“Everybody stay inside.” He glanced in Rosalind’s direction, trying to catch her eye. “I’m going to slay that skeleton.”
“You can’t,” I blurted. This had to be Enbarr. He had probably noticed Drayce missing and decided to break out from the palace stables in search for his master. “This capall belongs to my mate. I’m going to speak to him.”
“At least let Rosalind and me accompany you,” said Aengus.
“Alright.” I turned on my heel, stepped into the narrow hallway, and opened the carriage’s external door.
The screeches and grunts and snorts of pigs filled my ears, and the scent of mud and manure filled my nostrils. Most of the pigs in the muddy enclosures had crammed themselves into their sties, leaving a few stragglers trying to squeeze through the doors.
Holding onto the edges of my leather skirt, I descended from the carriage and stepped into the soft, cool mud and sank to my ankles. Each step was a struggle against the sludge that sucked me deeper as I progressed toward Enbarr. Rosalind and Aengus’ slopping footsteps resounded from behind, their movements some reassurance.
The front of the carriage opened, and soldiers in silver armor stepped out, brandishing flaming swords.
Enbarr lengthened his neck bones and parted his sharp teeth in a low growl that made my spine ripple with fear.
“Stand back.” I raised my hands and hurried through the mud. “He’s a friend.”
Enbarr lowered his head in greeting. I reached for his snout, not knowing if I would touch yielding flesh or bone, but before I could stroke the skeletal capall, he butted me hard on my shoulder.
I stumbled back a few steps, slipped, and fell backward into the mud. The cool substance sank into my hair and chilled my exposed skin.
“Your Majesty!” Rosalind rushed to my side and raised me to my feet.
Aengus unsheathed his sword and charged at Enbarr, who reared up and struck out with his front legs. The metal against his blade clanged against the capall’s bones, and my panicked heart jumped to the back of my throat.
I cried out. “Back away.”
“It attacked you.” Aengus stepped back, holding his sword like a shield against Enbarr, who continued to stand on his hind legs.
“He’s upset.” I accepted a handkerchief from Rosalind and wiped the back of my neck. “I deserved it.”
Aengus turned around to shoot me an incredulous stare, but Enbarr pivoted to the side, lashed out with his right wing, and knocked Aengus to the ground.
“Enbarr.” I held out both hands.
The horse lowered himself onto four legs and kicked Aengus aside. Smoke flared from his nasal bone, and his coal-red eyes blazed with fury.
“You’re angry with me,” I said.
He tossed his head.
“Because I hurt Drayce before, and you think I’ve done something to him again.”
Enbarr’s answering neigh was more like a war cry, a baying for my blood. He stalked toward me, the smoke clinging to his spine blowing like a mane in the wind.
“Someone called the Fear Dorcha got an oak sprite to curse Drayce to sleep.” I reached out a trembling hand and placed it on a warm muzzle and could almost feel the flesh and horsehair beneath my fingertips. “He’s resting on a nice bed, and we’re taking him to see someone who might be able to break his curse.”
Enbarr tilted his head to the side in an almost human gesture. I wasn't in tune with the capall like Drayce, so I couldn’t tell if he was asking if I was telling the truth or asking why I didn’t take him.
I licked my dry lips. “This is my fault. I should have gone down to your stable to tell you what had happened, but I was in a hurry to save Drayce and couldn’t think of anything else.”
He snorted, the sound bordering on disbelief.
My muscles twitched with irritation, and I thought about the first time I had seen Enbarr when he had been furious with Drayce for not bringing him to the human realm to capture Father and me. The capall had thrown a tantrum then, but at the time, I thought he was a skeleton Drayce reanimated to annoy Captain Stipe.
“Your Majesty,” Rosalind whispered from behind.
Enbarr’s head turned, and the burning coals of his eyes flashed at what he probably thought was an intruder.
“One moment.” I cupped his face in my hands and forced his head back toward mine. “We need to move Drayce into the Palace of Bóinne. Can you see through that darkness?”
He nodded.
“Will you take us?”
