by Jayne Faith
“And if you don’t count Raleigh and his followers?”
“Two. Me and Kristen.”
Kristen had graduated the same year as Shane.
“You outrank her, correct?” I asked.
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
I placed my forearms on the desk and leaned forward. “I have a problem. I can’t keep men like Raleigh and his followers in high-ranking posts in my military.”
He tilted his head in acknowledgment.
“I’d like to offer you the position of Battle Master and Military Commander.” He opened his mouth, but I held up a finger to stop him. “But I know you’re not a hundred percent behind me. I’d like to talk about why.”
His jaw worked for a second. “Don’t get me wrong, Petr—Your Majesty. As a soldier, I admire you immensely. You’re one of the fiercest fighters I know. You could kick my ass up and down the practice field.” He blinked, obviously uncertain about speaking so casually.
“It’s fine,” I said. “Please, continue.”
“I just don’t understand why you were chosen for the crown. You should be leading the military. Not sitting on the throne.”
I peered at him from under partly lowered lids. “I don’t doubt you believe that, but it seems as if there’s something else. Some other reason you don’t trust me.”
He shifted on his seat, and one knee began a quick bouncing rhythm. He looked at the floor.
“Just say it, Shane,” I said quietly.
He looked up, his dark eyes piercing. “You left.”
My brows lifted. “I left?”
“You graduated from the academy, and you ran out of here as fast as you could. That never sat right with me. While all of us were here fighting to carve out a spot for the New Gargs, you were in the Earthly realm, doing . . . whatever you were doing.”
I leaned back. “Well, everything you say is accurate. I couldn’t wait to get the hell out. I wanted freedom. I wanted to get away from my father. I was pretty damn immature at eighteen. Not that I’m trying to make excuses.”
He nodded, but his mouth still formed a tight line. I waited.
“Don’t you think others would have preferred to go, too?” he asked. His gaze lifted and roved around. “This place can be fricking stifling. All of us crammed into this building, living under a monarch obsessed with her own vision.”
My eyes sharpened on him. “So you’re not angry at me for killing her?”
He shook his head. “I understand you had to do it. She tried to have you and your sister murdered. I get that you had no choice, and I would’ve done the same.”
“You don’t think I deserve the throne because I abandoned the Order is what it comes down to.”
He lifted a shoulder and let it drop. “Yes, I question your loyalty. That’s part of it. The other part is that you just seem . . . an odd choice, considering there are other options.”
I nearly agreed with him, but Oberon’s advice came back to me, and I straightened and squared my shoulders. I shouldn’t be sitting there offering apologies. It wasn’t as if I’d done nothing to serve the Order of late. And meekly eating shit in front of everyone who disapproved of me wasn’t going to get me anywhere.
“Were you at the Battle of Champions?” I asked.
His eyes widened slightly at the abrupt change of topic. “Yes, Your Highness. Every New Garg was there.”
“You remember how I ended up there?”
“You saved Nicole from the Duergar. It set off a shitstorm of hostility between us and them.”
“Yes. And then I had to pay for my actions, for saving my sister, by entering a battle to the death. I won. And I secured a temporary peace for the Order, getting Periclase off our backs for a brief time. Remember that?”
He nodded. I casually reached for the scabbard holding Aurora that I’d placed on the floor, tipped against the desk beside me. Placing the sheath on the desk, I slowly drew the legendary blade. It wasn’t to threaten. I laid the sword parallel to the scabbard.
“I also went into the stronghold of the Tuatha De Danann with Jasper Glasgow,” I said, looking down at the swirling rosy colors of the metal. “The gods had taken Oberon there and had him shackled in sky iron. Jasper and I entered the Giants’ Causeway and faced the gods to take our High King back.”
I looked up at Shane. His eyes were riveted on Aurora. Any swordsman would be transfixed by the Champion’s blade. I waited until his gaze met mine.
