His laugh is ice splintering. “My daughter, how little you understand.”
Aldebaran shuffles out of the shadows on his left, the Xi on his right, their Inimical circuits blazing through the gloom, signaling their enslavement.
Cold fury sweeps through me. “Oh, I understand perfectly, Father. Everyone who defies you deserves to be controlled.”
“Yes.” His eyes are flint and ice. “And soon, so will you.”
“And then what? You’ll drag Dark Faerie and Fair Faerie in, mash them back together as some Frankenstein realm with you as king?”
“As it should be.”
“Only the Battle of Wits and War can tell.” The bain sidhe’s voice resonates as she comes sweeping into the throne room. She holds the Dark Faerie hearthstone in her palms, her claws clackering against it.
Its darkling light flashes wildly. It throbs in my chest, a runaway pulse.
She moves to the throne, holds the hearthstone over the dragon, and drops it, a dark jewel sinking into those curved black teeth. Her eyes, black pools, find me. “Wits or War first, princess?”
Nervous anxiety bleeds through my limbs. I eye the racks and racks of weaponry that circle the room. Glaives and knives, swords, spears, axes. All in brightest wintersteel, darkest adamant. Weapons everywhere.
A million ways to cut. A million ways to bleed.
If I lose, I die. If I win, I become queen. I’m not ready for either.
But we are. Inside my soul, Dark-Rouen rises to claw at her cage. We can’t wait for all that power, to be supreme, to rule and do whatever we want. First, we must slaughter the king.
But can I?
He’s not your father. He’s fallen, infected—a rabid beast with your father’s face.
I shove my dark self down. My heart conflicted, I put on my brave face. “Shall it be War, Father?”
“You will die.”
“No.” I draw a sword from the rack. “I will become the Adamant Queen.”
The bain sidhe’s wail splits the air, a keening sharp as knives.
“The Battle of War has begun, Father.”
His lip curls. Ice rushes down his arms, coalescing as two wintersteel short swords. He vanishes, icy mist pluming from where he stood. In the next breath, the Xi peels back the shadows. They and Aldebaran also vanish.
I step close to Syl. We stand back to back. “Be ready for anything.”
She nods.
My instincts scream a warning.
I sidestep reflexively, and my father’s blade prints heat across my side. Blood hits the icy black floor and bounces. I hiss and draw in a frosty breath.
Gouts of magma blast in, Aldebaran appearing in a burst of Inimical fire.
His darkfire forces Syl and me apart.
I windwarp away, to the top of the dais near the throne. Syl whirls, facing off against Aldebaran. I want to help her, but my father wings in.
Clash! Our weapons crash. We trade blows, our swords smashing and clashing as we leap across the throne room, taking the fight to the balcony high above, leaping from stairway to balcony to high niche to vault.
He misses me with his next stroke, and I slam my heel into his thigh. He falls, falling down, down, down.
I leap after him.
He lands near the throne, rolls to his feet. The snarl on his face is rictus, filled with hatred.
But my anger is a bitter wind inside me. This is the same chamber he brought me to in order to marry me off, the same place he sentenced me to a Moribund infection. The bain sidhe’s wail goes on and on and on, almost like she’s chanting a mantra. My mind whirls. I hear words in her wail.
“Be the queen, be the queen, be the queen.”
My father charges in, and I sidestep.
The Adamant Queen around my neck grows heavier. My dark self rises up again, driving my murderous impulses to a frenzy. Kill him. Kill him now!
But if I kill him, I’ll fall even harder to her.
I won’t! I fight against her, but I’m losing. Murderous rage fills me. This, this is why…
“I’m not fit to rule!” I try to tell the bain sidhe, Syl—anyone who will listen—but neither of them do.
“You can do this, Roue!” Syl’s sending is bright with her belief in me.
The bain sidhe chants on. “Be the queen, be the queen, be the queen.”
I block my father’s slash, pushing him back.
“Be the queen…” The bain sidhe’s wail winds higher, desperate, sorrowful.
“Hear that, my daughter?” Father taunts me. “That is the sound of my victory. Your death.”
