by D. D. Chance
“You killed your own people?” I gasped, and Lyric turned weary eyes on me.
“Not by choice. And not often. But even kings grow tired of such a duty, eventually.”
“Three hundred and fifty years,” Aiden prompted. “You first struck the Fae realm three hundred years ago.”
“In my youth and hubris, yes. I thought I could sway the mountain Fae to my cause. Instead, they lost their bid for power and were destroyed, while new magic flowed into the land of the Fae.”
He nodded mockingly at me. “A Hogan witch, far too powerful for me to challenge at first. But foreign magic changes things, and where there is one crack, another can be found. I tried again, not a hundred years ago, and came to plead my case to King Orin. He opened the portal between our realms for parlay, then laid waste to us all before we’d barely stepped foot on your shores. I took what soldiers I could save—and fled. I waited for the king to follow, to break the ancient rules and draw me into a battle that—at that point, as weakened as I was, I would surely have lost. He never came.”
“Because Reagan left him,” Belle murmured, and Lyric lifted one shoulder, dropped it.
“He had lost his witch and could only prowl behind the borders of his realm, unwilling to strike out and possibly lose. For all his faults, he was no fool. But the pathway to our freedom remained, and so I watched. I waited. And I prepared my people to escape and live in the quasi-light as best they could. A half a century later, I saw an opportunity to act…and I did.”
“Lena,” Aiden said.
Lyric smiled a little sadly. “Don’t judge your cousin too harshly. I had been feeding lies to her mother for decades before I turned to her. And she only wanted for the Fae to rise in glory again. Not so hard to understand, after three generations of kings who had lost their way and chose to find it again through warfare.”
“You sent the wraiths to us.”
“Once we entered the Riven District, I sought any and all who would come to our aid, and the wraiths were the vilest of all creatures in the monster realm. That anyone should want to be their ally took them by surprise. And they exist to fight and feed upon their victims, little more. It proved to be a worthwhile arrangement.”
“You also built a home for your people in the monster realm. How?” I asked.
Despite his fatigue, Lyric brightened. “When I was able to place my people in the monster realm, their joy made it worthwhile, even though it wasn’t perfect. There was the possibility of freedom, at least. There was hope. But the price was heavy. With the magic that it took to gain their passage, I became the first Fomorian king who could die and not be remade. At first, I railed against the injustice of it, but gradually, I saw it as a release. The Fomorians as we knew ourselves would be no longer. We would not have the capacity for great power and magic, but we could have life, family. And we could see the sun.”
His smile twisted. “As it turns out, though, it is harder to kill a king than you might suspect. And so I had to be ready to die before I came to you—lest you betray me the way your grandfather did so many years ago, and I had to push you to tax me to my utmost, which you have. This time, it won’t matter if you betray me the way your grandfather did, I won’t survive the return to the Fomorian underworld. I will die here, one way or another. But my people will live.”
“I say who dies or doesn’t in my lands,” I growled, oddly put out, but Lyric only sighed a broken breath.
“My battle is at an end, in either case. And so I put it to you, King Aiden of the Fae. Now that I have finally gained an audience with you, now that I have finally found a way to engage you in battle, I ask for your release. I will fight and you will strike me down, and either you will take care of my people and help them find their way, or they will make their way as best they can in the monster realm. They are no threat to you. They are only the threat they must be to survive. But with your pledge to aid them, our war against your people stops. The wraiths will depart with my death, and our contact with the human realm will end. You will have your magic, and you will have your witch, and my people will be free.”
Aiden narrowed his eyes. “There is never a deal proposed by Fomorian that is not without a trap.” Before I could protest, he pushed on. “I will not accept the terms of your surrender, Lyric. I will fight and I will kill you, and avenge the deaths of all the Fae your mercenary army has sucked dry and left like so much garbage in their homes. Your pitiful tale of woe does not move me. It stinks of artifice and lies.”
I gaped at Aiden, shocked to hear such cruel words coming from the king I loved. But I hadn’t seen the death he had. I hadn’t witnessed the slaughter of my own people as I fought to stem the tide of death.
King Lyric nodded, but anger glinted in his eyes. “Then perhaps it is I who should kill you, after all, to save the Fae from yet another idiot king,” he said. “For despite my age and extremity, I have more magic in my little finger than you do in all your land.”
“And that’s worked out well for you, hasn’t it,” Aiden sneered.
The two mighty kings lifted their swords and roared at each other, light and dark, and the magic I’d taken from both of them swelled to its highest mark and overflowed. They rushed at each other in fury.
I stared at them both, aghast, my own outrage growing within me. I understood Aiden, I understood Lyric, and while their complaints were valid, both of them were wrong. And I’d be damned if I sat this fight out.
“Stop,” I cried.
I plunged into the fray, my hands filled with power and heat. I channeled all my energy into the crown of emeralds and the shackles of steel. Coven constructs, maybe, symbols of my oppression, but I chose what I could make and unmake now. I decided. From my fiery right palm burst a blade of steel, and from my left arm grew a shield of emerald green.
