopy stretching over the ceiling the last time I visited this room or the carpet of moss under my feet. Something about this room was intensifying, becoming more like a forest. Perhaps the oak sprite had experienced something similar. I made a note to ask her if I ever got out of this dream.
“What’s the matter?” Drayce didn’t rise from where he lay.
“How did I get here?”
He glanced from left to right. “This is our room. Neara, come back.”
I clenched my teeth. Was this even Drayce? Why did he only care about keeping me in this bed?
“Why don’t you come here?” I asked.
Drayce, if that was really him, furrowed his brow. “I don’t understand.”
“You can’t leave the bed, can you?”
His frown deepened. “Why would I need to?”
My Drayce was never so evasive. I shook my head. Of course he was. My Drayce had worked behind the scenes with Father to train me into taking the throne of the Queen of the Faeries. Through a series of adventures where I thought I was fighting to save Father, I thought I had been betrayed by the man I loved, but he had maneuvered me into coming into my power and breaking his curse.
I still trusted the Drayce who Osmos had laid on the queen’s bed, the Drayce who wouldn’t awaken. But the Drayce staring at me with imploring eyes and wanted me to return to this accursed bed of moss? I wasn’t quite so sure about him.
My gaze wandered over his broad shoulders, where dense, green clumps of vegetation crept over his skin, threatening to take over his body as they had earlier. What if the moss was affecting his mind and rooting him to this bed?
I took a step toward him. “Turn around, and I’ll join you.”
His face broke out into a heartbreakingly warm smile of dazzling teeth, and with the kind of happiness only shared with those a person trusted. I swallowed back a lump in my throat. What I was about to do might hurt, but it might bring him back to me.
I parted the curtains, knelt onto the mattress, and swept my palms over the carpet of lush, green moss that covered Drayce’s back. It yielded under my touch the way a cat’s fur did when stroked. I dug my nails into the moss and pulled.
Drayce’s muscles stiffened. “Neara, what are you—”
“This moss isn't part of you. Please, let me take it off.”
“But, it’s my skin,” he said.
“Like those scales?” I asked.
Drayce tilted his head. “What are you talking about?”
My hands dropped to my sides. This male was either an impostor taking on Drayce’s form to trap me here, or the moss would consume Drayce until he completely disappeared. Either way, I had to tear that moss off his back, even if it hurt.
Chapter 7
I knelt behind Drayce, threaded my fingers into the growth on his back, and gripped hard. Its cool and damp and velvety strands resisted the slightest tug, and I pulled harder. The leaves rustled overhead in their branches, perhaps in a warning for me to stop interfering with the enchantment. It only hardened my determination
“Neara?” Drayce’s voice faltered. “What are you doing?”
“Do you remember how we met?” I asked.
He shook his head, and moonlight shone through the bed curtains, coloring the ends of his hair a deep, forest green.
“You were under a similar curse and trapped in a body of scales.”
I wrapped an arm around his front, rested a hand on his smooth chest, and stroked gentle trails with my fingertips. “Do you trust me?”
His tense muscles relaxed. “Of course, Neara.”
“Let me do this.” I whispered into his ear, still holding onto the moss. “Let me set you free.”
He paused for several moments, seeming to consider my words. Whatever kept him rooted to this bed likely wanted him to convince me to stay, to fall asleep, and to become ensnared. I continued running my fingertips up and down his chest, grazing the tight muscles of his abdomen.
Drayce tilted his head back, exposing his throat, and I pressed kisses along the column of his neck. I let my fingers wander down well-developed abdominal muscles, still smooth as the skin of his chest.
Each circle I rubbed against his tight abdomen brought me closer to his arousal. His chest rose and fell in time with his rapid breaths, and he canted his hips toward my hand. I let my little finger graze the tip of his manhood, eliciting a pleasured hiss.
“Will you allow me to tear the moss from your back?” I murmured into his pointed ear.
“Lie with me first.” He twisted, wrapped a strong arm around my middle, and laid me on the bed. The heat of his arousal seared into my thigh, contrasting with the cool and spongy moss beneath our naked bodies.
The way he caressed me with his lips and teeth and tongue, the way his large hands threaded through mine, and the way he rubbed his hardness against my core was Drayce. My mischievous, teasing Drayce, who had awakened something within me I couldn’t resist, not even when he was covered in scales.
His lips parted from mine and kissed a line of fiery kisses down my neck that sent trails of fire rushing to where I needed him most. I bit down hard on my lip and focussed on my task, but it was near impossible with Drayce devouring me as though I was his only source of sustenance.
I pulled at the moss on his back, and a tearing sound reached my ears. Drayce broke away from my neck and arched, letting out a cry of pain that shattered my heart.
“Neara, don’t,” he said through clenched teeth.
This was just like the time I threw his scales onto the flames. Worse, because that had been an act in the heat of hatred and anger and vengeance. Once his scales had caught fire, it had been too late to stop. Now, I had to continue tearing handful after handful of what felt like his skin.
With my left hand, I reached between us and wrapped my fingers around his length. Drayce exhaled a long, shuddering breath and let his eyes flutter shut.
“Endure it.” I caressed his hardness with long, even strokes. “Once you’re free, I’ll give you anything you want.”
The muscles in his beautiful face tightened, and he offered me a sharp nod. I pulled another handful of moss from his back, making him shudder with a mix of pleasure and pain.
For what felt like hours, I held him on a precipice, promising more if he would just withstand this torture. Molten heat seared between my legs as he shivered and pulsed under my touch.
Drayce moaned and sobbed and cried for release—whether it was from the pain of what I was doing to his back or the hold I had over his pleasure, I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t think about it until I had cleared the last trace of that
enchantment.
By the time I tore the last clump of moss from his skin, he slumped on top of me, exhausted and spent.
Desire rippled across my nerve endings, and every fiber of my being yearned for his touch. Hot, heavy breaths heaved from my lungs, and a deep hunger spasmed through my core.
Struggling against the fog of need, I pulled myself out from under his weight and knelt on the mattress. The clumps of moss I had extracted had already mingled with the bed and carpet, but Drayce was now free. The skin of his back was red and raw and spotted with blood, much as how I would expect from wrenching away a person’s hair from their head.
He stared up at me with pain-filled eyes, the trust in them faltering. “Will you stay with me, now?”
“One more thing,” I said, my chest tightening with guilt.
Drayce’s gaze dropped to the moss. “But you said—”
“Step off the bed.” I glanced over my shoulder to the room.
The tree’s canopy now covered the entire ceiling, with their tips forming a cornice of leaves that encroached the white walls. Silver berries dangled from the trees’ thick branches, each orb matching the light and shadows of the moon.
I scrambled off the bed and stepped out from the curtains. “Drayce.” I kept my voice sharp. “Come here.”
He stared through the long strands of lichen, his eyes shining with the pain of my betrayal. “Why?”
“Please.” It was a struggle to sound sincere. I had no intention of ever joining him on that bed, nor would I allow him to return. “Come to me, and we’ll fulfill our bargain.”
Drayce dipped his head, exhaled a long breath, and moved to the edge of the bed. My heart leaped toward him, but I forced myself to stay by the wall. If I moved within grabbing distance and let him keep me within those four trunks, the next time I found him in this room, the moss would consume him.
He parted the curtains and poked his head out, glancing from side to side as though what was outside the bed was new territory. I wondered if time moved differently within this dream compared to the outside world, and if that explained why the moss had taken root into his skin.
Mate of the Fae King (Dark Faerie Court Book 2) Page 6
