by Leia Stone
“I’ve got this!” I told him, advancing on Chrys with a glare.
She grinned. “Oh, honey, you can’t just become Queen overnight and expect to know what you’re doing with all that power.” She pointed to my chest as if she could see the power contained within me.
The electric current of power that was coursing through me at any given time was effortless like dipping my hand into a puddle or stream. I didn’t need to pull for it or strain to grasp it, but I did now. I yanked that power toward me, feeling it reverberate in my chest, and then threw everything I had at her. She grinned, throwing some type of shield up as visible sparks of yellow light exploded against her shield. I was so busy getting frustrated over my inability to just kill her like I wanted that I didn’t notice the green magic until it crashed into my stomach.
“Lily!” Liam cried out, and a wall of ice came between me and the witch, shielding me as I fell to the ground, heaving and feeling on the verge of vomiting.
What did she do? Melt my insides? Poison me? Make me go bald? Who knew what she just hit me with? I waited for the effects to show up, but other than feeling like I’d been punched in the gut, nothing happened.
Standing on shaky feet, I let the full weight of my fury settle into my bones.
Maybe I was just playing at the whole Queen thing, still learning and doing things by trial and error, but I was still going to wipe the floor with this bitch.
“Drop the ice,” I growled to Liam, pulling both of my throwing daggers from my thigh holsters.
She cackled from the other side of the ice, and Liam did as I asked. The ice went from a solid six-inch wall to powdered snow in moments, and that’s when I struck.
With one hand, I threw a dagger at the wall about two feet from her face, purposefully missing. Her eyes followed it for a fraction of a second, and that’s when I threw the other dagger, along with a sunlight bomb. The knife slid into her neck a fraction of a second before the sunlight burst over her skin, lighting her on fire. The stairs splintered into chunks of wood as the explosion rocked the house.
Heat blasted outward, and Liam and I had to stumble back a few feet so that we wouldn’t be burned.
“Holy shit, Lily,” Liam breathed. “You got the Queen’s power.”
Yeah… I did.
With a horrifying wet gurgle, the witch screamed, clawing at her skin as she burned alive, and I knew it was time to leave. Without a word, Liam and I kicked off the ground, flying up into the air. Ducking our heads under the overhang, we flew up the stairwell and back into the house.
“Let’s just go. I don’t want anyone to get hurt,” I told Liam. I could come back for the crystals later after I dropped Liam off with Kira and we regrouped.
He landed in the living room of the house, shaking his head. “It’s now or never. All the crystals have turned dark, and he’s burying them. If he didn’t get me to submit to the spell, he’ll steal one of my brothers. We need to end this now.”
Shit.
“Maybe now that the witch is dead—”
“He’ll find another. Lily, I can’t sleep at night until I know we’ve stopped the Winter King.” His voice held such malice, but it wasn’t the tone that gave me chills. It was the way he referred to his own father as the Winter King. I knew then that what Cam said was true, and if I killed him, he’d be okay with it. As fucked up as that sounded. This man wasn’t his father, not anymore.
“Okay, let’s bring all the crystals home,” I told him.
I followed Liam out the back door, looking above me and wondering where the Winter King was, expecting him to jump out of nowhere and try to take us out… but he didn’t. It was eerie and gave me a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.
Liam limped, and I got a better look at one of his wings. It was bleeding and bent at an odd angle, how he’d flown up that staircase was beyond me.
“Liam, slow down. Let me heal you.”
He shook his head, pressing on as he pushed into the woods. “There are three clusters of three crystals each. You need to save your strength to fight us a way out of here.”
I spun around, noticing that no one was following us. “No one is here, I’ll have enough energy to do both. Just hang on a minute.”
I ran to keep up with him as he dropped to the ground in front of a large oak tree and started digging. Using his hands, he dug into the dirt like a crazed maniac. I knew he probably had some PTSD from what they did to him and wasn’t handling it well, but I didn’t know how to support him at this moment. So I just let him be… Instead, I lay my healing hands on his bent wing as he clawed at the ground like a wild animal, making clumps of dirt and grass fly everywhere.
“Gotcha,” he breathed, and I froze.
Pulling my hands from his wing, which now looked better, I peered at the hole he’d dug. Three dirty crystals lay in a triangle formation about a foot into the ground. They were sickly looking, and I knew that the Winter King had used the dark witch to turn them this way. That meant I couldn’t touch them, but Liam could. Reaching inside, he pulled all three into his arms and looked up at me, grinning. “We’ll rebuild Faerie. Close the portals, burn all the blue doors, and The Winter King can never come for me and my brothers again.”
I nodded sadly, a bit confused that he was trying to simply lock the Winter King out and not kill him. I knew, in that moment, that it would have to be me. I would have to be the one to kill his father because, no matter how much that man had tortured Liam and his mother and their entire family… there was still a shred of love there. I could see it in his eyes and the way they looked achingly sad when he spoke about the man who raised him.
I’d been wrong in my earlier assessment, Cam too. He wanted his dad gone, not dead. There was a difference.