He nodded again.
“Thank you.” I squeezed my eyes shut and rested my head against his warm muzzle. It was probably my imagination, but gentle whiskers tickled my cheeks. His warm breath washed over me, and my muscles loosened with relief.
Enbarr drew back from our embrace with a snort I interpreted as a demand to hurry up and save Drayce. I turned to Aengus, who stared at me as though I’d just had a conversation with a specter.
“Can you saddle a horse?” I asked him.
He narrowed his eyes. “You don’t expect that—”
Enbarr lunged at him with a blood-chilling screech that sent the guards racing toward the carriage door.
“Alright!” Aengus backed away. “We’ll untether the capall and get the skeleton to carry us through the darkness.”
Chapter 11
I returned to the carriage, my spirits soaring at the prospect of Enbarr taking us to the Palace of Bóinne. Rosalind stepped after me and guided me to the royal suite, where Drayce continued to lie within the white sheets. My heart ached, my eyes grew heavy, and every fiber of my being pulled at me to fall asleep at his side.
Apprehension tingled across my nerve endings as though they were crawling with gnats. Nessa was right. The curse became stronger the closer we got to the Summer Court. Without meaning to, I edged across the suite’s dining area, but the trickling of water caught my attention before I reached the bed.
“What’s that?” I turned around.
Rosalind stood at a cupboard that contained a basin and a spigot that poured warm, rose-scented water. “You’re covered in mud.” She turned off the stream, extracted the bowl with both hands, and placed it on the small dining table. “Let’s get rid of it before you meet the Dagda.”
I lowered myself into the dining chair and stared at the pink and white rose petals floating on the water’s surface. “Did you accompany Queen Pressyne on her journeys?”
She dipped the edge of a washcloth in the bowl, and dabbed at the side of my neck. “We were seldom parted, Your Majesty. I was always at your grandmother’s side until Princess Melusina returned from the mist.”
“What happened?”
Rosalind rinsed the mud off the washcloth and sighed. “Her Majesty wasn’t the same after we banished the Fomorians.”
My brows drew together. “But faeries were their slaves.”
“Her Majesty served as King Balor’s concubine and bore him a daughter.” Rosalind lifted my hair and wiped the mud off the back of my neck. “A thousand people, including Queen Pressyne, volunteered to sacrifice their lives to send the Fomorians to the realm of the gods, but the enchantment took the infant princess instead of her.”
I glanced at the other side of the suite, my heart pining for Drayce. This was the story he told Queen Melusina when he disguised himself as the gancanagh.
The carriage lurched forward, sending the water bowl skidding across the table. Rosalind caught it and dipped the washcloth back into the warm water. “When Princess Melusina returned from the mist, Queen Pressyne wouldn’t listen to Osmos’s warnings that her intentions were malevolent. Even when Her Majesty saw the monster her daughter had become, she still ignored her wickedness.”
“What do you mean?” I stared out of the window, my stomach tightening as the carriage moved from the sun-drenched field into the shadows.
Rosalind hesitated, her throat tightening. She tore her gaze away from the window and wrung out the cloth. “High faeries don’t feed on humans, but Prin
cess Melusina kept druids locked in her chamber.” Her lips tightened. “We all knew what she was doing to them. And when her offspring always disappeared and were never mourned or buried, it was obvious to anyone that she was more fomorian than fae.”
“The queen let her continue living?” I asked.
“Her Majesty was blinded to her daughter’s evil,” Rosalind said, her voice mournful.
The carriage sloped toward the huge wall of black, and a creeping sense of dread overtook my senses. My first and last time of visiting the Summer Court had been with Drayce, and I had slept through most of it in his arms.
I turned my gaze to the end of the room, and my spirits plummeted with a mix of longing and drowsiness. Five minutes. If I lay at his side for five minutes, I wouldn’t feel quite so bad.
“Rosalind,” I whispered.
“Yes, Your Majesty?” she replied.
“The curse is calling at me to sleep.”