“Be the queen!”
“I can’t!” Panic surges up inside me. Even now, my dark self claws to get out, raking against her mental cage. “If I win, if my dark self gains the power of UnderHollow. It’ll be my father all over again.”
“No.” The bain sidhe’s wail stops with that one word. “Rouen Rivoche, you are only one half your father. The other half of you—”
“Is my mother.”
The truth of it slams into me. My mother was a powerful queen-consort, gentle when she could be, merciful but cruel when she had to be. She did nothing without intent.
I wrap my hand around the Adamant Queen.
Mother had a dark side, but she controlled it.
I can, too. No matter how hard, I will learn, I will grow stronger, and I will control her. Not the other way around.
I breathe in deep, drawing upon the power of my mother, my grandmother, all the Adamant Queens before me.
“Yes!” Syl sends. “I believe in you!”
I raise my chin. “The bain sidhe’s right, Father. I am my mother’s daughter.”
“No,” he snarls. “You’re dead!”
Cheekily, I touch the pulse at my throat. “Still alive.”
Snarling, he slashes in, and I knock his sword away.
He feints, but I don’t fall for it. I block his stroke when it comes.
He pushes forward, but I sidestep, using his momentum against him.
A cold, steady resolve drives me. I am my mother’s daughter, a queen in my own right. For his every attack, I have a counter until finally, he overbalances. I evade, sweeping his foot and stealing his balance.
He crashes to the floor.
In a flash, my sword is at his throat. “You’ve lost, Father. Throw down your weapons.”
My father spits blood at my feet. “Never.”
My head is reeling. I’ve won the Battle of War, but can I really kill him?
Do it. Do it! Dark-Rouen screams.
Father’s eyes, the same shade of sapphire-blue, meet mine. “If you kill me, you’ll never find out the truth about your mother.”
That rocks me to my core. “She died. When the sleeper-princess poisoned the hearthstone. When the vaults came down. She was…”
I can’t say it. Buried alive.
“No.” Every word Father says stuns me cold. “She still lives.”
“What?” My reality seems to splinter. Everything in the throne room fades into the background—the colliding realms, the Adamant Throne, the blazing hearthstone. Mother is still alive. My breath seizes in my throat.
“Roue!” Syl’s cry jolts me back to reality.
That’s when the Xi barrels into me.
The impact rocks me off my feet. I hurtle into the wall. Stone rains down around me. The Xi hits me, fists like anvils hammering me back and back and back into the wall.
Dimly, I hear Syl screaming my name, fighting against Aldebaran.
I fall, get back up, only for the Xi to hit me again. The troll assassin fights against my father’s mental commands, but the Inimical circuitry blazes up their throat, across those angular cheekbones.
The Xi has no choice.
“Roue!” Syl cries out. She’s locked up with Aldebaran, white fire against dark. She can’t afford an inch, but she turns to save me.
“Syl, don’t!”
He blasts her in the back. Darkfire and smoke plumes with the stench of ch
arred flesh. Her agony rockets down the bond. She crumples, smoking. But alive, still alive.
Like my mother.
I struggle, but the Xi throws me to the ground. My teeth rattle from the force of it. Blank-faced, eyes burning, the troll assassin kicks me over with one boot then presses the other down on my chest. It’s like having a house on my chest.
My ribs bend, creaking.
And then my father’s face fills up my vision. He wipes blood from his cheek. He raises his hand. Crimson circuits well up like blood from his fingers, sticking together, forming a glowing, sticky red orb.
An Inimical ovo.
The Inimical squirm inside it like a nest of chittering spiders.
He holds it over me. “Oh, Rouen, my daughter. The Battle of War may be over…”
He lets the ovo drop.
“But the Battle of Wits has just begun.”
41
SYL
If the Moribund ever infected
A fair Fae, that fair fae
Would become
Inimical
- Glamma’s Grimm
* * *
Roue’s father drops the Inimical ovo.
I watch, horror cranking open in my chest as it smashes open on the polished black floor, right next to my Roue. Instantly, a million tiny crimson circuits swarm out of it like spiders birthing. They skitter across the floor at her.