“Yeah, we’ll do that,” I told Liam, not wanting to stress him any further. There was no way I was letting his father stay loose out in the world, and I couldn’t destroy all the blue doors after inviting all the fae to come home. They would need to stay open, always.
As we ran to the next crystal cluster, I started to feel dread grow in my gut. Where was Elle, Cam, Jasper, Trissa? Where were Liam’s men, and why was the village so quiet? I liked to believe that we had the upper hand, that we were stealthily grabbing these crystals while the king’s guards fought Liam’s men off, but…
“Liam, why aren’t they guarded? The crystals?” We were deep in the thick woods behind the house, but still, you would think the king would put some guards on the area.
We’d reached the second mound, Liam dug at the ground, his fingers bleeding as the pile of other crystals he’d found lay on his lap.
I didn’t bring any healing water. It just struck me, at this moment, I’d charged after Liam and not thought of any way to heal these. Could he carry nine dark crystals himself? I’d touched one and got burned on my arm, could he carry nine without injury?
“Who cares why they’re not guarded. We got three more!” Liam whooped, dusting off the final layer of dirt.
Sure enough, three more crystals emerged from the ground. When Liam placed them in his arms with the stack of the other three, he swayed a little as if he were about to fall over.
“Liam!” I caught his elbow before he went down.
He winced, looking up at me with sadness in his eyes. “Why is there so much darkness in the world? Why can’t everyone just focus on love?”
I swallowed hard.
It was a valid question, one I think everyone thought of from time to time, but not one you would have while you were in the middle of the greatest crystal heist in history. They were affecting him. Six dark crystals were too much.
“Liam, let me try to help carry them.” I opened my shirt, indicating that he should deposit them in, but he shook his head.
“No, I’m fine.” He took off, running the forest perimeter, in search of the next pile of crystals, but quickly fell and faceplanted in the dirt. Catching up with him, I reached out and hooked my hands under his armpits, hauling hi
m up. “Liam, dammit. You listen to me! We’re partners now. In this together. Let me help you!”
He rolled on his back, clutching his ribs, which I suspected were broken, breathing heavily. “You can’t…,” he panted, “You’ll get hurt.”
I stared at the six dark crystals that lay on the ground, splayed out around his body, and my hands heated up with warm buttery light.
Huh?
It hit me then. These were sick. The darkness in them was like an illness, and what better way to cast out the dark than the light? Settling onto my knees, I reached for one of the crystals with my light-infused hands.
“Lily, no!” Liam shouted, swatting my hand away.
I looked at him and saw so much love and protection in his gaze that it made my heart pound faster. “Trust me?” I asked.
We stared at each other for a long few moments until finally, he released my hand and nodded. Continuing my forward motion, I grasped the crystal. The moment my fingers wrapped around the cool rock, a dull, stabbing pain ran up my elbow but not nearly as much as when I’d first grabbed it with bare hands. Liam watched me like a hawk, and I felt the sickly dark energy trying to slither its way into me, but I resisted. I pumped golden sunlight magic into the crystal, casting out any darkness there and not allowing it to affect me.
“You’re amazing,” he breathed.
I looked up at him with a smile and then back down to see the crystal was a clean, clear blue as the others in Faerie were at the base of the tree.
I looked at Liam. “Go dig up the others. I’m right behind you.”
He stood, faltering for a moment, but then took off running.
I took the next few minutes to hold each crystal and pump it with enough healing sunlight that it turned it normal in color and could be held by me without issue. All the while, my eyes searched the thick forest. I saw a few people off in the distance through the trees, but they appeared to be walking casually, not running or screaming or flying.
Where the frick was everyone? Why was it so calm?
When I’d cleared the last crystal of its darkness, I stood on shaky legs, my breath coming out in deep gasps. Liam was right. I’d expended a lot of energy doing that, but I had to push through. Gathering the six crystals in my arms, letting them stretch out the base of my shirt as I held them, I ran to Liam. He was only a dozen yards away. He’d taken off his shirt and laid it on the ground, creating a little sack to carry the crystals. I knelt next to him, setting the six clear ones down, and picked up one of the dark ones, intending to cleanse it. That’s when I heard her scream.
A horrifying shriek of agony ripped from Elle’s throat, and I dropped the crystal with a thud, flying up into the air without another thought. I’d fixed Liam’s wing. He’d be able to fly, and we’d found all nine remaining crystals. I needed to save Elle.
Chapter 11
Elle.
When I flew up and over the tree line, coming back into the city square, bile rose in my throat.
No.
No.
No.
No.
Bodies were… everywhere. So much blood. The casual figures I’d seen walking through the trees were the Winter King’s guards. My eyes zoomed in on the bodies I passed, and I screamed in horror when I recognized Liam’s men. But they weren’t all Liam’s men. Some were just fae holding backpacks and hastily packed suitcases like they’d intended to leave….
They were going to go with me... Go home like I’d invited them, and they were killed for it.
I brought them to their death. His men had been busy, silently taking out our army, but where the hell was he? Where was the Winter King!
When I saw the tall man with two little black horns protruding from his forehead, and the way he held Elle by the hair, I fucking lost it. He held a knife to her neck, and a thin trickle of red dripped down it.