“This ends now,” I announced. It wasn’t my voice that spoke, but a power that rolled down the entire line of Hogan witches—power that’d always been mine to claim, if only I’d had the eyes to see it. “I will not see the waste of so much magic to fuel your petty war. You are two sides of the same coin, and one cannot exist without the other. It took a witch to banish you from Earth, and now it will take a witch to free you from this war. Because you always underestimate witches, to your detriment.”
I struck.
38
Aiden
I could feel the pressure of Belle’s attack and reacted without thinking to diminish her witchling magic. As King Lyric’s sword sliced across my chest, I opened a portal and sent us to the battlegrounds outside the solarium.
Madness greeted me.
Once Belle had appeared and I determined she was safe, I hadn’t given much thought to the idea of witches still taking part in the battle. But they were there, their chants crashing down like an angry tide, pushing back the Fomorian goop creatures. When one spell showed promise, they doubled down, banding together to make it stronger. When another one showed no effect at all, they abandoned it and scattered, to reform again.
The warriors from the valley Fae had finished with the lizard men, restraining them at the far end of the field. The lizard men had only had a few generations to prepare for life in the monster realm, after all, and none at all to prepare for a battle against the Fae. Seeing them facedown on the ground, their hands behind their backs, shook me—and made Lyric cry out in agony, the great king finally faltering. His people were fighting for their right to survive, nothing more. They were fighting because they’d been given no other choice.
“They could have a choice,” Belle said in my mind. “You can give them that choice.”
As she spoke, she swept her hands up, and with an authoritative shout, commanded the attention of her witches. They turned to her, and she once more began a spell I had never heard before, one which the witches clearly had not either. Another portal opened, and a new band of witches flowed through it. Cassandra’s crew, I thought at first, but then I saw they were led by a tall, striking black woman in silver comba
t gear. Danae, high priestess of the Iron Sea coven. She shouted to her own people, and they fanned out, but it was clear she too was taking her direction from Belle. I reached out and grabbed the Fomorian king by the shoulder, effectively paralyzing him as he stared around, still dazed by the sight of his fallen subjects. As strong as he was, King Lyric was closer to death than even I had realized.
Belle thrust up a hand. “Welcome, Danae. The king of the high Fae can create a new realm that is a prison to his enemy, but a witch and a king can do something better, I think. With your magic aiding ours, we seek to create a home.”
I gripped Lyric’s shoulder more tightly, turning him to me. “You come to our land, King Lyric, there will be no more strife. There will be no more fighting. You will bend your magic to the service of the high Fae, and we will bend our magic to you and yours. We will learn to live together and build our realm together, or you and your people will not live at all.”
“Not good enough,” Belle said, surprising me. And now it was my turn as well as Lyric’s to stare at her, while Danae nodded once in fierce agreement. “Your promise to each other isn’t all that needs to happen here, Aiden. Times change. Kings change. There’s no way we can allow the Fomorians and Fae to control the human realm—ever. If I bend our magic to help you reach this peace, a new contract must be struck. One that binds the Fae and the Fomorians in service to the human realm, should the need ever be great enough.”
Lyric finally roused himself, seeing the potential pitfalls as quickly as I did. “Who is to decide the depth or breadth of your need?” he growled. “We cannot trade imprisonment for slavery.”
Belle’s laugh was grim. “Then you better hope you never need us. But I’m not here to rule you, you idiot. I’ve spent my whole life helping people escape from their keepers. You agree to this, or I leave you and the Fae to your endless war. But your people won’t pay for your bullshit battles anymore. I’m definitely done with that.”
She turned and flung her hands wide, one with the shining sword, one with the emerald shield, and a portal that led to the Fomorians realm opened before us. Together with Danae, the witchy warriors, and the fierce loner who fought among them with her jagged blades, Belle sent a pulse of silver light deep into the Fomorian realm.
It exploded inward, the fury of its passing knocking everyone to the ground and to the floor inside the castle. But that was not the end of its effects. With the disappearance of the Fomorians’ portal, the long, sinewy creatures coated in oil collapsed, their bodies growing smaller, frailer, until they took on the appearance of lizard men. And then that changed too, as their features softened, their glamour shifted, and they became taller, slender, their skin fading to burnished gold, their chins growing more pointed, their eyes widening. The human depiction of elves, I realized belatedly, but without the white-blond color so often assigned them. These creatures were every color of sunlight, from brightest gold to darkest dusk.
“Oh!” Lyric swayed as he struggled to keep his feet, his face going ashen as the portal snapped shut. And in his face, I saw the truth.
“There was no one else there?” I asked.
He clenched his hands into fists, even the one still holding his sword, but he did not deny the truth. “There have been no more Fomorian in the prison of our realm for a generation, save for the warriors who remained behind to defend me.”
He gestured around to the beautifully built Fomorian, who stood transfixed as Belle’s magic flowed through them. “These are the forms we chose long ago, the forms we were forbidden to retake during our imprisonment. But we were told…” He swallowed. “The ancient laws were clear. We were never to regain these forms. Ever. How is this possible?”
