The Queen's Consorts Box Set: A Reverse Harem Fantasy Trilogy

by Elena Lawson

  I blinked away the memory, letting the fire and steam within me burn out the ache in my gut. Finn and I would never voice it out loud, but we’d both waited for this moment since the day the news came about our parents. It was why we’d conscripted. To take revenge on the race of man that took them from us.

  And now was our chance. So then why was it so bittersweet? Was it because it wasn’t our lives they were after? They worked in service of the Mad King and their goal was to take the throne of night, probably to live in our territory. But in order to do that—they would have to kill Liana.

  It wasn’t about revenge anymore, not really.

  It was about protecting what mattered most.

  Her eyes brimmed, and she turned back to Finn and I. “It reminds me of home,” she said in a whisper. And I knew she didn’t mean the palace. She meant her home on the isle among the seven sisters. In the twenty-two years she spent there, they’d become her family. I wondered if she missed them as fiercely as we missed ours.

  “You’ll go back there, someday,” I told her.

  It was a promise I intended to keep.

  “Stay here with me tonight?” she asked, and my lips split into a smile.

  Finn smiled, too. “I’ll go find some food and drink,” he offered, and turned to head back the way we’d come.

  “I’ll start the fire,” I said, kneeling near the small hearth where several dry logs sat in a basket, waiting to bring light and warmth to the desolate place.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Liana

  I’d drifted off, the black furs covering the stiff bed swallowing me into their soft warmth. Kade and Finn had pressed the other beds tight on either side of mine, laying next to me, though I didn’t think they slept.

  The alarm sounded just after dawn, and the blaring echo of the horn resounded in my bones. I shot out of bed, eyes wide and searching.

  No. Not yet…

  Kade was up in an instant, tugging his boots on. Finn hurried to buckle his sword and scabbard to his waist. I shook my head. It couldn’t be happening already. It should’ve taken another few days at the very least for the Mad King’s army to reach the borders of my court. We weren’t ready.

  I wasn’t ready.

  Panicked, I inched out of the bed, my chest heaving, and mind swirling, “What’s happening? Are they here? Have they come?”

  Kade snarled, tossing me my boots. “No,” he said, “The horn was only blown once. It means they’re getting close, and every able bodied Fae is to move to the front.”

  “Come on,” Finn said, holding out a hand for me once I’d tied the laces. I took his icy cold hand in my own and we flew from the warmth of the cabin, taking off from the ground. Finn swung me into his arms and we were at our tent in less than a minute.

  I jumped from his embrace and raced into the tent. Alaric jumped from his seat, sword drawn. When he saw it was just me, he scabbarded it again and threw a hand through his hair, “There you are,” he said with a sigh of relief. “Healer Loris is here. I told her you agreed to help. She’s waiting for you at the mill. They’re setting up the infirmary there.”

  I ground my teeth but nodded. “Have you seen Silas?”

  He nodded grimly, “They’ve been spotted just past the valley. They’ll be within reach of our arrows by sundown.”

  A tremor stumbled up my back—radiated down my arms and settled in the violent shaking of my hands. My heart fluttered in my chest and my stomach turned sour. The skewers of boar we’d eaten the night before threatening to come back up.

  “Any word from Edris?”

  “No,” Tiernan answered, slipping into the tent with Kade and Finn behind me. “Nothing.”

  So, this was it, then. I hadn’t truly dared to hope, but now it was clear. The Day Court wouldn’t help us.

  I blew out a breath. There was no use wallowing in it. We had work to do. Steeling myself, I clenched my hands into fists, “Then we have about eight hours to get that infirmary ready to take in our wounded. Let’s get moving.”

  We were silent while we worked, the constant sound of marching boots filling our ears. Loris thanked me for offering my aid.

  Shortly after we arrived at the mill, which had a long hall attached to it, the other healer arrived. But it wasn’t a woman like Alaric thought. The male had a fair complexion, light hazel eyes, and a placid disposition.