“No!” I lunge, but Aldebaran throws up a wall of darkfire between me and her.
Panic eats me up. I have to help her! Summery heat tingles my skin as I blast the wall with white flame, eating away at it, but he pours it on harder, forming a cage around me.
I can’t break out, can’t get to her.
“Roue!”
She fights, but her father pins her to the floor with one boot, his wintersteel blade at her neck. Trickles of blood run down the white column of her throat, spilling like rubies to the black floor.
The Inimical circuits rush toward her, a red tide of chittering scarabs. Her fear bursts down the soul-bond, bright and pulsing.
She fights. I fight.
“No, Roue!”
“Syl!”
There is nothing we can do.
Roue’s cry tears at my heart. Crimson circuits swarm over her bare arms, then burrow deep, splicing into her flesh. Instantly, red veins rise up beneath her skin, glowing, pulsating, as she is infected.
Prickles shiver across my own arms, my own skin.
And it’s not from my Summer power.
No… I look down I horror as my veins glow a sickly crimson. How?
“The soul-bond!” Roue cries out, gritting her fangs as the Inimicals surge through her system.
“That’s correct.” Reinghûl steps away from Roue. “The fate of one is the fate of the other. That is the strength of the soul-bond. But it is also its weakness.” He signals Aldebaran, and the darkfire cage around me drops, pluming away in black smoke.
I’m free. Roue’s free. She scrambles to her feet.
But we’re still trapped. Caught dead-to-rights.
“The Battle of Wits has begun.” Reinghûl’s eyes glint with cruelty. “Can you purify the Inimicals before the two of you become my slaves?”
Good question. My eyes meet Roue’s, panic leaping up and down our bond. “Can we?”
Already the Inimical infection is spreading. I feel it, cold and hot all at once, splicing into my arm, racing up into my shoulders, down into my fingers. The sick glow heats my body like a furnace, all my Summer and sunfire curdling like burnt milk.
I am becoming Inimical, corrupted, evil and destructive.
The antithesis of everything that is Syl Skye.
Panic welling up inside me, I struggle, but my Summer power’s betraying me. It burns through me, igniting my veins in heat and pain. I fall to my knees, crying out. “Roue!”
Roue’s no better. “Syl, your fire!”
Desperate, I dig deep, pulling my white flame up from the bright core of my soul. Whoosh! I flame on, but the Inimicals are sleeper-princess power. Untouchable. Unburnable. “It’s not working!”
That’s not our only problem, either.
The entire realm shudders, vivid flashes blaring through the stained glass. Through the window, OverHill looms, its brilliance painful as it draws closer, closer. It’s no longer just a bright curve. Now it’s a blazing white-hot disk covering the entire sky. Outside, Winter recoils, melting, burning. Trees burst into flame; the ground erupts in molten lava. Snow blasts the air, winter winds winding up into a deadly squall.
Summer and Winter warring it out in the moments before the Great Convergence hits like a nuclear warstrike.
“Syl?” Roue’s sending is bright with panic. “We’re running out of time.”
“I know.” I steal another glimpse. OverHill’s Summer drags even closer. I can feel the heat of it now, clashing with UnderHollow’s Winter. “Let’s just hope that objects in mirror are closer than they appear,” I joke unhappily.
Meanwhile, Reinghûl’s gearing himself up for some serious supervillain action. At his command, the Ebon Knights pound into the throne room, joining Aldebaran and the Xi where they stand at the foot of the Throne’s dais. Reinghûl gestures, pulling on the power of UnderHollow. Frost explodes, and ginormous icicles jut up from the floor, from the walls, trapping us in the chamber.
I ramp up my fire, but the Inimicals surge through my body, eating up my power, transforming it bit by bit.
Roue’s even worse, Inimical veins carving up her arms, to her shoulders…
It’s not looking good for Team FairDark.
It’s all we can do to stay standing, the soul-bond forming a feedback loop of shared agony.
Guilt washes over me. I’m not strong enough. “Roue, I’m so sorry.”
“Not as sorry as these two clowns are going to be.” Her sending is a low growl.