“I lost Mort under that mountain,” I continued. “Oberon called Aurora to my hand. The trick only worked because I’m the Champion of the Summer Court, which ties me to this blade in ways I don’t fully know. Jasper and I escaped with Oberon because I wielded Aurora. Then we had to outrace the Dullahan to get away.”
Shane’s eyes popped wide.
“None of this qualifies me to be the Carraig queen,” I said. “But don’t you think I’ve done a few things lately to show my love for my people?”
He looked back down at Aurora and swallowed. After a moment, he inhaled and met my gaze again.
“You’re right, Your Majesty,” he said. “I was in error for judging you the way I did. I have no doubts of your loyalty to the Carraig, of your commitment to us.”
I gave him one crisp nod. “Good. As to the oddity of me as Queen, there’s not much I can do about that. Maxen was the obvious choice. But Oberon chose me. So here we are.”
“Yes, here we are,” he said quietly. A few seconds of silence past. “If the offer still stands, I would be honored to accept the position of Battle Master and Military Commander in your court, Queen Petra.”
I allowed myself a small smile. “I’m very glad to hear that. It’s yours.”
I stood and reached out, offering my hand, and he grasped it. Then he bowed, bending low from the waist. I waved him off, and he turned to go.
“Oh, Shane?” I said.
He stopped and turned, his hand on the doorknob.
“Don’t toy with Emmaline.”
His lips parted, and he blinked a couple of times. “I . . . wouldn’t do that.” Crimson splotches began blooming on his cheeks.
I arched a brow at him. “Good.”
He shut the door behind him, and I collapsed in my chair, tipped my head back, and groaned at the ceiling. Why did everything have to be so damn intense?
I blew out a long breath and then pushed forward and reached for my tablet. Shane felt like a victory, an important one. But the day wasn’t even close to over. There were still many positions to fill, and an execution to oversee that evening.
Chapter 15
BECAUSE THERE HAD never before been an execution in the Stone Order, Oliver, Maxen, and Amalie had scrambled to devise a setup for it. It was a grisly assignment, and I couldn’t help a deep stab of guilt over pressing it upon them. But it had to be done.
The fortress was a former Earthly realm prison, with a room that had once been used for lethal-injection executions. Since Marisol had the prison transmuted into the Faerie realm and remodeled most of the original structure, the lethal injection room had been used for storage. Amalie had found workers to clear it out.
The execution room itself was the size of a small rectangular bedroom, with a window opposite the door. The window looked into a slightly deeper room. When the fortress had still been San Quentin State Prison, the larger room had been used as a viewing area for people attending the execution—usually the family members of the victim, a few press, and sometimes family of the criminal.
I learned all of this from Amalie, who seemed well-versed on the history of the fortress. She and the others had arranged this execution in a manner that imitated the lethal injections that used to take place when the fortress was an Earthly prison.
I would be in the viewing area for the execution of the man who’d wanted me dead. Carlton Kanab was his name. He was single, no children, and a bit of a loner, by all accounts. It was hard to imagine how anyone could manage to be much of a hermit in the fortress, but perhaps
it was part of the explanation for how he’d ended up here, facing death because he’d hung his very existence on his belief that Marisol Lothlorien was the greatest of our people ever to have lived.
However we’d ended up here and regardless of how deeply and remorselessly Carlton Kanab hated me, my chest ached for what I had to do. I wished he’d repented, but he’d been given the choice and rejected my offer.
The Druid had come to strip the other three prisoners of their magic, and that process was still underway when I entered the viewing room for Kanab’s execution. Druidic magic usually involved chanting—the more intricate the magic, the more chanting needed—so it could be hours yet before that was finished. It wasn’t a simple process, and it was one that the subjects had to willingly submit to.
“Here, Your Majesty.” Oliver indicated I was to sit in a high-backed chair on a small platform that was situated at the back of the viewing room. I’d insisted that I not sit in front. I had absolutely no desire to be staring right into the man’s face when he died.
Maxen was the first attendee to come in after me. He bowed and then went to stand at my right while Oliver took the position to my left.