  He radiated calm. And in the face of what we’d soon see, that was no small accomplishment. His name was Eros, and he worked diligently and quietly, keeping mostly to himself.

  There was just one more thing that needed to be settled before I could take a free breath.

  They hadn’t said a word, but I could see it in their eyes and feel it exuding from them in ribbons of emotion. My guardians were anxious. It was obvious to anyone with two eyes and half a brain.

  Kade and Finn especially. They wanted to join the fight. I saw them looking out the small windows, watching the ebb and flow of the marching soldiers.

  They wouldn’t go without my permission. But could I deny them the chance at retribution? Could I deny my court their two best warriors in one of the largest battles ever seen on Meloran?

  I grew faint at the idea of letting them go. I pictured it. Saying goodbye, not knowing when or if they would return. My stomach twisted painfully. There was one other reason they would give for their need to join the fight. Me.

  Not only to protect me and my crown, but so I could see through their eyes the outcome of the battle. And give orders from the relative safety of the village.

  Kade looked out the window again, longing in his eyes, his chest heaving. His teeth grinding.

  I tossed the pile of cloth I was tearing into bandages onto the table, “That’s it!” I howled, my skin bristling, “Out. All of you.”

  Eros raised a brow at me, “Not you,” I said a little more roughly than I intended, “Them,” I clarified, pointing a finger at the four wide-eyed males helping with menial tasks like sweeping and boiling water and cleaning surgical knives.

  “But—” Alaric began.

  I jerked my chin toward the door, “Out,” I said again, more firmly, and he and the rest of them dropped what they were doing with exaggerated sighs and rolls of their eyes to stomp out into the cold.

  “What is it?” Alaric asked the moment we were outside.

  “Ask,” I said, leveling my gaze him, letting it flit to the others. “I know what you all want—so ask me.”

  I crossed my arms. Tried to quell the fire raging to life within my core.

  Kade stepped forward, swallowing, “We should be at the front.”

  “And I shouldn’t?” I snapped.

  “Liana, you can’t.”

  I shook my head, “Why? Because it isn’t safe? Because I could die? Well so could any of you!”

  “It’s not the same and you know it,” Finn said, a dangerous tone to his voice I’d never heard from him before. It wasn’t longing I saw in him. It was pain. And I knew the only way he’d be rid of it.

  Maybe he’s right… but I didn’t have to like it.

  “Go, then!” I yelled, “Go, if you want to go. I won’t stop you.”

  “Liana,” Alaric said tentatively, stepping in. Reaching out.

  I recoiled from his touch, “If anything happens to any of you…”

  “Tiernan will stay here with you,” Alaric said, the commanding tone of captain seeping back into his voice. My blond warrior stiffened, his lips pursing and fists clenching, but he said nothing.

  That was it, then? They would go. There were actually going to leave me.

  “We’ll come back,” Finn said, nodding to himself as though it was him who needed the convincing, “I promise.”

  “Don’t make me promises you can’t keep.”

  I couldn’t say goodbye to them. I wouldn’t. I took in the sight of them, their polished steel and leather armor covering the taught and coiled muscle below. Alaric’s steel-blue eyes, the color of a winter sky. Kade and Finn�
�s honey brown eyes that glowed gold when they took flight, or when they used their Graces. The shapes of their faces.

  They were the strongest warriors in the Horde. And Alaric was a leader of his own regiment when he was in the Horde army, too. They’d come back, wouldn’t they?

  My lungs ached, and my heart rebelled against the thought of them leaving, squeezing painfully in my chest—making my eyes sting with tears.

  “Go before I change my mind,” I spoke through gritting teeth, unable to meet any of their gazes. And when none of them moved right away, I clenched my fists and shouted, “Go!”

  …and then they were gone, and I collapsed into the dirt, clutching at my chest. The tearing there almost too much to bear. Tiernan’s arms came around me, stoking my back. My hair. Whispering sweet words of reassurance I couldn’t hear.

