I frowned thoughtfully, seeing the situation in a new light. On one hand, they had a point.
On the other hand…
They had zero chance of saving any of these men, regardless of who they had once been. Mordred’s spell prevented it.
Chapter 5
I did feel better to realize that their anger was directed at Mordred, not me. Every now and then, a meteorite of truth hit you in the face, letting you know that you weren’t actually the sun in your particular solar system. You were just a forgotten moon behind a forgotten planet.
That was both a crappy feeling, and a crappy metaphor.
It sucked to suddenly learn that it was not all about you.
Alex hung his head, looking sick to his stomach. “This was Sir Bedivere, Nate. Fucking Bedivere! When Arthur was dying, Sir Bedivere was the Knight he trusted to return Excalibur to the Lady of the Lake! And now he has died with Excalibur in his spine!”
My eyes widened in disbelief. “Are you sure?” I asked softly.
Alex whipped out a folded parchment from his pocket and flung it at my chest. I caught it with a frown, and then glanced down as I unfolded it. Twelve symbols filled the page, and they were familiar. I had first seen them on the Round Table—one for each of the original Knights.
Except these were inverted, and beneath each symbol was a familiar name. One of the symbols and names already had a crude, bloody X marked through it. I took a wild guess and assumed that was the other Knight I had been taunting Alex about earlier—Sir Handsnomore had actually been Sir Geraint. I couldn’t recall any specific stories about him, though.
I found Bedivere’s name, glanced at the symbol, and then bent down to shift the man’s helmet so I could compare the paper to the symbol on his breastplate.
I stood and slowly lowered my hand, letting the parchment hang by my hip. Holy crap. Alex was right. This guy wasn’t as famous as some, but I had heard of him. The story I knew about him was that he had been the one to put the dying Arthur into a boat to take him to Avalon.
I glanced over to see that Talon had his lips curled back as he stared down at the dead Knight, and everything about him made me think of an avenging angel. He was the epitome of righteous fury—dead set on making Mordred pay for leading them to this moment.
I hadn’t expected to see Talon so invested in Alex’s cause, but it was obvious that the cause had rubbed off on him. Alex was staring down at the dead Knight as well, and he was panting shallowly.
An apology felt hollow at this point, but I tried anyway. “I’m sorry, Alex. I hadn’t thought about it like that. I just painted them with the same hatred I feel for Mordred, because I don’t think any of them can be saved. I don’t know how to remove the curse Mordred put on them.”
He nodded stiffly. “I judged them prematurely too. At first,” he admitted. Talon was nodding as well. “The only solution I can think of is to put Mordred in a shallow grave.”
I nodded my agreement. “Okay. I can get behind that one.”
“Han Solo?” Grimm suggested into the uncomfortable silence.
I frowned, not following his meaning for a few moments. And then it clicked. I turned to Alex, nodding excitedly. “I can put him on ice. When this is all over, we can give him the funeral he deserves.” I didn’t add that we might have nine other Knights to send off by then—whether Alex liked it or not. And if the third dead Knight wasn’t in Fae or back home, I doubted we would ever find him. We would just have to use process of elimination to learn which Knight it was, since Alex’s paper only had the one red X on it.
Alex thought about my suggestion, and finally nodded. “I suppose that is better than a shallow grave on a lonely mountain occupied by a creepy, socially bankrupt wizard,” he said. I narrowed my eyes at him and caught the hint of a distant grin through the stubble coating his chin.
Rather than snarking back, I dipped my head. He’d earned a little return fire for my callousness. “As my king commands,” I said subserviently, bowing at the waist.
He flashed me a genuine smile. “Thank you, Nate.”
I glanced down at Sir Bedivere again. “We should take his armor. It’s incredibly powerful, and we will need it to stand a chance against the others.” Silence answered me, and I looked over to see Alex pursing his lips. “Technically, it belongs to the Round Table,” I added. “Maybe we can find a way to replicate it. You can put it in the Sanctorum for now,” I suggested, since that was where the Round Table was, and it might appease Alex’s conscience.