“Never underestimate a witch,” Belle said, and I barely forestalled a laugh.
“This battle is at an end,” I announced instead, and whether it was Belle’s influence or the rightness of the statement, my voice carried through the minds of all my people, inside the castle and out. “From this point forward, the Fae and the Fomorians will carve out a new existence. The Fomorians will coexist with us, share their wild magic, rebuild their people. And they will reclaim their rightful place in the sun.”
“No!”
Lena burst from the door of the castle wearing a battle uniform, a crown on her head. She strode across the open field, her voice carrying high. I wanted to protest, to stop her—but I couldn’t. Too easily, I could see the lies that she had fallen prey to. Too easily, I could understand why she had believed a fallen king. “You promised me I would be your queen if I helped you. The queen I was supposed to be all these years. I did everything to advance your cause.”
“You did.” Lyric sighed, pushing his pale blond hair out of his face as Lena made her way toward us. He passed a hand over his brow, wiping away some of the deep lines of worry and pain that radiated across his temples and bracketed his mouth. Then he faced Belle, and I was surprised to see some still-untapped reservoir of magic dancing in his teal-green eyes—along with a hint of wry humor.
“Belle Hogan, you nearly broke our marriage contract yourself by saving my life, but I maintained enough magic to thwart you. Now, however, I set you free…though it seems only fair I leave you a gift to honor your rightful alliance with King Aiden.”
Linked to Belle as I was, I stiffened as a fierce chill stole through her, electrifying the blood in her veins and making her gasp. Magic shimmered in the space between us, magic I could almost feel draining from Lyric as Belle drew it in. In its wake, Belle’s heart quickened, her nerves shivered, and suddenly…everything seemed possible.
“Everything is possible,” Lyric agreed quietly with a small, unreadable smile, though neither Belle nor I had spoken aloud. “It always is with a Hogan witch, now and evermore.”
Then he turned and extended his hand to Lena as she finally reached us. She stopped short, her dark eyes going wide as the Fomorian king continued.
“Lady Lena, you did not deserve my ill treatment of you. You believed in me—regardless of your reasons, regardless of the fact you were driven by power and control, not by the good you could do, the good you ultimately did—and so to you, I give a choice. The queen of the Fomorians shall be forced to face the ultimate challenge on the third moon after she weds her king. In those three months, she will sample power untold, the creation of the power eternal. She can build up armies, she can create mountains and castles to top them, she can carve out valleys and fill them with verdant crops. All power accrues to her.”
“Yes,” Lena said, her smile radiant, but the king wasn’t finished.
“But as I say, there are some curses that cannot be undone, even by the king of the Fae and his mighty witch. On the night of the third full moon, the queen of the Fomorian, be she pregnant or barren, will explode in a great constellation of power—supporting the Fomorian people for generations and blessing us with her abundance. But she will be no more.”
Lena drew back, clearly shocked. “What? You never told me that,” she protested, as I could only stare. Would such a fate have befallen me had Lyric not released me from my bond to him? I had to admit, I was glad I wouldn’t be finding out.
Lyric shook his head, a hint of sorrow creeping into his eyes. “No, I told you I would gladly take your hand as my queen—but also that I would never require it. My people are in debt to you, my lady. Without your help, we would not be here. But I do not wish for your death.”
He turned to me. “Don’t judge her harshly or the djinn she enlisted to her aid. Power is a cruel mistress, always tempting, never satisfied. And without her, I could not have saved my people—could not have learned the magic required to build their bridges to the monster realm or found the dissatisfied mistresses of the human coven. It was wrong for me to betray her, so should you seek the death of anyone to atone for her transgressions, it should be mine.”
“You really are making a case for killing yourself, aren’t you?” Niall observed, and I huffed in surprise. I hadn’t seen him appro
ach.
King Lyric grimaced, but I couldn’t stop the laugh. “No more Fae or Fomorian will die this day,” I said, “and I decree all debts paid.”
I turned to Lena. “Do you love him?” I asked because I had to, but the expression of surprise and irritation on her face was all I needed. She stalked off without another word.
Beside me, Lyric chuckled softly. “To love me is to die.” He shrugged, apparently resigned to that truth, but that was a battle for another day.
Instead, we looked out as clusters of Fae and newly freed Fomorians, human witches, and monsters approached each other cautiously, each looking as confused as the other. It was a new dawn.
I turned to Belle, my heart overflowing with all that her presence here entailed. She was my witch, she was my queen, she was—finally—mine. “It looks like the Witchling Academy will have a lot to sort through.”
“It will,” she said, slipping her hand in mine. “So we’d best get started.”
Epilogue
Belle
“Move your scrawny ass!”
My chin came up, my gaze darting across the wide expanse of my first-floor office as Niall’s booming order bellowed across the field outside my window, unnaturally loud for the large space. Alaric’s unintelligible yelp of a reply had me pushing away from my desk a moment later, though I was happy enough for a reason to leave the newest stack of books that had appeared on the shelves of the library this morning. It seemed there was always more to learn in my role as head witch of the Fae…and more I needed to unlearn too.