  They would come back.

  They had to.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Liana

  Killing does something to your soul. Tears it. The damage is irreparable. I knew because I’d killed Thana. And I would carry that scar—that black mark on my soul forever. Which is how I knew if—no—when they returned, even if they didn’t bear physical scars, they would bear mental ones. They wouldn’t be the same warriors who left the small village.

  War changed the hearts of men—that’s what the seven sisters taught me. Would this war change me, too? If I survived long enough to see it through?

  I slammed the bucket of water down onto the table, letting it slosh over the sides. Dipping the brush in, I scrubbed at the rough wood-grain of the table. But the water kept freezing, and then boiling, and then freezing again. I threw the scrub brush back into the bucket and rested my palms on the table, trying to catch my breath. The wood froze solid under my fingertips.

  They’d left almost an hour ago. If they’d flown, and I was certain they would’ve, they’d be there already… at the front lines. Had the battle already begun?

  Loris laid a hand on my back, recoiling at the frostbitten skin. “Oh dear,” she said, “I hardly believed it when I heard…”

  She came around to the other side of the table to look me in the eyes, “We stand a half-decent chance in this war, you know,” she said.

  I looked up, the annoyance gone, and some tension easing from my shoulders, my heart beat slowing. I cocked my head at her.

  With a small awkward looking smile—gods, had I ever seen her smile, before? Did I look so awful that even grumpy old Loris felt she had to do something to raise my spirits? I groaned. Shook my head.

  “It’s true,” she said, her brows narrowing, “The Alchemist race are skilled in the arcane arts. Magic. But they aren’t much stronger than the men of the mortal realms. They are smart and cunning, but on the ground, if you put one Fae warrior against one Alchemist, the Fae will win. We are stronger than them. Faster, too.”

  I hung my head. They were my own words. Though she hadn’t been here to hear them. I had convinced a legion of Horde soldiers we could win this war using a variation of those same words. They were true after all. We were stronger and faster. But every Fae on the battlefield would need to kill at least two for us to stand a chance.

  And the marching continued outside the infirmary… the entire Horde hadn’t even made it to the front lines yet.

  And they had some Fae on their side. And Draconians. And the Mad King himself… would he be on the battlefield?

  I should have gone.

  I should have insisted.

  Alaric. Kade. Finn.

  I was back in the ruined palace at Mt. Noctis. Watching as Ricon toyed with them as though they were puppets in his morbid theater. I remembered the punch of Kade’s blade as it found purchase in my flesh. The look in his eyes.

  “I should have gone,” I whispered to myself.

  Loris placed her hand atop mine, “It was the smarter course to stay behind, majesty. And there’s no sense regretting your decision. It’ll be too late by now.”

  Tiernan came back into the room from where he was helping move beds and tables into place in the main hall.

  “Check on them,” he said, “I can see it’s driving you to madness—just check on them already.”

  “But—”

  But what if I distract them, I was going to say, but he interrupted, “The battle won’t have begun yet,” he said, “Trust me—the earth… I would sense if it had begun.”

  His Grace. I wondered what it would be like to feel the pulse of the land beneath your feet…

  Biting my lips and hauling in a steadying breath, I closed my eyes. Searched for the three tethers. Found them stretched taught, tugging at my soul.

  Alaric, I called down the bond, where are you? Have you made it to the front?

  There came no answer.

  “He isn’t answering me!”

  Tiernan came to stand next to me, covering my hand with his on the table. “Try again,”

  Healer Loris gasped, realizing what I’d done. How I’d bonded myself to them.

  I didn’t care if she knew. I didn’t care if anyone knew anymore. As long as they came back.

  I’d tell the whole damned world. I’d shout it from the skies.

  Alaric, I spoke again through the bond.

  His voice ricocheted back to me, they’re here.

  Show me.

  Concentrating, I focused on wrapping all of myself around that one tether, and the moment Alaric opened the connection—what he saw flashed against my closed eyelids.