Alex nodded. “You’re right. We can’t risk it falling into the wrong hands, so the Sanctorum is as good a place as any. But I don’t have to like it.”
I nodded.
Talon waited a few moments as if to make sure Alex wasn’t going to change his mind. Then he silently went to work on removing Bedivere’s armor—as respectfully as possible.
I watched in silence as Alex pricked his finger and crossed out Bedivere’s symbol on his piece of paper. He studied the mark for a moment, as if murmuring a silent prayer. Then he let out a tired sigh, and folded the paper back up.
He glanced down with a frown, and I followed his gaze to see the two letters from the Fae Queens. Then he turned to look at me. “You already spoke to the emissaries I told them to send?” he asked, sounding surprised.
I winced instinctively, and took too long to come up with an answer.
“He threw them off the mountain,” Grimm said, ever the helper. “Summer flew further.”
“Not helping,” I growled, shooting him a dark look.
Alex cursed. “Damn it, Nate. We need their cooperation!”
I grunted. “I’ve been doing just fine without their help,” I argued. Then I frowned, only just now catching what he’d initially said. “What do you mean, the emissaries you told them to send? You’re working with them already?”
Alex shook his head. “I met with them. I demanded their surrender, as well as restitution for stealing me as a young boy.”
My eyes almost popped out of my head.
Alex smirked, noticing the look on my face. “I learned how to negotiate from a ruthless professional. Instead of my initial terms, they agreed to work with me against our common enemy—which was what I really wanted all along. A truce, Nate. And I made sure to include you in that truce.” He took a deep breath, as if trying to calm himself down. “And you’re telling me you threw their emissaries off the mountain?” he hissed.
“I know, Alex!” I snapped, knowing I had no excuse. “I’m sorry! But I haven’t exactly been in the right fucking headspace lately, in case you hadn’t noticed. Why else do you think I’m living on a goddamned mountain in the middle of Fae—as far away as I can get from anyone I care about!” I roared, panting, and clenching my fists.
Grimm was suddenly standing between us, forcing us both to take a step back. “Let’s cool down a minute, boys. It’s been a shitty day for everyone.”
I nodded, forcing my breathing back under control. “Thank you, Grimm.”
He snorted. “It’s nothing.” Once confident I was back in control of my temper, he got out of the way, no longer walling me off from Alex.
I looked Alex in the eyes. “I’m sorry, man. I’ll figure something out, even if I have to visit the Queens myself and apologize. I’m still trying to get my head back in the game.”
Alex lowered his eyes with a sigh. “I know. I’m sorry, too. Let’s just focus on what matters. We’re all on edge these days.”
Talon had tied up the armor and was dragging it behind him like a dead body. He paused, assessing the both of us. “You two finished acting like children? Because we have work to do in St. Louis.”
We both nodded.
Alex walked up to Talon and placed a hand on his shoulder. Much like I could use my magic to Shadow Walk, Talon could simply step out of Fae, and he was able to carry people with him if they were touching him.
“I’ll take care of Bedivere for you, and then I’ll see you guys in two hours at the S
anctorum,” I promised, turning away. I needed to figure out what to do with Alice, how to keep her safe while I went to work. Maybe I could take her to the Armory until everything calmed down.
Alex spoke from over my shoulder. “Be careful in St. Louis, Nate. Last time I was there, I heard there was an assassin looking for you.”
I spun, surprised. “Who the hell would hire an assassin—”
A Gateway erupted behind me, and I almost got whiplash spinning back around to face the potential threat.
Instead of snapping my own neck, I slipped on the ice, bounced on my ass with a flash of pain, and then began to tumble towards the edge of the cliff. Alarmingly fast.
I heard several voices shouting at me as I tossed my staff in an effort to use my hands to claw and scratch for some lifeline, but the ice was slick and I found no salvation to slow me down.
Before I knew it, I fell off my goddamned mountain and into the goddamned sky.