“King Reinghûl!” Aldebaran interrupts my internal pity party. He staggers toward Roue’s dad, the hearthstone beating a frantic, flashing pulse in his chest.
Send in the first clown.
The Inimicals on ol’ Al’s cheeks fire red, but he fights off their control for a moment, his eyes clearing. “I have done all you asked. Make me king!”
Mistake.
“Oh Aldebaran.” King Reinghûl’s voice is almost gentle. “You are nothing more than a pawn.”
Without ceremony, he rips the Fair Faerie hearthstone from Aldebaran’s chest with a sickening sclorch! The Prince of OverHill gasps, his chest torn into a sucking wound. He collapses to hands and knees, making awful noises as he dies.
Sorrow wells in my chest. I can’t help but feel a little bad for the guy.
Reinghûl windwarps the fading Fair Faerie hearthstone up the steps to the Adamant Throne. “With the fair Fae king and queen dead, there is no one left to control their hearthstone.” His smile is sharp with fangs. “No one to keep it from being devoured.”
As soon as he nears the Dark Faerie hearthstone, the two pulse and flare up, black light warring against the golden lick of flame in its bright twin.
No question, though. The Dark Faerie hearthstone is brighter, stronger.
It flashes and flares in the teeth of the black dragon.
Reinghûl holds the Fair Faerie hearthstone aloft. “There will be a Great Convergence. Dark Faerie will swallow Fair Faerie. And it will begin with this.”
“No!” With a sudden surge of energy, I lunge toward him, but the Ebon Knights knock me to the floor. The Xi holds Roue down.
Reinghûl drops the golden hearthstone into the dragon’s teeth.
It clinks as it drops in, sliding down like a pinball.
The instant the hearthstones touch, both realms of Faerie shudder to their foundations. UnderHollow rocks as flashes of Winter, bursts of Summer erupt inside the throne room. Thundersnow booms, deafening me, and the winds of Summer ramp up to a howl. I can’t hear the bain sidhe’s wail anymore.
The temperature flushes hot, then freezes cold.
>
One second, I’m shivering, the next I’m sweating.
And still the Inimicals burn through me. My white fire begins to turn black. “Roue! I can’t stop it!”
“I can’t either, princess.”
I scramble to my feet toward her, but the Ebon Knights hem me in, glittering pikes jabbing at me from all angles.
The chamber rumbles, the entire realm destabilizing.
“The Great Convergence is at hand!” Reinghûl shouts.
Ugh, leave it to King Jerkwad to say something cheesy. Besides, we have about a minute left till Midsummer, by my reckoning. “You’re early—”
With a great rending riiiiiippp, the Shroud tears wide.
Uh-oh. Scratch the “early” bit. The Shroud’s clearly got other plans.
Velvety black wisps thread the air like ribbons, every single denizen of Faerie, Fair or Dark, feeling the shivery agony in our very bones as the barrier between all realms rips open and dissipates.
The entire realm shudders like it’s falling apart. The vaults above quiver and shake. The stained glass cracks.
Reinghûl stands there, triumphant. “Look.” He points.
The side of Castle Knockma blows open, and a second castle, its polar opposite, looms closer, bright and radiating sunfire, dragged toward us through the snow as though the moorings of that dimension have shattered and the gravity of Dark Faerie is sucking it in.
Horror creeps into my heart. I know that castle. It’s OverHill’s Caernarvon.
Rouen struggles against the Xi. “Father, you must stop this!”
Fair Faerie drags closer, drawn by its hearthstone.
“I cannot.” He turns to us in the shuddering throne room, the flashing light and darkness of the hearthstones leaping across his face. “You began the Great Convergence with your soul-bond. But I, I will see that Dark Faerie not only survives but thrives. I will see us reign supreme.”
“You mean you will reign supreme.” I step forward, pressing against the pikes.
His smile is mock-rueful. “Yes. One way or another.”
I get his meaning—his way includes the Inimicals turning me and Roue, and everyone else, into his mindless servants. Even now, the crimson glow infuses my skin. I feel it carving up my arms, my chest, my neck.
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