“It’ll be over soon,” Maxen said softly.
I nodded without meeting his gaze. Realizing I was pushing my palms backward and forward across my thighs in a nervous gesture, I stilled my hands by intertwining my fingers and holding them in my lap.
Deciding what to wear to the execution had been yet another macabre little task that I was eager to forget. I’d ended up in trousers and a dark shirt, feeling it wouldn’t be right to put on some fancy dress as if I were attending a ball. I did, however, wear the crown. We’d opened attendance to anyone who wanted to come, up to the limit of the size of the room, and some of my dissenters—not those who’d tried to kill me, but who didn’t want me on the throne—would be in the audience for the execution. I wanted them to remember who was in charge.
They began to arrive, and Oliver’s people who were stationed just outside the door made sure none tried to enter with weapons of any kind.
Raleigh, the stump of one forearm heavily bandaged, was among the first to come in. He stopped to bow before me as etiquette dictated. Tension hung heavy and ugly in the air, but I speculated by the way his shoulders curled forward and his sunken, haunted eyes skirted off to the side he wouldn’t be coming at me again. I imagined he was thinking about how this easily could have been his execution. If he weren’t thinking about how he might be the one facing death, he was a very stubborn and stupid man indeed. I would have been well within my right to have Raleigh sentenced to death after what he’d tried to pull against me in the fortress foyer. But unless he was putting on an act, the loss of his sword hand appeared to have left him shamed and broken.
For me, Raleigh’s presence was a vivid, gut-wrenching reminder of the difficult choices I’d faced. I could only hope that these punishments—Raleigh’s missing hand, the permanent banishment of three Fae from their homeland, and Carlton Kanab’s death—would be enough, and I wouldn’t be forced to take any of these actions ever again.
I hoped, but I also had to remain realistic.
Another half dozen people filtered in and quietly took seats in the three rows of folding chairs set up between me and the viewing window. There was no conversation, only quiet, careful shifting, clearing of throats, and other subtle noises.
Belatedly, I wondered if we should have made more of a spectacle of the event, perhaps requiring all adult Carraig to attend. But that felt too tyrannical, even if it might have been effective in dissuading more attacks against me.
Maxen went to pull the door closed and turn down the lights. Half a minute later, the curtain on the other side of the viewing window was pulled aside, revealing three people in the execution room.
Carlton Kanab was strapped to a gurney. One of the fortress’s lead medics was hunched over a stainless steel surgery tray. And next to the prisoner was Jaquard. A master swordsman and one of my former teachers, Jaquard was also my failed assassin. Marisol had sent him to kill me, but he’d found a loophole in her command and allowed me to escape. He and I hadn’t spoken since I’d returned to the fortress to take the throne, but Oliver had informed me that Jaquard had been keeping a low profile, being very careful to avoid association with anyone who opposed me.
Apparently, Kanab had chosen Jaquard as the one person he was allowed to have as support at his execution. I wasn’t entirely sure how to feel about my former teacher’s presence on the other side of the glass. I decided to focus on how Jaquard showed me mercy and saved my life at the risk of his own and was now offering comfort to a man who was facing death.
The medic straightened and faced the viewing window holding a small vial filled with pinkish liquid in one hand. Then he turned to Kanab. To his credit, he opened his mouth and allowed the medic to pour in the poison without struggle or resistance. Carlton Kanab had balls. In spite of his actions, I couldn’t help thinking it was a terrible shame we had to lose him.
It was over quickly. Kanab’s body slackened, his head falling to one side, as if sleep had suddenly overtaken him. After about a minute, the medic felt for a pulse at the side of Kanab’s neck. The medic stepped back and gave a slight nod. An unseen hand pulled the curtain back across the window.
Maxen raised the lights and opened the door, and the spectators filed past me, offering their bows and curtsies as they left. I sat rigidly, enduring it with as much stoicism as I could muster.
When the room was finally empty except for me, Maxen, and Oliver, I slumped. I thought I’d mentally prepared for what had just happened, but the full force of reality barreled into my chest, and I realized I’d been kidding myself. I squeezed my eyes closed for a second.