Just like the emissaries from Summer and Winter.
“Fucking Karma!” I screamed.
Chapter 6
The wind whistled in my ears as I fell through a blanket of clouds, flipping and spinning wildly as I tried to gain some measure of control so I could think of a solution.
I sensed a dark shape in the clouds beside me, but I couldn’t make out anything specific, and it didn’t try to eat me alive, so that was good. Thankfully, I broke through the clouds a few seconds later, giving me a clear view of the entire Land of the Fae drawing closer to me faster than I would have preferred.
Grimm abruptly swept up alongside me, and I realized that his silhouette had been the dark shape I’d sensed in the clouds. But he didn’t attempt to catch me, contenting himself with a leisurely freefall with his Horseman pal.
“Help me, Grimm!” I snapped, trying to reach out and grab him.
He shifted slightly out of my reach, his black shadow wings somehow still able to snap in the wind. “Who’s the best fucking unicorn in the world?” he asked calmly, but loud enough for me to hear past the whistling wind.
“You are! Now catch me, you psychopath!”
“That wasn’t very convincing,” he said unhappily. “Try again. This is a long fall, so you have time for a few attempts.”
I cursed him at the top of my lungs, reaching out to latch onto any part of him. I missed, and began flipping and spinning and cartwheeling for my efforts.
“You will tell everyone how majestic I am,” Grimm said, “and that I nobly saved your life at the very last moment, risking personal harm to do so.”
“Oh, you’re risking harm alright,” I snarled.
He flared out his wings, suddenly soaring up above me as I continued to plummet downward like a rock.
I cursed again, turning upside down and spreading my arms and legs out like a starfish so I could locate him. I saw him a dozen paces above me, calmly descending just out of my reach.
“I’m sorry, Grimm!” I shouted, hoping he could hear me.
“Who’s fucking majestic?” he shouted.
“You’re fucking majestic!” I crowed.
He thought about it for a second, and then shook his mane. “Give me a G!” he yelled, sounding like he was trying out for the head position on the My Little Pony Cheer Squad.
I gritted my teeth to prevent myself from cursing him out again. I risked a quick glance over my shoulder in order to count how many seconds I had to learn humility—
“Holy crap!” I gasped. I was falling way faster than I had thought. I angled my body so that I might glide parallel to the slope rather than striking into the side of the mountain. It might buy me a few more seconds.
Hopefully.
I spun back to Grimm, panicking as I did my best to imitate a flying squirrel. “G!” I screamed.
“Give me an R!”
“R!” I shouted at the top of my lungs.
“Give me an I!”
“I!” I shrieked.
He was cackling, now. “Give me an M!”
“M!”
“Give me another M!” he cheered, kicking his hooves happily, making it look like he was practicing a choreographed dance.
“M!”
“What’s that spell?” he yelled, and he barely managed to say it through his raucous laughter.
“GRIMM!” I cheered desperately.
“Damn right it does!” he snapped.
And then he folded his wings close to his body and plummeted directly for my face. My ears had popped at one point, likely due to the rapid change in elevation. At the last second, Grimm dipped beneath, preventing me from grabbing onto him. I spun around so that I didn’t break my back over his spine, and that’s when I saw how much closer to the ground we now were. Trees whipped past us, maybe thirty feet below, but the boulder field was still a little bit further down the slope.
It was at this moment, while calculating distance, trajectory, velocity, probability, and a newfound faith in God, that I was introduced to an upper echelon of pain that mankind had never explored before.
My groin slammed into the engine block of the original single-horsepower motor—my unicorn—at Mach 7 speed.
I instantly lost my breath—and the ability to make any sound louder than a newborn chipmunk’s cry. Grimm also gasped in pain at the impact, rapidly descending a few feet before he managed to spread his wings wide and fight against physics. I was sprawled over his back, holding on for dear life, and I was only able to suck in pitiful amounts of air as I tried to recover the ability to breathe.