She dropped the washcloth into the water, reached for the seeing-mirror on the table, and flinched, snatching back her hand. “Ouch.”
I raised my head and stared into her panicked, violet eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s hot.” She pulled the washcloth out of the water and placed it on top of the glass. It sizzled with the contact, making her rear back. “Nessa needs to see this.”
Fatigue pulled at my senses. I gave her an absent nod and dipped my head. When I opened my eyes, I stood within knee-high moss, staring at four splintered trunks surrounding a collapsed bed of moss consumed by brambles. Drayce no longer stood by the window, and the door lay broken in two pieces.
I dashed out of the room into a large chamber where a tall, dark figure sat on a golden throne whose back stretched seven feet high. A doe with bright, yellow ears slumbered at his feet with her head on his lap, and the figure’s long, spindly fingers stroked her head.
“Who are you?” I asked, already suspecting the answer.
As he stood, the doe slid off his lap, and opened eyes that shone like cut emeralds. The figure’s limbs stretched inhumanly long like the stilted legs of a crane. His arm unfurled toward me like lengthening shadows.
“Neara Cruachan,” he rasped in a voice unused to speech. “Welcome—”
“Your Majesty!” Rosalind shook me awake. The bright lantern light reflected against her raven black hair, alarm flashing across her pale features. “You must stay awake.”
“How long?” I slurred.
“Three hours,” she replied. “Nessa cracked the seeing-glass the moment she stepped in to check on you, but it’s taken us this long to pull you out of sleep.”
The carriage rocked from side to side, and a chorus of gut-wrenching howls from outside resounded through my eardrums and made the walls tremble.
“He knows I’m here,” I whispered.
Rosalind nodded. “A pack of wild dogs have chased us around in circles for the past two hours.”
Pitch darkness filled the window like a writhing mass of serpents fighting to slip through the barest crack. I clenched my fists and pulled myself to my feet. “I thought the palace was only a few miles away. What’s taking so long?”
“The Dagda won’t let us through the wards until we circle the grounds seven times widdershins and seven times sunward.” Rosalind lowered her lashes. “We would have escaped the dogs if it hadn’t been for his stubbornness.”
Splaying my arms out for balance, I staggered past the sofa to the back of the suite. Drayce lay on the bed, unmoving and oblivious, his blue-black hair swaying against the white pillow with the rocking of the carriage. I stopped at the foot of the bed and braced an arm on the wall, my heart aching for the latest development in the dreamscape.
“Where did you go?” I whispered.
He didn’t respond, didn’t even twitch an eye. A heavy weight knocked into the carriage’s right with a tremendous thud, and the vehicle banked hard to the left, slamming me against the wall.
“Your Majesty?” Rosalind screamed.
I fell onto the ground and pulled myself up, but the carriage lurched as though descending from a great height. Behind me, Rosalind slid backward and landed against the door. I stumbled, only breaking my fall by grabbing onto the sofa with both hands. I peered out of the window, which showed us hurtling toward a sphere of light.
“We’re about to land.” I crawled on my hands and knees, pulled Rosalind toward the sofa, and hoped Nessa and Aengus were safe in the other room.
Her wings wrapped around my body encasing me like a cocoon, and we fell onto the sofa’s cushions. I raised my head to see if the collision had knocked Drayce from his bed, but he still lay underneath the white sheet as though it had been enchanted to confine him to the mattress.
I clenched my teeth against the sensation of sharpened quills stabbing against my skin. “What’s that?”
“Powerful wards,” Rosalind said through gasping breaths. “I expect they’re testing our intentions.”
The lanterns flickered, eventually winking out and encasing us in a thick darkness that wrapped around my neck like a noose. It seeped through the tiny gap between our compressed bodies, slipped between my arms, my legs, my lips, between the gaps in my fingers and toes. I couldn’t scream, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything but lie enveloped in my companion’s arms and wings while the darkness consumed the very air from my lungs.
Just when I thought I would suffocate, bright light streamed in through the window and flooded the carriage. The plummeting stopped, and Rosalind loosened her grip.