  A line of men and Fae stretching as far as I—as he could see in either direction between the split in the short mountain range separating the Wastes from my court. Ten thousand men and Fae. A small legion of Draconians hovering restlessly above them.

  The sheer size of Ricon’s borrowed army stole all the breath from my lungs.

  Some were armored with sword and shield. Others looked to be… chanting? They held bottled substances in their hands. Drew glowing sigils in the air with their fingers. They were getting ready. Setting wards and drawing strengthening magical sigils like Finn said they would.

  The force was no more than five hundred yards from where Alaric stood next to Silas, in our own front line of Fae soldiers.

  What would happen now? What were they all waiting for?

  The anticipation curdled my bloods in my veins.

  What happens now?

  They aren’t within reach of our archers… We wait for them to initiate the charge, they have to file through the pass, it’s to our advantage to wait on this side. They are waiting for us to do the same.

  It began to snow. The fat flakes of it drifting down from the sky like ashes.

  A hair-raising battle cry rang out from the opposing side, and my breath caught.

  They charged. Screaming and chanting and sprinting across the frozen ground, their shields out and swords raised.

  Silas hollered, “Hold!”

  “Hold!”

  Alaric drew his sword.

  I love you.

  And I was thrown from his minds-eye, landing back into my own mind with the force of a catapult. I fell back onto my behind hard, landing with an oomph on the hard wooden floor of the mill. I struggled to refocus my eyes, grasping at the tether, but the connection had faded. It was gone.

  “It has begun,” Tiernan said with shadows over his eyes.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Tiernan

  The earth bled.

  The moment they charged, I felt the vibrations. And at the first spilling of blood, Meloran recoiled and wept.

  Liana alternated between ice and fire. Unable to control herself. She wouldn’t let me near her for fear she’d hurt me. She struggled to catch her breath, looking for all the world like she was suffocating. I’d seen that level of panic before. I’d experienced it myself the day I found out my parents would never return home.

  The feeling like the world is crushing you. That there isn’t enough air in the room—in the entire universe to fill the gaping chasm inside y
ou.

  “Liana,” I said, trying again to get nearer to her.

  “I shouldn’t have let them go!”

  “You need to calm yourself.”

  “Get her out of here before she burns the whole infirmary to the ground,” Healer Loris said, and I gave her a cutting glare so deep she ran to the other section of the mill.

  As though Liana heard her, she ran out into the street, and I followed on her heels, chasing her out into the cold. I shivered, an icy flake of snow landing on the tip of my nose. I brushed it off. I’d heard of snow, but living so far to the south like I had my whole life, I never thought I’d see it.

  The Horde army had all passed through the village—the last of them would be arriving at the gap now. The absence of them was like a held-breath. Leaving the streets silent. Their tent-flaps billowing in the gentle breeze.

  I grabbed Liana by the arm, wincing when the icy chill of her flesh stung my palm and stiffened my fingers. “Liana, stop!”

  She tried to jerk her arm free, but I wasn’t about to let go—no matter how much it hurt. I bared my teeth as the frost crept up my wrist, winding around my arm.

  Liana gasped at the sight of what she was doing and the cold left her all at once. Retracting from my arm as she forced a healing warmth to radiate over her body. She fell to her knees and cried softly. She was still so very young.

  She hadn’t had to see war, or famine, or any of the awful things of the world until only recently. I bet sometimes she wished she’d stayed on that island in the middle of the sea.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  “You have nothing to be sorry for.”

  “I can’t reach him… he isn’t answering my calls. None of them are,” she wiped at her nose with her sleeve, “Does that mean—”

  “No,” I said fiercely, unwilling to believe it myself. It wasn’t only Liana who had become like family to me, and I refused to believe they had fallen… “You would have felt it,” I rationalized, “Alaric said the severing of the bond was one of the most painful, awful things he’d ever endured, and that bond only went one way.”