Any shred of pity or humanity I had left washed out of my skin, and I only saw red. Flying through the air like a torpedo, I slammed into the dude, ripping him off Elle. We collided, making everything in my body groan in protest, but I didn’t care. It felt good, pain felt good right now. I’d never been so angry in all my life. The guy looked surprised like he thought he could pick Elle off easily.
Reaching up, I held his face in my hands and screamed, pushing so much light through my palms I went temporarily blind. His head liquefied in my hands, and he died instantly.
I stood, panting, and wiped my palms on my pants as I spun. The guards were running for me, at least twenty of them. Some held bows and arrows, others knives, and some guns. Cam limped over from behind a bush and pulled Elle backward, out of the line of fire, and then looked at me helplessly. Like he was sorry he was taking her and leaving me alone.
I simply nodded, and he dragged her farther away as she screamed for him to stop.
How many died?
I did a quick count and estimated forty bodies; at least twenty were ours.
No. My heart tripled its beat while simultaneously breaking in grief.
War was like a festering wound, constantly reopening and never healing. How many times were we going to do this back and forth?
No longer. Not anymore. I couldn’t bear it.
I let the powerful magic and light fill my body as it mixed with the rage that was brewing there. Then I poured in a dash of anger and hatred, and by the time they reached me, I was a bomb ready to blow.
The time for speaking and giving them a chance to surrender had passed. If they were still gunning for my life at this point, they were dead to me. With a battle cry, I opened the aching cavern of pain and magic and grief in my chest and exploded. Light shot out of my body like a bomb and eviscerated the advancing army in seconds. It didn’t light the men on fire or slowly peel their skin off, no. One second, they were running on two legs, and the next, they were piles of ash.
Holy shit. The amount of power I contained actually scared me then. I didn’t feel remorse for them, but I felt fear of what I’d just done.
Suddenly, a weakness overwhelmed me, becoming too much, and I fell forward. Black dots danced at the edges of my vision. Bile rose in my throat as I surveyed the scene.
I did this.
All of it. Even if I didn’t personally kill Liam’s men, they were dead because I’d led them here without enough support.
So much death because of me.
I heaved on the ground, gagging as the realization of what I’d just done hit me. I was a monster… A murderer. I just wanted this to be done. I just wanted the war over. I only ever wanted to go home, to have a home to go to, and to share with everyone.
“Lily!” Elle’s voice cut through the space as Liam and Cam ran out to grab each of my arms.
I think I passed out for a second when they pulled me up; there was dirt on my face so I must have…
Time was weird, and I felt so sick, so weak that Cam and Liam had to drag me across the ground. Liam had stopped somewhere and taken a backpack, which looked heavy with the weight of the crystals. I wondered if he’d stolen it from one of the dead fae trying to flee.
“We need to get her out of here,” Liam said to Cam, and then Elle swooped in, and we were airborne. Liam and Elle were flying with an arm hooked under each of my armpits. My wings flapped a few times, but it was useless. I was too weak. Cam ran underneath us, blindingly fast.
“It’s going to be okay,” Elle whispered beside me. Knowing she had my back gave me a small measure of hope.
I didn’t realize I was crying until Liam reached out and brushed a tear off my cheek. He lost half his men, and he was wiping away my tears? I was such an asshole. A murdering asshole.
When we landed on the dirt road that led to the car, I felt a bit of my strength return. My legs were a bit steadier, and my wings didn’t feel so heavy.
Liam and Elle let me go, and I stood strong on my feet as Cam burst through the trees behind us. “I can walk.” My voice shook with the grief I was repressing as we all picked up speed and power-walked to the
car, which stood still against the beautiful Montana landscape. The two guards were nowhere to be seen, but I’d hoped it was because they were inside, that the other half of Liam’s men had retreated inside to the safety of Mara’s house and they were all waiting for us.
I just couldn’t take any alternative.
The back car door stood open, and when I rounded the corner, peeking inside, my stomach dropped at the sight of blood. Large fat droplets stained the laundry room of Mara’s house as I tore inside, screaming her name.
When I turned the corner and came out into the open kitchen, a sob ripped from my throat.
I’d found the Winter King at last. He stood over Mara and Bashur’s dead bodies piled in a bloody heap at his feet like discarded waste. Liam’s mother whimpered as the Winter King dragged a finger across her neckline, holding her close to his chest while he caressed her in a fucking creepy way that added to my desire to murder him.
Looking down at Mara, I… blocked it all out. I somehow compartmentalized the fact that she looked dead. The odd angle of her neck, the way her stomach was opened up and icicles littered the floor. Her cuffs… oh gods her cuffs had popped off and lay open on the floor. I blocked it all out and flew into a rage so blinding that I feared I would kill Liam’s mother on accident.
This was it. This was the moment I was going to end him, slowly if I had it my way. I leapt from the ground and plowed into the both of them like a linebacker. Knocking Liam’s mother out of the way, I landed on top of the Winter King, my chin clipping his chest. Reaching out, I grasped whatever I could hold, relishing the moment that I was about to liquefy this mother fucker!