She rolled off the sofa and landed on the carriage’s floor, inhaling ragged breaths that matched my own frantic panting.
The carriage landed with a gentle thud, and my muscles finally relaxed.
“He did it. Enbarr got us through the darkness.” I pulled myself off the sofa and offered Rosalind a hand.
A knock resounded on the door.
“Come in,” I said.
Aengus stood in the doorway, his golden hair glowing as radiant as the sun. Sometime between his confrontation with Enbarr and now, he had changed into a fresh tunic and sandals with a red cloak. “My father’s personal guard has surrounded the carriage. They wish to know what you want.”
“Isn’t it enough that his son has returned to him after a thousand years?” I muttered.
“The Dagda has many children,” Aengus replied, his voice stiff.
I rose to my feet and smoothed down my leather armor, trying not to think about Father and all the children he’d had with Queen Melusina. He loved me, I was sure of that, but he never once mentioned his other daughters.
My mind drifted back to the Keeper of all Things’ lair, the rows upon rows of desiccated corpses that monster kept as brides. They had all been my sisters, at least from the same mother, and had all been drained of their body fat until they perished. Did Father mourn those girls, or did he shove them to the back of his mind in order to survive?
After kissing Drayce goodbye, I followed Aengus and Rosalind out into a vast orchard of seven-foot-tall trees arranged in straight lines, each holding apples the size of muskmelons. Some grew golden fruit, others silver, and the occasional tree held apples that glinted like drops of blood.
Nessa stood at the carriage doors and shoved Cliach down the steps. “His Majesty will be safe within these wards, but I’ll stay with him in case he stirs.”
Twelve young males stepped out from behind the trees, holding gold-tipped spears. They all had the same blond curls as Aengus and wore white tunics with cloaks as green as the leaves on the apple trees.
“Are they your siblings?” I whispered.
He grunted. “If they’re guarding the orchard, then they are children of lesser importance.”
“Who goes there?” asked the tallest, a lithe male whose curls extended down to his chest. He slammed the butt of his spear into the lawn and stared at us through narrowed eyes. “I am Ullstean, master of this orchard.”
“Aengus, son of Boann and the Dagda.” He
swept his arm to the left. “My companion is Neara, Queen of the Faeries, who requests a boon.”
“Our father never mentioned having a son of your name,” said Ullstean.
“He probably doesn’t remember your name, either.” Aengus folded his arms across his chest. “Let me through. The queen of our lands wishes to see him.”
Ullstean mirrored Aengus’ posture and stuck his nose in the air. “Monarchs come and go, but the Dagda is eternal. You shall not pass until you solve my riddle.”
I clenched my hands into fists. We had traveled across the country, been detected by the Fear Dorcha, and been chased and attacked by dogs. I knew exactly how these riddles ended—with bloodshed even if the person answered correctly.
I stepped forward and placed my hands on my hips. “When I eventually meet your father, who should I say threatened the Queen of the Faeries and her mate, the King of the Otherworld?”
The other males retreated behind the apple trees, leaving Ullstean standing alone in the middle of the path. His rosy cheeks turned pale, and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “This way, Your Majesty.”
“My mate is in the royal coach,” I said. “Allow me to bring him.”
He raised his hand. “The Dagda only allowed Her Majesty entrance into the palace. No others.”
Aengus stepped forward. “I will take Her Majesty to meet our father.”
“As you wish.” Ullstean inclined his head and stepped back behind a tree trunk.
I turned to Rosalind, who promised to keep Drayce safe. Cliach’s shoulders rose to his ears and he rubbed the golden body of his harp, looking as though he regretted having left his loch.
Aengus took my arm and guided me through a wide pathway between two rows of apple trees whose fruit glinted gold in the magical light. I turned my head to a white sky devoid of clouds or sun or the darkness of the curse.
“No matter what you see or hear, do not look to your left or right,” he said in a low voice. “Do not turn around, do not pause, do not let your steps falter.”
Mate of the Fae King (Dark Faerie Court Book 2) Page 10