The tops of the trees were so close that I feared they might actually clip my feet as we screamed over them. But we were so close to the edge of the treeline, and I spotted cushy-looking snow drifts interspersed with the titanic slabs of rock and ice that had fallen from the mountain at some point in the last thousand years.
As long as we didn’t hit one of the hard targets, we would only break all of our limbs upon landing. I heard the tendons of Grimm’s shadow wings straining and creaking as he tried to keep the tips of the trees from impaling us.
With a snarl of effort, Grimm brought us past the last tree—my foot actually grazing one of the branches on our way by. If I hadn’t already been struggling to breathe, I would have let out a sigh of relief.
Naturally, Grimm chose that moment to buck me off his back without any warning whatsoever. As I flew over boulders that were as big as most houses, I cursed myself for ever agreeing to his stupid cheer.
Fortunately, I hit a snowdrift of fresh powder rather than solid ice.
Unfortunately, I blew entirely through it and into another.
This one managed to stop me, and I immediately began clawing my way out from my tomb of snow, since the entrance I had made upon arrival had instantly caved in behind me, and I had already been struggling to breathe.
It should say something about my level of panic that I didn’t think of using my magic to blast my way out until my head broke through the surface.
Sunlight kissed my cheeks, and I just stayed there with my eyes closed for a few moments, retraining my body on the use of oxygen. When I opened them again, my first sight was Grimm standing a dozen paces away, shaking snow from his mane and rump. He saw my head poking out of the snowdrift, and scraped a hoof back across the ground, lowering his head towards me without breaking eye contact.
“Majestic,” he whispered, drawing out the word so that it stretched out over three seconds. And I realized that his strange stance was a bastardized attempt at a bow.
“You’re insane,” I whispered, clawing myself the rest of the way out of my snowdrift.
He dipped his head. “You say the sweetest things.” I climbed back to my feet, shaking off the snow covering my body. Grimm waited until I was finished before he began prancing about in a bizarre dance, lifting his hooves almost delicately as he spun in a circle like a show pony practicing his steps. Then he stopped, jerking his head at something closer to the base of the mountain. I noticed a red splash on one of the boulders and win
ced. “That’s where you threw the Summer Fae dude. You totally beat his record.”
I stared at Grimm, shaking my head. “Who hurt you?” I asked, genuinely concerned for his sanity.
He turned to glare at me. “I thought you would be happier,” he grumbled. I folded my arms, shaking my head. “That was the most excitement I’ve had in quite some time,” he grumbled. And this time, he didn’t sound like he was teasing. I sighed—still not pleased with him, but recognizing that my friends often had to go to drastic measures to prove a point to me.
Although this was definitely a new record for maximum effort.
I let out a breath, lifting my head to look up at the mountain. It…was really fucking tall. Taller than any other mountain I’d ever seen.
“Welcome back, Nate,” Grimm said, joining me to look up at the mountain.
I frowned over at him. “What do you mean?”
He continued staring upwards. “Call it the Grimm Stamp of Approval—a second opinion that you really are Nate and not Wylde.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked, confused.
“Wylde wouldn’t have pissed his pants from a little tumble like that,” he whispered.
I glanced down, suddenly mortified. Seeing no spots of shame, I slowly turned to level a glare upon my unicorn. “Asshole.”
“Made you look!” he hooted, bursting out with laughter
Despite the adrenaline still coursing through my veins, making me feel twitchy, I found myself smiling along with him after a few moments, shaking my head.
“Wylde would have used some weird Fae magic to stop gravity or something,” Grimm said. “So, welcome back, Nate. You incompetent bastard. I missed ya.”
I sighed, setting my hand on his back and climbing up. “Thanks, I guess.” Once situated, I grabbed onto his mane, glancing up at the mountain. Now that I wasn’t worried about immediate death, I remembered why I had fallen in the first place. “Any idea who made the Gateway?” I asked, suddenly concerned for Alice.
Knightmare: Nate Temple Series Book 12 Page 4