“Thank Oberon that’s done,” Maxen said, his voice low and ragged.
“Maxen, Nicole and I will join you in your quarters,” Oliver said to me. “I’ll bring my Gnome-made single-malt. We could all use a drink. Except Nicole, of course. She can have herbal tea.”
My father wasn’t a drinker. He also wasn’t an offerer-of-comfort. He recognized how deeply the execution had affected me and was trying to help, but I couldn’t stand the thought of trying to make conversation. I needed to be alone.
I shook my head. “I’m not good company right now.”
Avoiding Oliver’s and Maxen’s eyes, I rose and swiftly walked from the viewing room. Guards trailed me as I strode to my quarters, but my father didn’t try to follow me. With numb fingers, I let myself in.
A man was dead, but he probably hadn’t even been one of the leaders in the uprising against me. Several of them had escaped through doorways before Oliver’s meager security team had managed to apprehend them. It all felt so senseless in one respect. But I knew I’d had to follow through on the threat of execution. I’d managed it, but I’d hated it.
Walking through the dark rooms, I pulled the crown from my head. It slipped from my fingers and fell with a series of metallic pings on the tiled floor somewhere along the hallway leading to the second living room. I heard the jeweled crown roll to a stop.
In some corner of my mind, a thought tried to form about how I shouldn’t treat such a valuable item so carelessly. But the admonition was crushed under the weight of my guilt and sorrow.
I pushed through the French doors and went out into the courtyard, where I began tracing the same path around the lovely grounds that Maxen and I had followed earlier. The darkness enveloped me as I walked and walked, wishing I could just dissolve into the refuge of the night as if stepping into the netherwhere.
A man hated me on the throne so much he had voluntarily chosen to die.
I turned the thought over and over, my mind trying to reason it out in ways that lifted some of the responsibility from me. Perhaps he’d been bitterly unhappy long before I took the crown. Maybe he’d been infatuated with Marisol—he certainly wouldn’t have been the only stone blood to have harbored feelings for the exquisitely beautiful
, obsessively driven leader. He might just have been one of those people who couldn’t accept change.
But it didn’t really matter why he’d done it. Carlton Kanab was dead because of me.
There were too many Carraig who didn’t want me on the throne, and it was for good reason. I wasn’t fit for the job. I knew it. Maxen knew it. Everyone knew it. I couldn’t let this farce go on. I was a fighter, not a queen, and nothing in Faerie was going to make me into the queen the Carraig Sidhe needed. Oberon had forced me under the crown, but I would find a loophole. I’d give the Carraig what they wanted, what they deserved. I would create a position that made Maxen Lothlorien the de facto leader of the Carraig Sidhe, and I’d go back to what I did best: wielding a sword.
My tension eased a little after that, but I continued on my circular path as if the night air could cleanse me of all troubles.
I wasn’t sure how long I paced around the dark courtyard, listening to the cheery little trickle of the waterfall, but at some point, the phone began to ring. I ignored it, but it insistently continued. Finally, I went inside and snatched up the receiver.
“Yes?”
“Petra, let me in.” It was Oliver.
“What?”
“I was pounding on your door for ten minutes.” His irritation came through in the snarly edge to his voice. “I had to leave to find a house phone to call you. Now that I know you’re not dead, I’m coming back. You’ll let me in.”
He hung up.
I scowled at the phone and then dropped it back on its cradle. I wanted to be pissed, to tell him to leave me alone, but I was too damn exhausted. Letting out a long, weary breath, I passed my hand over my eyes and began trudging toward the front of the apartment. When I reached my fallen crown, I bent to retrieve it and left it in the kitchenette.
The sound of a heavy fist pounding wood echoed through the formal living room.
“I’m coming!” I hollered irritably.
When I opened the door, I found not only Oliver, but also Maxen and Nicole. They crowded inside before I could protest. Nicole gave me a quick hug.
